Team Mohawk trade mission draws criticism

>> Traditionalists angered by band council's participation in Team Canada trip to Mexico

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

Plans by the Kahnawake Band Council to jump on the Team Canada globalized-trade bandwagon have angered traditional groups on the Kahnawake reserve and other reserves of the Iroquois nation.

The band council, led by Grand Chief Joe Norton, plans to participate in an inter-indigenous trade agreement called Project Oaxaca-Kahnawake, or Project OK--a trade deal that will see indigenous people of Mexico mass-produce wampum belts and goods with Iroquois motifs for cut-rate worldwide sale. But traditional groups on the reserve consider the project illegal and are outraged by the council's dealings with a Mexican government complicit in the slaughter of 45 Chiapas Indians last Dec. 22.

Observers point out that the council's participation in the trade deal is particularly bewildering in light of the Chiapas Indians' expression of support for the Mohawks during the 1990 Oka Crisis.

The Mohawk nation at Kahnawake has written a letter dated Dec. 29 to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, protesting the Team Canada trade mission to Mexico and insisting that the Kahnawake Band Council delegates falsely represent the Mohawk Nation. The Oneida Iroquois Nation of Ontario and New York state, and the Tuscarora Iroquois of North Carolina and New York state have also sent letters to the prime minister protesting the trade mission. The prime minister has not yet replied to the letters.

The Kahnawake Band Council announced Tuesday that it would defer the signing of the trade deal, originally scheduled for that day, until February in light of the December massacre of Chiapas Indians. But according to the press release, the massacre has only "led the Kahnawake and Oaxaca leaders to strengthen their commitment to the trade convention and push hard for both Mexico and Canada to support the work of the [recently formed Indigenous Trade] Commission."

Arnold Goodleaf of the Kahnawake Band Council explained that the massacre has strengthened the indigenous trading partners' resolve to negotiate independently of the Canadian and Mexican governments. The Project OK negotiators called off arrangements for Canada and Mexico to participate in a signing ceremony, for instance, as a result of news coverage of a Mexican army patrol firing on unarmed men, women and children.

Goodleaf insists the trade deal is an honourable venture for the indigenous people of Canada and Mexico. He describes it as a means of reappropriating the Iroquois identity: "The intent is to try to get rid of United States middlemen. It's so we can stop getting a nickel for our work when we should be getting a dollar. And that dollar will be shared equally between producer and seller." Goodleaf describes the Mohawk Nation's complaints against the band council as a "misunderstanding of intent" and "not an accurate reflection of what the convention is all about."

But doubts remain about the sincerity of the band council's concern for human rights. Karonhiahente, a member of the People of the Longhouse, one of the Kahnawake traditional groups opposed to the band council's participation in the trade mission, claims the band council stands to make a substantial amount of money from the trade deal. She fears that the production of artifacts, now in the hands of local native artisans, will head down south after the trade deal to factories employing Mexican Indians working in poor conditions for subsistence wages. The artifacts, she adds, will then be sold with a politically correct "Made by Indigenous Peoples of North America" label to help sanitize the whole process.

"It's the people down in those areas who will be doing this work. Their land is taken away, they're forced into camps, and they have to take any work possible because they have no choice. How can we as Indian people sign an agreement that will have our brothers and sisters mass-produce our own symbols, and get beaten and killed if they resist?

"Those cultural symbols belong to everybody. What's to say someone in their own home makes something and wants to sell it, and is told, 'Sorry, you can't do that, you have to get a permit?' These things are a reflection of who we are as a people. How can a few individuals decide when and where we can pull them out and be proud of them?"

Karonhiahente describes the band council's rule in Kahnawake as autocratic: "There's been no discussion with the community. It's been a completely top-down affair. All the band council does is give out information every so often saying, 'This is what's happening, this is what's likely to happen.' But there's no discussion, either through referendum, meeting or anything, to get the total opinion of the community." She said that the council is democratically elected, but few people in the community vote. Delegates, she says, are elected to council thanks largely to the voting turnout of family and friends.