The Oka Crisis (French: Crise d'Oka), also known as the Mohawk Crisis or Kanehsatà:ke Resistance (French: Résistance de Kanehsatà:ke), was a land dispute between a group of Mohawk people and the town of Oka, Quebec, Canada, over plans to build a golf course on land known as "The Pines" which included an Indigenous burial ground. The crisis began on July 11, 1990, and lasted 78 days until September 26, with two fatalities. The dispute was the first well-publicized violent conflict between First Nations and provincial governments in the late 20th century.
Historical background
Early settlement
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people, mainly members of the Mohawk nation (Kanien’kehá:ka), first established their homeland in the Hudson River valley before moving north to the lower area of the St. Lawrence River. The several hundred people who migrated at the time went on to develop three distinct Kanien’kehá:ka communities in the region: Kahnawá:ke, Kanehsatà:ke and Ahkwesáhsne.
Around 1658, the Kanien’kehá:ka had displaced the Wyandot people, with whom the Haudenosaunee had long been in conflict. In the fall of 1666, hundreds of French soldiers, as well as Algonquin and Huron allies, attacked southward from Lake Champlain and devastated four Kanien’kehá:ka villages near Albany, then negotiated a peace between the Haudenosaunee and the French and their allies which lasted for the next 20 years. In 1673, the Jesuit mission at Saint-François-Xavier brought about forty Kanien’kehá:ka from the village of Kaghnuwage, on the Mohawk River, in present-day New York state. In 1680, the Jesuits were granted the seigneurie Sault-Saint-Louis, now named the village of Kahnawá:ke, with a current area of over 4000 hectares. Starting in the 1680s, there was a military conflict between the English allied to the Kanien’kehá:ka and the French allied with other indigenous tribes. In the early 1690s, the Kanien’kehá:ka were weakened through a prolonged and severe military effort by the French.
In 1676, the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice (Sulpician Fathers), a Roman Catholic order, then based in Paris, France, founded Montreal Island's first mission at the foot of Mount Royal to minister to the Haudenosaunee / Kanien’kehá:ka, Algonquin and Huron neophytes and to distance them from French settlers in Ville Marie. In 1696, the Sulpicians moved
the mission to one on the edge of the Rivière des Prairies, near the Sault-au-Récollet rapids, in north end Montreal Island. In 1717, the Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice de Paris was granted a concession (3.5 lieues of frontage, 3 lieues deep) named seigneurie du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes.
In 1721, the Sulpicians moved the Sault-au-Récollet mission to two villages on seigneurie du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes territory with the Algonquins and Nipissings being assigned the village to the east and the Kanien’kehá:ka being assigned the village to the west including territory known since the late 1880s as "The Pines" (formerly "sand dunes behind the village ... part of the Common Lands on which the Kanien’kehá:ka pastured their cattle") and the adjacent indigenous cemetery. This meant the Indigenous inhabitants were forced to move once again. To cushion the blow, they were promised ownership of the land they would inhabit. The seigneurie du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes was expanded through two grants, one in 1733, consisting of small pie-shaped segment with 2 lieues of frontage to the east of initial concession land, and, in 1735, a larger segment representing about 40% of the seigneurie's total area. In all three grants the land was provided under the guarantee it would be used for the benefit of Indigenous residents.
Land dispute
Following the conquest of New France in 1760, the Act of Capitulation of Montreal guaranteed that all the "Indians" who had been allied to the French would be free to remain on the land they inhabited unless those lands were formally ceded to the Crown. This was restated by the Treaty of Paris and again in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Hence, the Kanien’kehá:ka began advocating for the recognition of their land rights to British officials. Similar claims in Kahnawá:ke and Ahkwesáhsne were recognized, but the Kanehsatà:ke requests to be released from the rule of the Sulpicians and reporting of seminary officials to white settlers were ignored. When the Sulpicians aided the British in crushing the Patriot's War of 1837–38, the seminary's land title was confirmed. The Kanien’kehá:ka continued pursuing their right to the land, petitioning, and failing, to obtain the recognition of Lord Elgin's recognition of their claims in 1851. Eight years later, the Province of Canada extended the official title of the disputed land to the Sulpicians.
In 1868, one year after Confederation, the chief of the Oka Kanien’kehá:ka people, Joseph Onasakenrat, wrote a letter to the seminary claiming that its grant had included about 23 km2 (9 mi2) reserved for Kanien’kehá:ka use in trust of the seminary, and that the seminary had neglected this trust by granting themselves (the seminary) sole ownership rights. In 1869, Onasakenrat attacked the seminary with a small armed force after having given the missionaries eight days to hand over the land. Local authorities ended this stand-off with force. In 1936, the seminary sold the territory under protest by the local Kanien’kehá:ka community. At the time they still kept cattle on the common land. By 1956, the Kanien’kehá:ka were left to six remaining square kilometres out of their original 165.
In 1959, the town approved the development of a private nine-hole golf course, the Club de golf d'Oka, on a portion of the disputed land. The project area bordered The Pines, as well as a Kanien’kehá:ka burial ground in use, at that time, for nearly a century. The Kanien’kehá:ka suit filed against the development did not succeed. Construction also began on a parking lot and golf greens adjacent to the Kanien’kehá:ka cemetery.
In 1977, the Kanehsatà:ke band filed an official land claim with the federal Office of Native Claims regarding the land. The claim was accepted for filing and funds were provided for additional research of the claim. In 1986 the claim was rejected on the basis that it failed to meet key legal criteria.
In March 1989, the Club de golf d'Oka announced plans to expand the golf course by an additional nine holes. As the Office of Native Claims had rejected the Kanien’kehá:ka claim on the land three years earlier, his office did not consult the Kanien’kehá:ka on the plans. No environmental or historic preservation review was undertaken. Protests by Kanien’kehá:ka and others, as well as concern from the Quebec Minister of the Environment, led to negotiations and a postponement of the project by the municipality in August pending a court ruling on the development's legality.
Lead-up to the crisis
On June 30, 1990, the court found in favour of the developers, and the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, announced that the remainder of the Pines would be cleared to expand the golf course to eighteen holes and to construct 60 condominiums. Not all residents of Oka approved of the plans, but opponents found the mayor's office unwilling to discuss them.
On March 11, as a protest against the court decision to allow the golf course expansion to proceed, some members of the Kanien’kehá:ka community erected a barricade blocking access to the dirt side-road between Route 344 and "The Pines". Protesters ignored a court injunction in late April ordering the dismantling of the barricade, as well as a second order issued on June 29. Mayor Ouellette demanded compliance with the court order, but the land defenders refused.
On July 5, the Quebec minister of Public Security, Sam Elkas, said, regarding the land defenders at the Pines, that "they have until the 9th [of July], after that date it's going down." The next day, the Quebec Human Rights Commission alerted John Ciaccia and Tom Siddon, respectively the provincial and federal native affairs ministers, of the rapidly increasing threat of conflict near Oka and the need to establish an independent committee to review the historical Kanien’kehá:ka land claim. Ciaccia wrote a letter of support for the Kanien’kehá:ka, saying that "these people have seen their lands disappear without having been consulted or compensated, and that, in my opinion, is unfair and unjust, especially over a golf course." This did not sway the mayor.
Crisis
Police raid
On July 11, at 5:15 a.m., police officers arrived to the Kanien’kehá:ka barricade that was blocking the Pines' southern gate. Police cars, vans, and rented trucks were parked in front of the roadblock. Police personnel took up tactical positions in the trees or crouched in ditches. Others proceeded to the barricade. At the same time, another police unit known as "Sector Five" approached the northern roadblock. A total of around a hundred officers surrounded the Kanien’kehá:ka warriors and their allies, including a tactical intervention squad and riot police.
The previous day the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, had asked the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) to intervene with the Kanien’kehá:ka protest, citing alleged criminal activity at the barricade. While the protesters had expected town officials or municipal workers, they had been promised by an SQ officer that the police would not intervene in this civil injunction. While they were reportedly willing to be arrested in the defence of their land, they had hoped to avoid violence.
The Kanien’kehá:ka women present at the southern barricade purportedly took charge of the interactions with authorities as they recognized the protection of the land as their own duty. A dozen of them, arms stretched out to signify their being unarmed and having no violent intent, walked towards the police. Authorities said they would speak only to a designated leader, while the group of women said that they were all representing the interests of the group and no single leader existed. Tensions escalated as the authorities would not discuss matters with the Kanien’kehá:ka women. Eventually, the group compromised and asked a male protester to come forward and talk with the officers; which was in vain. The SQ deployed their Emergency Response Team (ERT), a police tactical unit, threw tear gas canisters and concussion grenades at the protesters in an attempt to force them to disperse.
The Kahnawá:ke Warrior Society was called in for reinforcements, and by 6:20 a.m. they were seizing Honoré-Mercier Bridge and the highways which fed into it. They gained control of the two lanes of Highway 138, and then pushed back the thousands of cars to Châteauguay. Over the next three hours they created a no-man's land between two barricades while other contingents blocked Highways 132 and 207 as well as Old Châteauguay Road.
Around 7:30 a.m. a front-end loader (sometimes cited as a bulldozer) and helicopter arrived, and the police moved closer to the barricade. Trees were sawed down by the Kanien’kehá:ka and added to the barricade while additional police cars arrived. Members of the surrounding Kanien’kehá:ka communities joined those already present at the Pines as tear gas canisters were thrown at the southern barrier. Around 8:30 the front-end loader rammed the barricade. Then armed police officers moved into the Pines, and gunshots were fired from both sides. Then the police retreated, abandoning six cruisers and the front-end loader. Although an initial account reported that 31-year-old SQ Corporal Marcel Lemay had been shot in the face during the firefight, a later inquest determined that the bullet which killed him struck his "left side below the armpit, an area not covered by [his] bullet-proof vest". Despite a 1985 SQ directive mandating that all officer communications be recorded, no record of the events was provided to the court, which the coroner decried as "unacceptable" and "even comical".