Solidarity rally to remember 35 years since Oka crisis

Representatives of the Montreal and Mohawk community came together for a commemorative solidarity rally Friday night, 35 years after what’s been historically called the Oka Crisis.

It lasted 78 days —starting July 11th, 1990.

The dispute was over the land known as The Pines – sacred Mohawk land that housed a cemetery.

“We were there on the ground during the Oka situation at the pines, and we’ve been standing in solidarity with them ever since,” said Green Coalition’s President Charlie Macleod.

“It doesn’t feel right to benefit from what has happened on this land and to not support the people who are actively suffering for it. That’s what brings me out,” said Volunteer and Community Organizer Una Sverko.

“We put up a blockade on a secondary dirt road. We didn’t block a highway to block the development of the extension of Oka’s golf club,” remembers Mohawk Activist and Artist Ellen Gabriel. “We blocked condominium development and we also did it for our ancestors that are in their cemetery which was going to be dug up to extend the parking lot and it’s the last vestige of common land that the community has so people got on board and we put a put a barricade up.”

But according to Ellen Gabriel, their efforts all those years ago ultimately failed to save their land, as the sacred community cemetery was later sold by the municipality of Oka to the federal government for one dollar —as well as the pine forest they fought to protect.

“Kahnesatake’s land struggle is far from over. They’re still stealing land under the guise of a whole bunch of different things, and the situation there is quite bad for people living there,” said Sverko.

Until now, land dispossession hasn’t ceased, and according to representatives from the Mohawk Resistance, the Canadian and Quebec government are still enforcing colonial laws that favor developers and the surrounding municipalities, especially in Oka, where the crisis originally occurred.

Today, many gathered not only to remember the violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples 35 years ago, but to reveal 16 Calls to Action they are demanding from the Quebec and Canadian governments.

“The first thing with Kahnesatake is actual engagement on the land issue,” stressed Sverko. “They know what they need to do. They’ve been told a million times. So, actual genuine engagement and a respect for the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous people which prioritizes self-determination and free prior and informed consent.”

“We want we want the land to be returned to us entitled because right now under the Indian Act it’s there for our benefit and use. So, we want to change the relationship that we have with Canada,” added Gabriel.