[news] uprising in kanesatake

[Big Garlic Bobcat]

UPRISING IN KANESATAKE
1.media analysis - joey
2.first hand account - jake brant

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1.UPRISING IN KANESATAKE
joey - (media analysis)

On Monday January 11th there was an uprising in the infamous Mohawk
community of Kanesatake Quebec. The home, car and tractor of Grand Chief
James Gabriel were set on fire after he suddenly fired the 12 person
police force and the ‘soft of crime’ police chief Tracy Cross. The new 67
officer police force was federally subsidized to the tune of $900,000 for
November 2003 to June 2004. After James Gabriel and his family fled the
reserve Quebec Public Security Minister Jacques Chagnon pulled a deal to
disband the new police force from 16 different native communities, this
ended the uprising.

Pine trees were dropped on highway 344 symbolically on the spot where
police cars were flipped over and used as barricades during the 1990 Oka
standoff. Other community members went to the police station to throw
rocks and debris at the reserve cops when they tried to leave for patrol.
With the help of trucks the police were prevented from leaving the
station, no police force patrolled Kanesatake that night. Terry Isaacs
(the day old police chief) faxed the Quebec Provincial Police requesting a
riot squad to engage the demonstrators outside the station. Isaacs later
said, “these people who are outside have (prevented) us from eating. They
haven’t allowed any food in. That night we ordered some pizza and they
stole four boxes of pizza from us. A lot of the boys are hungry, they’re
tired.”

Why all the new cops in Kanesatake? There are 27 kiosks on a 3 kilometre
stretch of Highway 344 that sell Indian-rolled cigarettes (Native, Seneca,
Niagara, Bronco). The smokes are produced on reserves and cartons go for
$25, $40 less than the going rate in Quebec. Kanesatake (pop.1200) is a
rare native community; it does not have federally recognized title to its
land, it is not recognized as a reserve under the Indian Act and it did
not have a native police force until 1997. The community is but a sliver
of a land, too small for agriculture, development, residential growth or
manufacturing; the high school does not have a science teacher. Many
people who are unemployed and receiving social assistance work in the
tobacco kiosks because they have no choice. The Montreal Gazette reported
that many of those who took action against the police occupation on were
cigarette vendors.

Mohawks along the St.Laurence Seaway have often struggled with the
government over their cigarettes. The RCMP contends that the cigarettes
are illegal because an excise stamp must be on every pack, with
provincial, federal, and excise taxes included in the price. In a
cigarette dispute in August1994 the Army, Joint Task Force 2 (J2F2), the
RCMP and the Quebec Provincial Police planned to send a force of 18,000
into the border community of Akwesasne Ontario by helicopter gunship,
rail, armoured personnel carriers and by securing the roads. Mohawk
warriors sent many warning shots over the valley letting the invaders know
just how ready they were. Hours before the invasion was to take place
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was told by advisors that the ‘bloodshed
would be too great for the Canadian public to stomach’. They changed their
strategy, the next day the price of a cigarette pack dropped way down to
$3.15 curbing the cross border ‘organized crime ring’. Slowly taxes were
raised again; cigarette costs are back up to $6-8.

On the reserve of south shore Kahnawake there are over 60 tobacco kiosks.
The Kahnawake Council sees nothing wrong with them. But things are
different across the river, last fall Treaty Chief James Gabriel promised
the federal government that he would clean up the cigarette trade in
Kanesatake.

Kenneth Deer of the Kahnawake newspaper ‘the Eastern Door’ said, “you talk
to James Gabriel and he says this is about law enforcement and drugs, and
you talk to the other side and they say that it not about that, it’s about
a power play by James Gabriel to control the local trade in (Mohawk made)
cigarettes.”

Karen Etiene, a resident of Kanesatake said Treaty Chief James Gabriel,
“just wants his own dictatorship on the reserve. I think he wants to
manipulate and control the community. He’s the worst thing that ever
happened to Kanesatake.”

Treaty Chief James Gabriel is determined to resume his role in Kanesatake
during next Tuesday’s band council meeting even though people in the
community have said they will no longer recognize his authority. Gabriel
is obsessed with returning ‘law and order’ to the community saying it is
an ‘essential cornerstone in a democratic society’. Gabriel lost a vote of
confidence in the community two years ago, but a federal court overturned
the vote. A group of dissident Mohawks, including three chiefs, blockaded
Highway 344 last April to protest a policing deal Gabriel had made with
the federal government. About a week before the fire 30 people stormed the
band council to confront Gabriel about rumours that he’d secretly asked
the government for money to conduct police operations.

On January 14th Gary Dimmock’s article in the Ottawa Citizen ‘BIKER DRUG
NETWORK BEHIND UNREST, EXPERT SAYS’ began with, “a multi-million dollar
drug network, unfettered by authority and controlled by the Hells Angels,
is behind the civil unrest at Kanesatake, the stage of the 1990 Oka
standoff.” Dimmock’s article was based on the interview of Guy Ouelette a
former police investigator. Oulette claims that the Hells Angels puppet
club (Northern Rockers) controls the pot harvest at several Mohawk
reserves. Sensational articles like Dimmock’s are meant to deliberately
confuse the issues for the public; it changes the caricature of the public
debate and ideologically taints people’s perceptions.

Band Councillor Steven Bonspille, who plans to replace James Gabriel in
June’s election said, “I have lived here my whole life. I have no
knowledge or indirect knowledge of the Hells Angels being in Kanesatake.”
Bonspille denied that Kanesatake is a haven of organized crime and pot
saying, “(Gabriel) is fixated on drugs this whole term in office, he
should have been a police chief somewhere instead of a band chief.”
Barry Bonspille said, “there is no problem with law and order. The biggest
problem here is health, housing, roads and education.”

Micheal Rice is a teacher at the Kanesatake School. He published an
article this week about poverty in Kanesatake saying, “Is it a wonder that
people are working in the tobacco shops? Is it a surprise that some people
might be involved in drug dealing. The frustration and anger that have
boiled over in Kanesetake are a manifestation of the division in the
elected band council system introduced (here) and other First Nations. How
do you expect to achieve harmony when you impose an outdated Canadian
political structure that gives political power to one party even if it has
only 51% of the votes? This system was set up to create division and
conflict in native communities.”

The Ottawa Citizens Gary Dimmock completely avoids the real issues such as
the sovereignty of the Haudonesaunee (Six Nations) Confederation of 1703,
of which the Mohawk Nation belongs. Canadian style democracy has little in
common with the longhouse council of the Iroquois Confederacy, where
decisions were made collectively and not by the mandate of an RCMP
collaborator such as James Gabriel.

There are several morals in this story. The Six Nations receive none of
the benefits of the free market or free trade within their ancestral lands
or beyond. The community members of Kanesatake defended the trading
interests of their Nation. If people show strength in standing up to the
system the police and corporate media will always cooperate against you
because they see each other as legitimate bodies in the Canadian state.
And the real moral of the story is that average people picked up rocks and
axe handles, defeated a police force, a Treaty Chief, and asserted the
never ending sovereignty of the Mohawk people.


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2. REPORT ON RECENT EVENTS IN KANEHSATAKE, MOHAWK TERRITORY
by Jake Brant, forwarded by Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Note on what follows:

Over the past week the Canadian public awoke to find the struggle of the
Mohawks of Kanehsatake as front page news.  The trigger of events was a
secret deal with the Feds signed by Grand Chief James Gabriel (who was
ousted by the community by way of a non-confidence vote this past summer
in Kanehsatake, only to have him re-instated by the Feds based on an
obscure legal technicality) to bring in an outside, invading and illegal
police force to occupy Kanehsatake at a cost of $900,000.00.  In response,
members of the community torched Gabriel's home, and the invading cops
were forcibly confined in the Kanehsatake police station for over 24
hours.  This compelled the Government of Quebec to broker a deal and
remove the occupying force.  The mass media has portrayed this as a
dispute between law-abiding Mohawks and criminal factions within the
community with connections to organized crime.  However, all credible
reports indicate this event was only one in a series based on the sincere
and genuine desire for peace and stability in the community to which James
Gabriel, in collusion with Federal and Provincial government authorities,
continues to stand as the impediment.


January 17, 2004

Re. Kanehsatake

I have had the opportunity to visit with my brothers and sisters in
Kanehsatake and would like to share that experience and insight into the
current situation.

Within the whole of the Mohawk Nation, we have been waiting for such an
event.  Since the failed Military invasion of our communities in 1994,
which included some 6,000 troops and months of training, the Federal
Government has been quietly organizing a new strategy to deal with its
approach to "organized crime" within all Mohawk communities.  The crime
that was alleged to have been committed in 1994, and as government
suggests, continues to be committed is the manufacturing and sale of
"Native Cigarettes". One report suggests the need to "target the Indians'
claims to the inherent right of inter-tribal trade with sister Mohawk
communities and the native run tobacco manufacturing industry as a whole."

It is concluded that the organized aspect to the criminal offense exists
because all distributors in Kanehsatake charge the same price of $25.00
per carton thereby suggesting collusion between proprietors.

The government has successfully transmitted its media message of "law and
order" and "organized crime" to the public and they do so at any cost.  I
sat through a Kanehsatake Police Commission press conference and witnessed
a proud Mohawk man give his story on serving his community, as a member of
the Police Commission and with no criminal record, and watched him break
down when he told us how he had to explain to his children that he was not
a criminal.  Each of the members recounted similar stories.

I personally recall in Sept/95, reading government propaganda, endorsed by
the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), that specifically stated, "There is
no burial ground in Ipperwash Provincial Park.  These people are on the
fringe and are not supported by the council for the Band."  A few short
days later, three Anishnawbe were shot, one fatally, and people who tried
to help were beaten.  The most severe beating was in-fact reserved for a
band council member.  Then Minister of Indian Affairs, Ron Irwin, was
forced into admitting that there was in fact a burial ground in the park,
after proof was presented.

During Gustafsen Lake, supporters behind the lines were presented as
terrorists, dissidents, and on the fringe.  The public as a whole failed
to question the legitimacy of the government reports and allowed for an
invasion force to attack and shoot the defenders of the land.  A U.S.
court however, after being asked to return one First Nations man for trial
who was involved, ruled that the people of Gustafsen were engaged in a
legitimate and political action to force the government of Canada from
power and advance the cause of the people who lived in squalor on Indian
Reservations.  The court further found that the information relayed to the
public at large was not truthful and was only intended to discredit the
people involved and to create a feeling or sentiment of lawlessness and
imminent peril for the Canadian people as a whole.  There was no prospect
for a fair and impartial trial and the Canadian request for extradition
was refused.

I cite these two examples of struggle to illustrate the ignorance of the
general public at that time and their inability to determine fact from
fiction.  It further illustrates the government's willingness to engage
us, even in the most righteous of situations and including those that have
been likened to the protection of a cemetery from commercial development.

Today in Kanehsatake, the government propaganda is "organized crime" and
"Hells Angels connection".  For us living on Nation lands and within
Mohawk communities, this type of rhetoric is laughable.  We know that
families with children run the convenience stores.  In the year 2004,
Mohawk people have developed their mental capabilities to be able to
establish stores that sell pop, chips, newspapers and cigarettes without
mob involvement.  There are craft shops, smoke sh\ops, wood shops and
others that don't charge taxes on their goods or services and are all
perceived as organized crime because they agree collectively not to
collect taxes.

There is no lawlessness in Kanehsatake.  There are no Harleys running up
and down highway 344.  I would suggest that the recent Barrie, Ontario
"Molson's Pot Bust" would not fit in all the basements of the few homes in
Kanehsatake.  In that situation, I would hardly think that the Barrie
Chief of Police was fearing for his job because he didn't know it was
happening right under his nose or that the people of Barrie would have
tolerated the city being surrounded by military while every house and
person was searched.

The issue at hand is simple.  It is an attempt to curb the sale of
cigarettes, made by First Nations people and industries, and sold
throughout First Nations communities in every province.

The issue of solidarity and understanding is always difficult, despite the
lessons learned from 1995.  If good Canadian people are tricked once again
by their government, then people in Kanehsatake and elsewhere will be
subjected to further despair, intrusion, and violence.  That being said,
we can all rest assured that some report, sometime in the future, will
reveal once again how the government lied to its people and justified its
assault on the Mohawk Nation.  Perhaps in a few years we can have some
speakers come out to a workshop who will speak first hand to the bullshit
and injustices that are being faced today by the people of Kanehsatake,
but however it may be billed at the time, "Aboriginal solidarity" and
Mohawk sovereignty will be determined over the next few days and weeks.

This issue has not concluded.  Let us govern ourselves accordingly. – Jake
Brant

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