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Kanesetake blues

Ellen Gabriel sees serious problems, and some progress, 15 years after the Oka Crisis

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

It had been almost a year since the Oka Crisis had passed when Ellen Gabriel appeared on the cover of the April 25, 1991 issue of the Mirror. The article, written by Denise Babin and Eleanor Brown, was headlined “A Summer in Vain?” and revolved around the stalled land ownership negotiations that helped spark the crisis the previous summer. At issue was a golf course whose owners wanted it to expand onto what the Kanesetake Mohawks considered sacred ground. Violence bubbled over into an armed confrontation between the paramilitary Mohawk Warriors on one side and the Sûreté du Québec and the Canadian Forces on the other. Before it was all over, one SQ officer died in a firearms accident and deep-seated racial prejudice reappeared in the ugliest manner.

Gabriel had been one of the chief spokespeople for the Kanesetake community throughout the crisis, and acquired a high profile during the 77-day standoff. She had a reputation for being tough, no-nonsense, eloquent and angry. Long after the crisis has faded from the headlines—to say nothing of the majority of Quebecers’ memory—Gabriel still sounds angry. She’s angry at how the federal government deals with Natives, angry about the deep, ongoing rift in Kanesetake, where she lives, and angry with the sclerotic band council, a political entity she rejects entirely. But she is certainly able to cast a critical eye on her own people.

“This is a community in pain,” she says. “We’ve forgotten how to communicate with each other, and many of us have forgotten our values, our respect for one another, for our traditions and for the Earth.”

Community troubles revisited

Kanesetake made headlines again last year, when long-simmering resentment boiled over and came to a climax on Jan. 12, when the home of her cousin, then-Grand Chief James Gabriel, was torched. The trial of those suspected responsible is ongoing, but the conflict as a whole has traumatized an already troubled community, says Gabriel.

“A lot of people here are afraid to speak out,” she says. “I see this as another form of colonialization, how the government is negatively turning us inward against each other. We need a lot more patience, we need time to cool down and learn how to talk to each other. And this is possible—there are many reasonable people here, but no one is taking the initiative.”

She has few kind words to say about the existing band council, which she describes as “male-dominated” and the legacy of a colonial past. Whatever the case, she says, it’s been effectively paralyzed, split between James Gabriel loyalists and those supporting the new Grand Chief, Steven Bonspille.

“I can’t say anything about the present council because they haven’t done anything,” she says. “They’re all still trying to get their bearings, but they’re motivated by personal agendas.”

Guns, cigarettes and equal rights

On the cover of its July 26, 1990, edition, the Mirror ran a first-hand account of life behind the barricades, written by an anonymous Warrior. On Dec. 23, 1993, then-news editor Patricia Bush wrote about the booming cross-border trade in contraband cigarettes, which some pundits said would revive again with the recent spike in tobacco taxes. The sale of cigarettes, in fact, is one of the reasons why the Kanesetake community remains so divided today. James Gabriel wanted to lead a law-and-order crackdown on contraband tobacco sellers. He found resistance fierce.

It hasn’t been all doom and gloom, however. While Kanesetake is still suffering from deep divisions—over its police force, the sale of cigarettes and a controversial uranium mine—Gabriel says that, little by little, its residents are becoming increasingly aware of their rights.

“There have been small, incremental changes,” she says. “Aboriginal people have to educate themselves about their rights and about dealing with the government. But there’s a long way to go about how to communicate amongst ourselves. It’s a learning process—a painful one. But we have to keep on trying, or else we’re just going to keep spinning our wheels in the same old garbage.”

In the meantime, Gabriel says that she’ll continue with her hobby, painting, and her work at Quebec Native Women. “Aboriginal women’s voices are still not listened to, and our own people are perpetuating that,” she says. “Until we have equality and human rights protection, there won’t be much of a future for aboriginal people.”