MONTREAL – As the Mohawk band council in Kahnawake prepares to post names of non-natives issued eviction notices last week, local reaction yesterday revealed mixed feelings about the evictions – even though some felt they may have been necessary.

The only thing there seemed to be any agreement on is that the inter-racial couples now being forced to separate or move out of the community together “should have known better.”

“Nobody in this town can say they didn’t know that this would happen if they married a non-native,” said a Mohawk woman in her 60s sitting at a card table at the community’s Golden Age Club.

“We were all taught from when we were children: If you marry out, you move out,” the woman said as four of her friends, all Mohawk women of about the same age, nodded their heads in agreement.

Like most other Mohawks, residents of Kahnawake have been reluctant this week to talk on the record to outside media about the eviction issue, painting it as an internal community matter. But people were quite willing to talk off the record, though – and the prevailing view expressed was that the rules are the rules, and that people need to conduct themselves accordingly, even though there are some painful individual situations involved.

One shopkeeper in town, a 42-year-old woman, said she shared many of the same feelings expressed by the women at the Gold Age Club.

She said she grew up knowing if you “married out, you moved out,” and she has taught her own three children, age 13 to 21, the same rule.

But she said she remained troubled by the impact that future evictions could have on children of inter-racial couples. The band council has made it clear that although this round involves childless couples, there will be others in the future.

“The children made no choices of their own,” she said. “But it’s like telling them they are white when in fact they are half-native.”

One woman who was willing to talk on the record was Lynn Delisle, who has been posting remarks on a Facebook page dedicated to the issue. She responded to a reporter’s question via email.

“Every person has been affected negatively,” Delisle said. “Some because it goes against our values of compassion, others because they and their families and friends feel rejected – the worst form of punishment in our culture.

“But for others the need to regain power and control is somewhat satisfying.”

Over the years, there have been at least five such separate actions, in 1880, 1939, 1971, 1973 and 1981. Delisle said this current eviction undertaking was predictable.

Although a widow now, one Mohawk woman at the Golden Age Club yesterday who had married a white man said she was “lucky” she did so before 1981, when a moratorium on mixed marriages prohibited non-natives who married Mohawks from residing in Kahnawake. As a result, she was not forced to move out.

But even without the 1981 moratorium, she, like the others, said they had always known the potential cost of marrying outside. Their parents had witnessed the upheaval caused by eviction notices in the 1930s and, they themselves remembered the emotional turmoil of similar eviction notices issued in 1971 and 1973.

One woman recalled how she had refused to let her son, who was 15 at the time, into the house when he came home with a white girl from Châteauguay. “He thanks me for it now,” she said.

As a group, the Golden Age women talked openly, even joking about having teenage crushes on the good-looking, young white fellows who drove for Monette, a South Shore bus company that years ago stopped in Kahnawake en route to Montreal. “Our fathers watched us.”

Those least willing to talk openly about the eviction

issue are those who have received notices in recent days – and whose names could be made public by the band council as early as next Monday.

A Kahnawake woman whose non-native partner has received one of the 25 notices said she wishes the band council would show some discretionary favour toward non-natives who are widely known to have made significant social contributions to the community.

“Your commitment to the community can not be measured by your hair or skin colour,” she said. “It’s about how you respect the values of the community, the people living here.”

“He’s very hurt,” she said of her partner.

She said she and her partner have appealed their case to the band council. Council officials said yesterday eight people have responded to the notices so far, and that the rest have not.

However the next few days play out, there is a lot at stake for the future direction of individual and collective rights in Kahnawake, residents say. There are legal and social implications that affect land rights, family relationships and the community’s ability to preserve its culture and language.

At the Golden Age Club, the women who spoke to The Gazette yesterday morning said council should probably have acted more decisively in the past on the non-native residency issue.

“I think they waited too long to act,” said one woman. “They have let people get comfortable. Now it is harder.”