Will there ever be peace?

RESTLESS SUMMER, PART II: $51M and 17 years later, the Oka crisis still has not been settled. Are we on the verge of a repeat?

By JORGE BARRERA
June 27, 2009
Ottawa Sun

The war never ended in Kanesatake, the Mohawk community at the centre of the Oka crisis, and now the government has been put on notice history might repeat itself.

Ottawa's lead negotiator on the Kanesatake file has received two letters this year from the Kanesatake Women's Coalition warning the federal government to stop negotiating with the band council. The letters say they could throw up a highway blockade or worse to force the issue.

"I do not have to remind you that this is exactly what happened back in 1990. The chief and council of the day did not have the authority or the mandate to negotiate our land rights in the pines for the expansion of the Oka golf course," says one of the letters.

"The Mohawk women of Kanesatake warned the federal Conservative government of that day and its negotiator that if they continued to negotiate with the council without the community's input there will be war and war did break out."

To prevent the nine-hole expansion of the Oka golf course over burial grounds in 1990, Mohawk warriors and community members took over the land and held a blockade for 78 days. A Surete du Quebec police officer was killed and the military was called in, creating an international spectacle just south of Montreal. The sister Mohawk community of Kahnawake shut down the Mercier Bridge, a major feeder into the city, in support.

The women's coalition is self-described as a "grass roots organization comprising of grandmothers, mothers, aunts and nieces."

Kanesatake Grand Chief Stephen Bonspille says the government would be wise not to take the letters, dated April 2 and March 12, lightly. He says the band council has kept the community in the dark over land claim negotiations.

Chief Clarence Simon, lead negotiator for the band, could not be reached for comment.

Indian Affairs referred the letter to the Surete du Quebec, which is investigating.

A senior official with Indian Affairs says the plan is to continue talks with Simon.

"We have been talking to the council and the representative of the council and we are going to keep talking to them," says the official Indian Affairs is awaiting for a renewal of its mandate from Minister Jim Prentice's office to negotiate with Kanesatake.

The official says Ottawa has spent $51 million on the Kanesatake negotiating process since 1994. Of that, $35 million was spent on the acquisition of 178 pieces of property, $4 million was spent on negotiations for the government side and $9 million for the Kanesatake side, according to the official.

Three federal negotiators with strong ties to the political parties of the day have been appointed to the file over the past 17 years. Close friend of Brian Mulroney and sponsorship inquiry lead counsel Bernard Roy was axed by the Liberals when they came to power. The Liberals eventually handed the file to Jean Chretien friend and Liberal party insider Eric Maldoff. He was replaced by the current Conservatives with Guy Dufort, a failed Ottawa Centertown Conservative nominee in the last election.

Despite the money and the political connections at the table, the disputed burial ground lands at the centre of the Oka crisis are still not under full Mohawk title. Indian Affairs argues no one knows the true size of the piece of property.

"The piece of land was allocated to the Mohawks at the time for common pastures," said the official. "The Mohawks say it's big, the municipality says it's little."

There has been no peace in Kanesatake since the soldiers moved out. The war turned inward, paranoia sprouted and some of the most volatile moments happened under Ottawa's nose.

One segment of this history is now under the microscope of a forensic audit called by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

LAWSUIT FILED

Former Grand Chief James Gabriel has launched a $2 million lawsuit against the government, the auditors and media organizations over the leaking and reporting of preliminary findings included in draft documents connected to the forensic audit.

In a statement of claim, Gabriel says the documents contained "incomplete findings that were entirely one-sided ... many of the facts reported ... were false ... the audit itself appeared to be negligently conducted and reported."

Gabriel's lawyers did not return phone calls.

The draft findings found that Indian Affairs and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness broke Treasury Board rules in the spending of $4 million to police Kanesatake between April 2003 and April 2005.

An incident on Jan. 12, 2004 triggered it all. When 67 police and auxiliary officers from outside communities descended on Kanesatake armed with three submachine guns, a sniper rifle, two automatic rifles, a semi automatic rifle, two pump-action shotguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition, all hell broke loose. Warriors and community members laid siege to the police station for two days. The force was eventually let out of the community and Gabriel's house was burned down.

Jacques Chagon, Quebec's security minister at the time, called it an "illegal" operation using "an army of mercenaries," during an interview with Radio-Canada.

The federal government had transferred $900,000 in special funding to the police force. Part of the money, about $62,296, was used to purchase the heavy weaponry for the officers, who were sent to "reinstate law and order in the community," according to Gabriel's statement of claim.

Former Solicitor General Wayne Easter says he believes the money was authorized by the RCMP.

The RCMP told Radio-Canada that Kanesatake's problems with organized crime were no different than any other Quebec community, according to a transcript contained in Gabriel's statement of claim. Strange things preceded those events.

In May 1999, Kingston OPP detained a man named Richard Walsh who had sensitive intelligence files in his possession. Walsh, who had a rap sheet, had just finished a secret contract with the Kanesatake band as an undercover agent to dig up information on members of the community.

The band sent a resolution to Indian Affairs in 2002 calling for an inquiry into the Walsh affair. The resolution said that $25,000 had been allocated from Indian Affairs "to support this activity."

Indian Affairs says "the content of the resolution was investigated by the SQ and the Crown prosecutor found no grounds to file criminal charges."

In 1999, Le Journal de Montreal uncovered a cancelled 1994 military plan to invade Kanesatake and its sister communities of Kahnawake and Akwesasne. In 1994, Mohawk warriors opened fire on a military helicopter and airplane flying over the reserve in search of a mysterious distress call that was never found.