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- This is the true side
of what's happened to this community, and...
we're all a living testament.
We are here, and we are going to tell the story
for everyone to hear.
- To me, it's one of the darkest days for myself...
to the whole crisis of 1990.
It was a terrible day.
- Nobody ever expected that to happen.
- Here we are, cars all busted.
I'm full of blood,
my daughter's full of blood, and I'm carrying my daughter.
(blues guitar)
- I don't know what I would do if it happens again
to one of my family.
But I'm scared that I think it's going
to happen again to me.
(blues guitar)
- The Canadian Government, they have troops...
the strength comes from our spirituality.
As Onkwehonwe people,
we only have each other to help each other.
That's what gives us the power.
- This is CKRK 103.7 FM in Kahnawake.
(gentle music) (singing in Mohawk)
(blues guitar)
- When a person asks me where I'm from, I'll say Kahnawake,
and they'll be like, "Where's that?"
It's like they don't know where we are.
We're not recognized.
(blues guitar)
If you say, "Oh well, it's just outside of Montreal,"
they'll go, "Oh, oh, okay." Yeah.
- (filmmaker) Do you think it's a beautiful place here?
- Yeah. I do find it a very beautiful place in Kahnawake.
(blues guitar)
- I sincerely love this community. I love the people in it.
I have a son who's growing up here,
so my interests are for the next generations,
and that's who I feel is being targeted
for full assimilation,
and I will try my hardest to prevent that
and to remain and keep our identity as a distinct people.
(gentle music)
- [filmmaker] In 1716,
groups of Iroquois moved to the Seigneury
of Sault St-Louis
located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River
facing the Lachine Rapids.
They named it Kahnawake.
This Seigneury was granted to the Jesuits
specifically for the settlement of the Iroquois.
The French court believed the Jesuits would gain the loyalty
of the Iroquois once they were converted.
The Seigneury is approximately 65 square miles
from Laprairie to Chateauguay.
The Jesuits assumed the group of Mohawks who settled there
had been totally converted to the Catholic religion,
but the people had not given up their Longhouse traditions.
They continued to be part of a clan system
consisting of three clans:
Wolf / pathfinders,
Bear / keepers of medicine,
Turtle / wisdom.
Over the years,
many concessions of Sault St-Louis Seigneury lands
were made by the Jesuits
for the benefit of French Canadian settlers.
Approximately 45 square miles of land were taken.
The remainder of the land of the Seigneury
is 19 and a half square miles.
- The lands we're claiming... we're not going to turn around
and move anybody.
Our reserves consist of 12,532 acres.
We're going to argue with the Provincial Government
and the Federal Government
to pay some kind of compensation for the loss of the lands,
so that's 45 and a half square miles
that we got to go dig up
and say, "Hey, this belongs to us."
- From the air, you can see the results
of further erosion of the Mohawk territory.
Every day, about 65,000 cars
cross over their reserve.
Trains pass through and the seaway traffic
is on and off all day long.
In 1990, the Mohawks of Kanehsatake,
70 kilometers west of Montreal by Lake of Two Mountains,
made a stand to stop the destruction of a sacred area
known as The Pines.
Developers wanted to bulldoze it so that they could build
condominiums and enlarge a golf course.
(ominous music)
- We're tired of getting pushed around.
What's all out there belongs to us to begin with.
What gives them the right to say that's theirs?
Plus, it all started over a nine-hole golf course.
Our people are buried there.
- This was a turning point for the Mohawk people.
No more land taking.
1,000 police officers were sent to Kanehsatake.
This was done instead of politicians
taking responsibility for land issues.
In support of their brothers and sisters in Kanehsatake,
the Mohawks of Kahnawake blocked the Mercier Bridge
and all entrances to their reserve.
The commuters who normally use the bridge
would have to take long detours.
Trenches, barricades, and many other obstacles were created
to block access to the community.
Warriors from several nations had come to give their support
and their lives, if necessary.
- My role was... cooking
and feeding the men that were at the blockade.
I think we cooked for 100, 125 men per day,
three meals a day,
and we were getting our food from Chateauguay.
Just one night, I think we made 35 pots of coffee.
Oh, we had different shifts we were on.
I was there all the time, and I used to sleep on the floor.
- There was a lot of young people here,
where they needed milk and stuff like that,
and yet these people on the other side said, "No."
I mean, there's a lot of secret ways people came in
to deliver other things that we needed.
- They were bringing it through the woods, at night, hiding.
- There was a safe house where some of our people could go
to be taken care of if they got caught on the outside,
you know, trying to get out and get food.
They were keeping an eye out for patrol.
They were letting our people know when it was safe to come.
I know even some people who were running through the bushes
to bring medical supplies and food,
who were beaten, attacked, harassed.
They had phone calls. They were calling them "Indian Lovers."
- Towards the end, there was trucks that came in.
Everybody got together
to help feed one another.
We all had to go and, you know,
every morning at the Kateri Hall,
and you were only allowed maybe half a loaf of bread
and maybe six eggs.
It was difficult.
Everybody was kind of close
and pitching in and doing their share.
- They wanted to starve the Indians out,
but they couldn't do it.
We survived and we survived this one, too.
- We tried to convince the Government
that these people had to be fed, one way or the other.
How? It was up to them to decide.
Was it through special trucks being controlled
to avoid any kind of arms
or all kinds of things being smuggled around
to support the families over there.
I mean, we were not in war.
(blues guitar)
I think the population felt bad about them.
They were not pleased
with these people behind the barricades.
It created a larger effect
when the population was behind this whole issue
because of the land claims,
but I don't know if the whites understood that.
- We point out that there are three preconditions
that the Government of Canada, Quebec
have acknowledged and signed.
People will be allowed to come and go
and that food and medical supplies be allowed to come
into our community. Those things have not been met.
We feel that the Quebec Government...
the Federal Government has not respected that agreement.
They have not done anything to ensure
that the supplies enter our communities,
both here and in Kanehsatake.
- (filmmaker) Another precondition was not respected.
By August 27th, the premier of the province of Quebec,
Robert Bourassa, asked the international observers to leave.
The representative of the United Church of Canada
and Quebec Human Rights Commission
took the initiative to replace them.
- The police allowed the mob to prevent me
from bringing that food in.
- We were not pleased politically.
We were not pleased as far as the citizens
of Chateauguay were concerned.
Here in Chateauguay, we were the ones
that were kind of hostages of the situation.
- It wasn't like the average person
who would be at the barricades nightly,
burning the effigies and...
you know, calling for...
for the army to come in.
Instead of taking a more calm approach and saying,
"Look, we'll sit down and we'll try
to work this situation out,"
the mayor very quickly reacted to take a radical position.
Some of the merchants called for, you know,
severe action to be taken, without thinking of how,
in some instances, Kahnawake had supported them to become
what they were,
and that was a betrayal.
- (filmmaker) The Chateauguay commuters were enraged
because the Mercier Bridge was blocked.
They gathered at the police barricades
in the thousands and rioted for hours,
day and night.
(blues guitar)
The local businesses were losing customers
and millions of dollars.
The population in Kahnawake is over 7,500 people,
and most of them did all their business in Chateauguay.
- All these incidents with our people,
with all the riots that have gone on...
the yelling and the screaming has all been incited
by the bad press, by the Federal
and Provincial Government and the terrible things
they've said about the people of Kahnawake
and Kanehsatake and Mohawks people in general,
terrorism and everything else.
- What the people in Chateauguay should realize
is that Mohawks and Indians of Canada, United States,
have been inconvenienced for hundreds of years.
We are not trying to take their armored personnel carriers.
We're not trying to take their country.
They're trying to take our country.
They've already taken all of our country.
We are here. We're going to stay here.
- And if you see those armored personnel carriers
rolling in your direction, what are you gonna do?
- I'll try not to get run over.
- Lots of rumors were flying around
that the possibility of the army coming into Kahnawake
and people are getting very frightened.
Politically, there wasn't very much that we could do
because of the fact that our leaders were trying
to negotiate a settlement with the Quebec Government,
and at the time, the army was already here,
but they were on the outskirts of the community.
- Any place they put a man, you face him with a man.
- Right.
- Right? - Ten four.
- No big deal. You don't have to sit up and stand up
and be at attention and all this shit.
You relax. Let them stand.
(subdued music)
- (filmmaker) Barely 20 years after
the foundation of Montreal,
on March 26, 1665, in reference to the Iroquois,
King Louis the XIV wrote a message
to his intendant Jean Talon stating...
- "To wage war, to pursue them into their homes
if necessary, in order to exterminate them completely."
- The following year, Remy de Courcelles and 1,500 men
invaded four of the Iroquois villages, burning everything,
destroying the food, and confiscating the land
in the name of the French king.
The Iroquois were dispossessed of their territory
in Montreal and the St. Lawrence River area,
but their fighting spirit never died.
- Many of our forefathers and our ancestors
have died for the same thing, for the same cause.
We're here in protection of our people
and our land.
Look at us.
Should we die because of a nine-hole golf course?
(urgent music)
- [filmmaker] The army was preparing to enter Kahnawake
and advance on Kanehsatake.
The leaders made plans to evacuate
the children and the elderly.
They feared a shoot-out between the army
and the people resisting a search of their homes.
- My sister works at the hospital, and she called.
She asked me if I was going to go, and I said, "No."
She said the hospital was getting ready,
and they were making sections.
If there was fighting, those that would be hurt
and those that would be dead.
And she said, "Do you really want
your children to see that, Yvonne?"
She said, "If you can leave and not let them see it and..."
she more or less talked me into it.
- I was in contact with our council members,
and I cautioned them about declaring an emergency situation
in the community
because the civil authorities lose complete control,
and that leaves the door open to the province
and the Federal Government,
the army and the police forces to come in.
- It was decided that the Mercier Bridge
would be the best place
because there were little or no people there.
One of the key parts was that our Peacekeepers would lead
the entourage across the bridge.
They would be helped through to get off the Mercier Bridge
through the Whiskey Trench
and on to wherever they needed to go.
- The older people were really worried about the...
...everybody else that would be left here
within the community.
They were really concerned that the army
was gonna come in.
There was going to be shots fired. There was...
they came back. There would probably be...
hardly anything left within the community itself
if there was a fight.
(group cheers)
- My husband was traveling back and forth to work.
We had a boat at the time,
and he'd bring back bread and milk and eggs
and whatever anybody needed.
And he'd shop for everybody and then at night,
we would distribute it, you know, to our neighbors
or our family or whoever needed anything.
One morning, he went to work
and he went to dock his boat.
There was a crowd there, and they start
throwing stones at him.
- (filmmaker) When the Mohawks would leave the reserve,
they would be humiliated
and every attempt was made to rob them of their dignity.
(dramatic music)
- [filmmaker] Anyone having a medical emergency
was in for a lot of trouble,
whenever an ambulance had to cross the Mercier Bridge.
- I don't deal in Chateauguay
because of the way they treated my son.
There was a little boy about 12 years old
that broke his leg,
and the paramedics went to the hospital
in Chateauguay and when they...
they had to go through a police barrier in Chateauguay.
Here comes about 15 men.
They're trying to tip over the ambulance.
Now why?
And my son was in the ambulance.
- Some hoodlums here, they was yelling,
"Let them die! Let them die!"
Is this human being?
I was in the war six years.
We respected the Red Cross all over the world.
But people, they sent ambulances, not the Red Cross.
What is ambulance then?
- Some police were just like this. They didn't do nothing.
But some turn around, and they're thinking of
what is right and what is wrong,
and they say, "Hey, it's an ambulance. Let them go."
(sirens)
- I started my contractions about three...
three in the morning,
and when she came out, I felt a rip.
At the same time, she tried to pull on the placenta
for it to come out, and it wouldn't come out,
so they called the ambulance.
The ambulance had gotten there at about maybe six o'clock.
We got over the bridge to the other side and...
once we got there, the other ambulance was...
like a few ways down the road.
So they got their stretcher out and they came up
and they met us and they put me on it
and they said that my husband wasn't allowed to come.
They asked if one of the paramedics from our ambulance
go over with me and they said,
"No, she can't go with you."
We went maybe not even like a foot...
and they had pulled us over.
All I know was the ambulance driver
had gotten out of the car, out of the ambulance.
He opened the door,
and there was these two men standing there.
They just looked at me and they said, "Okay,"
then they closed the door.
And then they... we started to go again
and then two minutes after, it was like...
we got out of the car again. We opened the thing.
Now this man has to see.
So that was three men now that have to see.
We closed the door. We got ready to pull out again.
It didn't happen. We got back out.
He had to open the doors back.
Once he had to open the door back,
there was four standing there.
There was three men and one woman.
They just want to see because they think that maybe
I have a firearm or something.
At nine o'clock, we got to the hospital.
I think they were saying that it was one third
of my blood that I had lost.
- [filmmaker] The army received orders to move in
on Kanehsatake and Kahnawake.
Because of the army's advance,
Kahnawake decided to apply their evacuation plan.
- I don't know. They were supposed
to raid Kahnawake or something.
That's when they took us, uh.
Then because I was old, I had to go.
I didn't want to go, but I had to go.
- We took my mother-in-law, who was 86
and my uncle, which lived across the street from me, was 74,
and my son, which was 10 years old.
I had asked them
if they would go because I was scared for them
because we had heard that the army was coming in.
- It was my grandson's birthday.
He was going to be one years old,
and we got a call that they were going to have
a caravan to leave town.
My mother was 77 and my father was 81,
but my daughter changed her mind.
She says, "Ma, I can't go." So she put her baby in my car.
- There was between 50 and 75 vehicles that were...
gathered to go across.
They were stopped by the SQ.
At that point, they were told by the officer in charge...
that particular checkpoint that everyone...
every man, woman, and child would have to be checked.
The vehicles would have to be checked
before they were allowed to go through.
- So I asked again, "What's going on?"
Well, they says,
"We have to provide you with better security,
in order to go through."
- When we left,
he watched from the roof of the house with binoculars,
and he knew that something was going on
because the cars were stopped.
- They came to every vehicle.
They searched the trunk, the underneath the seat.
I mean, at on point, they tried to get my father out.
My father at the time was 78 and my mother was 69.
I mean, he was about 90 pounds. He was sick.
You know, he was so weak, he could barely move his legs,
and the SQ officer was, you know, pushing him in the seat,
and I kept saying, "We have nothing.
What are you looking for?" You know?
I guess they thought we had weapons or something.
I really don't know.
- And they looked in the trunk.
I asked them, "What are you looking for?"
And they said, "We just want to make sure, you know,
that you're not taking anybody out
or something out or weapons out."
I said, "I don't even own a weapon.
Why would I be taking anything out?"
- I felt very bad for the elders that were among us
on the bridge because some were getting sick.
But what can you find
when you have children and elders in a car?
- I was six years old.
There was me, my little sister,
my older sister, my mother,
my grandmother, my great-grandmother.
They stopped us on the bridge
to start searching all our stuff,
and I was there for three hours.
I didn't know what was going on.
They just told me that we were going away
for a little while.
- They weren't carrying firearms.
They weren't carrying any of the stuff and they...
that on-the-spot check was done by our people.
But unfortunately, that wasn't good enough.
- So I let the kids out, and they would come,
and they'd yell at you, "Get them in the car!
Put them back in. You're not allowed.
Don't get out of your car."
Then we started to argue.
We said, "These kids have to get out. These people..."
It was just too hot in the cars.
I had my mother with me. My mother was maybe 70.
It was a beautiful summer that summer.
- I was really upset and heartbroken for having to leave.
My husband gave me a paper telling me not to read this paper
until I was off and out of the reserve,
and it was his will,
and I was crying.
One SQ was very nice about it.
He came and he said, "Look, ma'am." He said "I'm sorry.
I really don't want to be here, but this is my job,"
and he held me and he comforted me.
He asked me if I was okay.
Just to be strong, keep my head up, and take care of my son.
- When they first arrived at that point,
there wasn't anybody on the other side of the bridge,
meaning the north side.
That one particular area was under construction.
It was all dug up.
The officer in charge of us spoke with the officer in charge
of the SQ because he was concerned for the safety
of the people, of the people out there,
and he said there wouldn't be any problem.
They had two bus loads.
They were all full of RCMP standing by, riot equipped.
- (filmmaker) The police had orders not to arrest anyone.
Their concerns were to prevent the crowd
from reaching the cars
and blocking their passage over the bridge.
- We're sitting in the car waiting, waiting.
My great-grandmother was about 92,
and my grandmother... I'm not sure of her age at the time,
and I was 18.
There was hundreds of people on the other side now,
calling us down,
yelling at us, calling us savages, and...
saying stuff in English and French.
It wasn't nice.
- At the time, there was myself,
my daughter Sarah, she was 18 months,
her father, and our babysitter,
and we saw all the people on the other side waiting,
and we also heard rumors of conversation on the French
radio station to entice people to come over
and to harass us in many different ways.
- I got out of my car,
and I went and talked to a Peacekeeper.
I said, "I can't go."
I was like drained, drained. It was hot,
and I had no more energy.
Then he said, "Get in your car, they're going."
- Finally, after the crowd really built up
to, say, two or three thousand people out there,
all of a sudden, the SQ says, "It's okay to go.
You's can leave."
- Then I started to get nervous,
but there was no way to turn back at this point.
The delay was incredible.
We were on top of the bridge at quite a height.
90 degree weather.
They assured us, after two checks of every car,
that everything was okay.
"Keep your windows up
and just keep going and don't stop for anything."
- "Don't stop for anything."
And I said to him, "My God, there's people, you know."
You could see them on the banks.
I said, "What if somebody fell and...
run them over and just keep on going.
Don't stop for nothing."
- It was all lined with police,
all the way up and they were, like, screaming at you,
"Go faster! Go faster!"
They kept waving you through and just waving.
I saw a policeman standing in front of...
of somebody with a pile of rocks and just step aside
when I went through and just let them throw them.
- Everybody started following and stones,
sticks, bricks, boulders, throwing from all angles.
Your right, your left.
From the walkway on top.
Just throwing and throwing.
A couple of rocks hit the car.
I started getting nervous.
My grandmother was really nervous, and she was driving.
It was bad.
- You could see the people, waiting with piles of rocks.
They had all their ammunition ready,
and oh, there was so many people.
There was hundreds of people.
Just a big crowd.
- These people started to pick up rocks,
and they started throwing them,
and one of the policemen was trying to stop them.
He was like one and all the rest of the police
were way up on the bridge part, on the abutment part.
So as we went through,
one big rock hit my son's car on the back
and a couple of smaller ones and broke like the back window
and it left a big dent in there.
If you looked in the rearview mirror,
all I could see is the dust as we were going through.
- The SQ, they were just standing there. They were watching.
They had their backs to the people
and just watching windshields being smashed,
you name it.
- There was a phone call that came in to
the council office
and said there were problems on the bridge.
We didn't know the extent of those problems,
so we rushed and turned the TV on.
(somber music) (people chatter)
- It was just awful because we were so powerless.
There was nothing you could do.
- I felt sick. I felt... I said, "No. My God, why?
Why should this happen?"
Some people couldn't take it.
For all kinds of reasons.
Not being able to go to work.
Not being able to earn a living.
Having to travel all around the place to go to work.
- I was really scared.
Scared for my grandchildren and scared for myself,
and thank God Mona is a good driver
'cause when they were throwing stones,
it was just bouncing off our car.
And then, it hit the guy behind us.
So I was praying out loud,
telling my grandchildren... we covered the kids,
and then... my granddaughter is pregnant...
and then she could go into labor. We were afraid.
- I sat there during that time and thought about
if I was going to tie my son in the seat next to me,
in a seatbelt or hold him.
And for some reason, I said, "No, I'm going to hold him."
I felt more comfortable putting him on my lap
and holding on to him than strapping him in,
which I normally would have done, but this time I didn't.
All you could see was like an avalanche of rocks,
and it wasn't small rocks. It was large rocks.
Rocks like this.
And you could see what was happening
to the cars in front of you,
so we were terrified,
and my sister-in-law was crying and shaking,
and a rock hit the back of my sister-in-law's window,
and the window shattered.
We were covered in glass.
It's something that...
I've suppressed, I think, until now.
- What if that baby would have got hit
with the stone that they threw?
- I just kept praying and asking the creator,
"Please, guide me" as I drove,
and as the stones were flying,
I told my mother, the children, to bend down in the car
and put blankets and pillows on them.
- I just drove and watched the car in the front of me,
so that I don't hit him.
- And every time I tried to get my...
tried to put my head up to see what was going on,
they just kept pushing me down. I didn't know why.
And just heard a bunch of yelling
and a bunch of things hitting the car.
Then we just went really fast and stayed down.
My grandmother... we're all scared and everything.
- They were throwing stones and chairs and...
so my daughter... I didn't think she was coming.
I looked in my mirror and she was there, pale and white.
Her window was all busted.
Her front window, her back window.
- So it was all dusty.
The farthest you could see was a little
past the windshield of your car,
and all I kept praying was
the person in front of me wouldn't stop to put on her brakes
because I was going to hit her,
and all I could hear was "bang, bang, bang,"
the noise of these rocks,
and my son crying to get the blanket off of him and...
between that and my tears coming down my face,
you couldn't see anything.
- I was just staring out the window.
and really, I could have been hit in the face.
I was there with my brother in the back seat with me,
and I just decided that whoever was there,
they weren't gonna see me hiding.
They were gonna see my face staring out at them.
You know, a strong face, and...
and they weren't going to see me back down.
15 is... it's quite an age to be going through that.
That was one of the things that I knew I had to do.
I felt like... almost like I was taking care
of the family in my father's place
because I knew my mother was very nervous.
(blues guitar)
- I was six and a half years old.
I was holding my brother with me.
He was sitting on my lap, and my baby cousin
was sitting right next to us in her car seat.
All these people just started throwing rocks at us.
I was screaming for my mom, but obviously she couldn't help
because she was trying to drive us to where it was safe.
- My father in the back, moaning.
He had such a whisper because he was so sick, you know,
and he just kept saying, "Why are they doing this?
Why are they doing this?"
And my mother had her head down
and she was praying in Mohawk, you know,
"Sewenniio, Sewenniio, help us, help us,"
which means, "my God, my God, help us."
- I couldn't believe how many people were gathered there,
how many people hated us so much that they weren't there
just to throw rocks to scare us,
these were rocks to kill us.
- When I saw the rocks coming, I said, "Put your head down.
Put your head down,"
and my mother went down, my boys went down,
and my older one just kept yelling, "We're okay, ma.
Everybody is okay. Don't worry," he said.
"I've got them covered."
One was 12, 10, and 6,
and I remember from the top, a lawn chair coming down,
and I said, "I'm going to lose control."
My car just swerved all over the place, but...
somebody must have been watching over us
because I didn't get in an accident.
I got through it,
and when we got into Ville LaSalle,
that's when my son told me that he had gotten hit,
that the rock...
the windows were all busted in my car.
He got hit on the shoulder.
They had like glass all over them.
Little, little cuts.
He had a lot on his legs too, little cuts.
But the main part was his neck and shoulder that he got hit.
He knew that I had to drive, and he didn't want me to panic.
- As we got through what they call the Whiskey Trench,
the crowd, the mob had gathered on top of the span.
The trench, which is impassable...
you can't yield, you can't turn.
It's referred to as the Whiskey Trench
because of the Seagram's distillers
on either side of the highway.
It was just before I went under the tunnel that...
I heard the rock go through the window,
and I heard my father moan and he fell.
I didn't know where it hit him, and I had to keep driving,
and my mother was screaming,
and she was trying to reach over
to my dad in the back seat,
and I was trying to reach over and trying to hold the wheel.
So what I did... I knew we were hit,
I just didn't know how badly he was hit.
Was he hit in the head? Was he hit... where?
I couldn't tell.
I was looking in the rearview mirror, but I couldn't see.
And I went right to the Lachine General.
I pulled into the emergency exit.
He had been hit in the chest,
right smack in the middle of the chest.
This is what they threw at my father.
This is what hit him in the chest.
I'm gonna keep this,
and I'm gonna remember those faces.
(shouting)
I can't believe racism is this bad
in this country, in this time.
I don't know what else to say.
There was a large laceration. The skin had been broken.
There was glass everywhere in his shirt,
in his underwear, in his pants, socks.
They were taking glass out for days after.
They admitted him immediately,
and they started to clean him up.
They cleaned up the wound, they bandaged it.
He was already sick to begin with. He was already weak.
He was already depressed.
- I couldn't believe people could be so cruel.
I couldn't understand how men and women
could stand there and throw rocks
at other women, children, and elderly people.
- It's hard to... to...
think how people could do that to you, you know...
to anybody, you know.
I would never think of trying
to hurt anybody like that, you know.
I saw a few faces, and I guess I'll never forget them.
You try to forget them. You have to live.
You have to put it in the past,
and I always remember a little girl
and her mother standing at the corner,
and they were throwing us kisses,
and I remember saying,
"My God, not everybody is against us."
- Over the bridge, through the clearing of the dust
and everything, I see an elderly man with his two children,
standing there crying and waving at us
and giving us thumbs up like, "You did it!"
- And I remember going by the lake shore and saying,
"My God, there's people rollerblading and bicycling and..."
the life on the other side was so normal,
and I kept on saying to myself, "Do they know
what we're going through across?" You know?
It's like two different worlds.
It was just so normal out there and peaceful,
and here we were going through all these things
where planes were flying over us
and helicopters and, you know,
every day you hear somebody, you know,
"They're gonna come in tonight.
They're gonna come in tonight."
- The police let them throw rocks
and bust their windows and everything.
- Anybody hurt? Do you know?
- As far as I know... I don't know yet.
- The Indians all around, they're not gonna stand
for another Wounded Knee,
and we're going to die for our rights.
- All right. Thank you.
- I remember we were headed towards the Whiskey Trench,
and seeing things being tossed, and I wasn't sure
what it was until our car was actually hit.
I could remember grabbing a pillow
that was on the side of Sarah
and putting it over her, and I thought that she was safe.
My daughter was hit,
I was hit,
and...
the windows were broken on the car,
and we ventured through the tunnel.
That was the only time I felt we were safe,
and I pulled the pillow from on top of her.
I looked down at her, and I saw blood,
and I could feel myself that I had pain,
but I couldn't exactly pinpoint where it was.
I looked at my babysitter.
She was screaming, you know,
and I didn't know exactly what to do.
I just said, "Let's bring her to the hospital."
You know, the LaSalle General.
We went running in there, and they took her into emergency.
They also brought me in.
I had bruises. I was hit on my breast, my arm, my face.
When they brought her in,
it took an hour and a half, two hours for them
to remove all the glass from her.
It was stuck in her diapers, stuck in her shirt, everywhere.
And to try to control...
a child, you can't.
I was made to feel that I...
I took the decision to leave.
I put us in jeopardy.
For me as a parent,
I didn't feel I was able to do the job anymore.
- I hope whoever shot stuff at us is very sorry,
and I'm glad that I still have my mom and dad today
'cause without my mom, I don't know what I'd do,
and I'm glad I have my family.
- We were speaking with the RCMP...
that there were supposed to be 100 other police officers
on standby right outside
to ensure that there would be safe passage.
- There was a lot of cops there.
It was a bad scene and no...
no riot squad showed up.
- We were victimized,
and again the violence was perpetrated on us,
and again we were not the aggressors.
We were not violent toward anybody.
Why could they have not gone and physically
stopped these people from
picking up rocks and throwing them?
- I saw the news that evening,
and they were like, "Yeah, we got the Warriors!"
They got a Warrior!
They got a 76-year-old French-Canadian from Lachine.
That's who they got.
Joseph Armand Lacroix.
He married my mother. My mother was Mohawk.
He never really recovered from the incident.
Even when we had to bring him back from check-ups,
he would always be very nervous,
especially going over the bridge.
He never wanted to talk about it.
He died in 1994.
(acoustic guitar)
- I should never have left. I would never leave again.
I feel safe in Kahnawake,
and I feel safe nowhere else but here.
(blues guitar)
I'm proud to live in this community.
Kahnawake, to me...
shows how very strong and determined
our people are to maintain our identity.
(blues guitar) (people chatter)
I'm proud to be Mohawk.
I think that, no matter how the Governments
or the outside communities try,
they could never beat that out of us,
not even with a rock.
(blues guitar)
- If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die here.
I am not gonna die from somebody throwing rocks at me.
I'd rather die in my own house
with my children and my family close by.
(gentle music)
- The questions were, how did it happen and who planned it
and what kind of plan took place to allow this?
And it's like... we were in such a position
that we really couldn't answer those questions.
If the people who planned it knew what was going to happen,
they would have never done that.
They would have never let the people across that bridge.
They would have taken them in boat or any other way.
- I was scared at many times
when the women and the children were driving through.
I've seen people approaching with boulders and...
softball-size rocks, whipping them through windows
and not really even caring
what was on the other side of those windows
in the automobile.
- What was on the other side?
- Women and small children.
Innocent people. Innocent.
(moody music)
- That was the lowest point in my life, what I seen.
I would say my career as a Peacekeeper
and everyone else that was there that day...
we had spoken to them, the elderly,
telling them they're gonna be safe.
Don't worry about anything.
Little did we know they were in more danger than we were,
just by passing through that one little section.
That day when I came back, finished work,
I just came home.
I went into my bedroom and closed the door...
my wife and my family knew what happened.
They didn't say a word. They just let me be.
I'd seen it on the news that night.
The hurt came back right away.
- Everybody was crying and...
I felt bad for my grandchildren and my parents.
You know, to go through that.
- We went to a school in Dorval
where they were taking names down,
and it was there that we saw all the damage
to the other cars.
We were basically on our own
once we went through that gauntlet.
From there, we went to a hotel,
stayed over a week, maybe 10 days
because we had started school.
- My kids cried, my older one, every day.
"Let's go home, let's go home." He said,
"I don't even care, ma, if they stone us."
I heard people say, "Oh, you're on vacation."
That was the most miserable 11 days of my life.
Sitting in that hotel, you didn't know what was happening.
We went out, like, to wash your clothes.
People were staring at us.
You know... they couldn't miss you.
Your car was all busted up.
- There was one elderly man who, after the incident,
suffered a heart attack and died the day after,
so that was quite devastating as well.
(somber music)
- I don't know what they think of us today, but...
it was out of our control and...
they didn't take the means or the measures
to prevent something like this.
I think they were well aware of it because...
before that, when people were going across,
there was incidents that were happening there.
Anyways, these guys, when they went to court,
they got a smack in the hand and that was it.
- (filmmaker) 13 people were arrested.
11 adults and two juveniles.
One man was sentenced to 10 consecutive weekends
at Bordeaux Jail.
10 of them received conditional discharges
and varied fines going from $100 to $1,000
with probation of up to two years.
The charges against the two juveniles were dropped.
- They blocked us from coming out or going through,
so now we don't want them to come out.
- Okay, within some time this evening,
the army's going to be going in...
- I don't care about the army.
- Children and elderly people.
- That's too bad. It's a real shame. I feel sorry for them.
- As an athlete...
one thing is that I gained respect
from other athletes in other countries
because of my performance levels.
- In the lead. Now with a full boat-length lead.
Nobody's going to catch the Canadians, I don't think.
We have another gold medal for Canada.
- Yeah!
- Hugh Fisher and Alwyn Morris
win the gold medal for Canada in the K2 1000 meters.
A lot of sacrifice by both of these fine Canadian athletes.
- The friends that I met and the places that I've been
and the respect that I was shown, I will never forget.
- Winners of the gold medals.
The Olympic champions. The team from Canada!
(audience applause and cheers)
- I'm sharing this victory with the Kahnawake reserve,
with the Mohawk Indians in Canada,
and with all the Native people in North America.
I feel really strong about...
about being an athlete, being Native, and being Canadian,
and carrying it up here had very much significance for me,
and I just hope my grandfather's very proud.
Thank you.
I always had an easy time making friends
and taking people for their word,
and whether that's something that I learned
as a young man, growing up in Kahnawake
or with my grandparents, it was part of me.
So when I made all these arrangements
with the Surete
and, given certain assurances,
I had to go on their word and my own deep feelings
that this thing was gonna be okay.
When you relay that kind of message
in your own terms, in your own words,
and then see what happened,
you lose something.
You lose that faith.
It's so difficult to bring it back,
in terms of redeveloping it.
In retrospect, and that's always 20/20,
it would have been smarter to say, "Look,
there's a big crowd here. It's not gonna work.
Go back to the community.
We'll work out another
way in which to do this at a later date."
There was a lot of property damage.
People did get hurt by the glass and the stones.
Those things healed,
and the fact that it happened here, in this country
suggests some very deep-down problems
from a social standpoint.
How long is that wound gonna take to heal? I don't know.
Maybe not in my lifetime.
- Maybe the people that agreed to it,
who were in command and who Alwyn spoke to,
maybe were sincere and did it in good faith.
But again, it was another example
of the orders not being followed by line officers.
- To me, it was planned.
It had to be planned for them to get everybody there and...
all it takes is one person.
Word gets around and that's it. Everybody knows.
- My brother worked on the bridge,
on the Kahnawake end.
All Mohawks, no white men.
The steel arrived from Lachine
to the south shore end of the bridge.
It came by rail
and then it was trucked in from there.
My late brother Louis
had a team of horses,
and they plowed the road same as they would plow
on the farmland, to break up the plaques out
before the trucks could get through.
They had an army of men from here
to shovel the snow,
and if your shovel was too small, they won't hire you.
You had to have...
a regular snow shovel
before you went to work.
The iron workers on the Mercier Bridge itself...
it was very, very tough.
It was cold, windy.
One whole week, before Christmas,
they didn't put in an hour's work.
Being Christmas, the company turned around
and paid them one hour each, every man,
which wasn't very much, let me tell you. 75 cents.
That was the hourly rate at the time.
Those are the iron workers.
We were only laborers, working on the abutments.
We were only making 30 cents an hour.
That was big money then.
In the springtime, I started
work at the quarry,
feeding the stone crusher.
They used the crushed stone to build the roads.
10 hours a day, six days a week.
That's the only time I ever worked close to home.
- [filmmaker] The construction of Honore-Mercier Bridge
started in 1932.
They worked all year round.
By July 12, 1935, the church and the state
were well represented at the inauguration of the bridge.
In 1955, an order in council was passed,
permitting the expropriation of Mohawk land
by the seaway officials.
This meant that the privy council was to allow
the seizure of 1,855 acres of Mohawk land.
When people refused to move,
a bailiff and police officers came and evicted them.
(explosions)
- [filmmaker] Tons of clay dug out of the canal
were dumped on Kahnawake farmland.
The seaway needed to construct bridges high enough to allow
the passage of large ships.
The Mercier Bridge was raised and a twin bridge constructed.
A lift was also added to the existing train bridge,
then the bridges needed new highway approaches.
That meant more expropriation for the Mohawk people.
- The other bridge was going up too...
the railway bridge at the same time.
The lift bridge... all Indians worked on the south shore.
Five men with a pusher.
That's the erecting...
and then the riveting guys were four men to a crew
with the heater stick ring and two riveters...
You wouldn't think there were
that many Indians in Kahnawake, would you?
- I'm asking him, "When are we gonna go back to work?"
- [filmmaker] By 1959, the seaway was completed,
and the Mohawks would forever after
suffer this new interference in their lives.
(blues guitar)
Kahnawake means "by the rapids."
Well, the rapids are no longer in view.
Much land is lost and the beach front is gone.
- This is a good demonstration of our toys.
I'll fuckin' cut you in half.
- Yeah? Why don't you come and try it?
- This is our land.
We can't go any place else.
We can't go to another country.
This is our home. We have nowhere to go.
They have their tanks. They have their barb wire.
They have rocket launchers.
They have all the armaments, you know,
that you go to war with.
You don't do that with Native people here
who have taken care of their ancestors
to make sure that they don't starve.
But we can't take any more of their land taking from us.
I mean, this is all we have left.
They have the power in their hands
to change history right now.
They could change it by dealing with the land issue.
- The armed forces mandate was to search
their vehicles, I guess, for weapons.
You could have left the community a dozen times
during the day,
and you passed the same checkpoint...
looked at the same people and you would have
to go through the same process.
If we were going to have to suffer
that kind of indignity then we,
in turn, also would retaliate by
our own plan of action if you will
to create as much resistance as we could.
You're not paid to think. That's your problem.
It was demanded of me to open the trunk
of my car and I said, "No." I said, "You open it,"
and we went back and forth for 15, 20 minutes
or whatever it was... or half an hour,
and I said, "I'm not opening for you.
You want to know what's in there?
You open the damn thing," you know.
"Here's the keys." And the officer would refuse.
And we kept going. Finally, as silly as it sounds,
we both held the key and we both opened the trunk.
I missed at least one meeting anyway that I was supposed
to be involved in with several members of parliament.
But I did manage to get there later on in the day.
But it's just an example of how difficult
it was for us to do the things that we had to do
during that time period.
- [filmmaker] On August 28, there were secret meetings
at the Hilton Hotel in Dorval.
Mohawk leaders
and officials of Federal and Provincial Governments
were trying to negotiate a peaceful ending to the stand-off.
- And I'll continue my discussions with the confederacy.
- [filmmaker] The barricades would be dismantled
by both the army and the Warriors.
The Mercier Bridge would be open to the public
and Colonel Gagnon promised the army would not enter
the reserve once the bridge was opened.
The barricades on the Mercier Bridge came down.
Repair work was resumed on the bridge.
Experts searched for explosive devices
on the bridge and in the river.
- One day, I saw a submarine coming through and I ran.
I got my camera, and I took pictures.
I saw it on the news when they were interviewing,
and they said, "No, there wasn't a submarine that day...
came through," you know.
"The Indians are making it up."
And the helicopters, they came right over here,
maybe six feet off on top of the water.
These helicopters were so loud.
I remember telling the kids, "Just ignore it.
Do your homework."
- [filmmaker] In a meeting with the Warriors,
Colonel Gagnon announced that his orders had changed.
The army was preparing to enter the Kahnawake reserve.
Ironically, in many battles,
the Mohawks were allied to the French and English Canadians
to defend Canada against the Americans.
In 1847, for service in Canada,
119 medals were given to Indian Warriors,
of which 82 were for the Chateauguay river battle.
These Warriors were Abenakis, Algonquins,
Nipissings, and Iroquois.
Although the Mohawks were robbed of their ancestral lands,
they helped defend Canada against its enemies
and fought throughout both world wars.
(somber music)
Meanwhile, in Kanehsatake,
the army advanced and took over The Pines.
The Warriors moved to the treatment center.
- Basically, I would like you to contact your general
or whoever it is,
and stop the advancement of these troops.
- I'm not responsible on this site.
- I'm just saying he can issue the order immediately
until we can resolve these things peacefully.
So they are not recognizing our confederacy.
- Hey, that's against the law.
- [filmmaker] The army rolled in with their armored vehicles,
all the way to the Longhouse and raided it.
- Hey!
- The very attack on one of our Longhouses is disgusting.
Would you like your synagogues,
your churches, attacked the way ours was yesterday?
- [filmmaker] Finally,
the bridge was opened to the public on September 6.
- They were flying right over our houses,
the Chinooks, the double blades.
Those things are big. They're long.
They're like 30 feet off your roof.
Three or four of them.
Flying all over the town and they all out on the island.
- We were sitting here having lunch,
and next thing you know, there was helicopters
flying all over,
army men just flowing out of the helicopters.
Then people from town just pulled up, pulled up, pulled up.
There was people all over.
- We were coming back from a meeting in Montreal,
and I received a call on my cell phone
that the army was at the island.
We should get there as quickly as we could
to try and calm things down.
There was a kind of a stand-off on the small bridge
that goes to the island between the mainland of Kahnawake
and the Tekakwitha island.
There were barbed wire that had been strung,
and the armed forces were standing on the island itself,
and people were demanding, you know,
"What are you doing there?"
First, there was no response,
but then one of the commanding officers came over
and said that they had received evidence
that there was weapons that were hidden on the island
and that they were searching the island to find out
whether there was any truth to this information
that they had received.
- And even across the seaway,
they had like four or five, maybe six APC's.
They even had army tanks across the river
with their barrels pointing right at us.
- What people saw was... was a row of soldiers
with automatic weapons, gas masks.
They had everything to their advantage,
to be able to overwhelm and overpower our people.
- Some of them, I believe, weren't really...
didn't want to really be there, you know.
It's like we're stuck on an island over here,
and all these people are around us,
but they had their guns. We didn't have no guns.
- Are you prepared to let our people move out?
- No!
- A couple of the soldiers that were there
were also in the Longhouse raid, and we recognized them
'cause they're the ones that we fought with, you know,
and you could tell that they were very uncomfortable
standing there.
They're just waiting for orders, which was...
what were they gonna do?
They weren't gonna come into town.
- Once they would have made it over that bridge,
there would have been martial law in town.
And then it would have been even worse.
Gonna have an APC parked outside my house? No way. (laughs)
Have army guys walking around our territory? No way.
They wouldn't have lasted.
It would have been like a big war for sure.
- The guys that were on the force even said it.
If they come in, they're gonna go with the people.
(blues music)
- That had to be one of the most bravest moments
that I've ever seen during that time period
and during my lifetime
of our people defending their territory
against tremendous odds.
- We are right! They're wrong!
They're attacking us! They're proud!
Look at them all! You're all proud!
- Then our town brought a dump truck
to the other side of the bridge.
Blocked it. More people arrived.
People were getting rowdy.
- They were really close to the bridge there,
the army. They made a circle.
They were throwing razor wire from the helicopters,
and as fast as they were throwing it,
the people were picking it up. (laughs)
- They start shooting at us.
Bunch of tear gas start going all over the place.
People start running over the bridge to get over the bridge,
get away from it.
(blues music)
Even women there that were pregnant...
you could see that they're pregnant,
but yet they still threw the gas at us.
- More tear gas. Fights.
After that was fighting, fighting, everybody was fighting.
I myself was fighting.
- It wasn't planned.
People were there. We're just a big family, that's all,
and we're gonna stay that way, we're gonna stay united,
and we're gonna be as strong as ever.
(dramatic music)
- Two army men just threw me right over the bridge,
and there was a big rock over here at the time.
Landed on that, on my hip. Fled into the water.
There was people all in here,
washing their face, getting the tear gas,
so they could see again.
I remember a teacher I had in high school.
He was standing there.
He's yelling, "Hold on! Hold on!"
And I'm telling him, "Help me!" I didn't know how to swim.
I made it to the second pier
then a ship started passing,
the current just pulling you in.
It pulled me right up to the boat.
I woulda went right underneath.
This is where the elderly man, Albert...
his father Sonny was holding my head above the water
to keep me from going under.
(gentle acoustic guitar)
They lifted me out of the water and put me onto the boat,
and they drove off and put me in an ambulance,
and finally I got to the hospital.
I had a fractured hip in two spots.
So much I wanted to get back at them.
I still remember their faces,
two of them especially.
Sometimes I can't even walk.
I mean, it's gonna be a wound that's gonna be there
for the rest of my life.
- Some had masks on and then they would stand so long,
and then another line would come in and they would take
their masks off. It was like they were always on duty.
Shot us with tear gas and everything.
- Once the air cleared,
and we noticed they were trying to cross the bridge,
and that's when we started stoning.
We learned that from Whiskey Trench.
We learned that from what they did to our people
going over the Mercier Bridge.
Okay, they want to stone our people?
That's all we've got.
Had their helmets and all their gear with them.
They were halfway across the bridge but us,
we didn't give up.
We just kept worse and worse,
throwing more stones, more stones.
They couldn't take it anymore, and they backed off.
(blues music) (people shouting)
- People started pushing them back,
away from the bridge entrance.
Then they wanted to march over the bridge
through the community itself,
just to show that they had taken the community, so to speak,
and the people's resistance prevented them from doing that.
- And the women are the title holders to the land,
and we'll never give that up.
No amount of money
can take the value of our land.
- When all you had was people with their spirit
and their strength
defending their territory, their village,
the heart where their children are.
That's what really this was all about.
- What kept us... gave us the strength
was our ancestors through our spirituality,
and we're gonna be here forever.
We were always in this area.
We're not gonna go away.
No one's gonna drive us out.
We're gonna remain here.
- Need blood before you leave?
- So the people out there should know that.
- It was a very tense and dangerous situation.
It almost erupted into
what could have been, I guess, a tragic situation.
One of the soldiers did get attacked
and was beaten by some of our people.
(gunshots)
- Right across from the island, there's a hospital.
A lot of old people in there. Imagine how they felt?
Scared and they hear gunshots going off.
- To defend their comrade,
one of the soldiers did fire one of the automatic weapons
that he had into the air,
and that created a situation in which then...
the rest of his colleagues then pointed their weapons
at everybody and to myself. I said, "This is it.
They're gonna shoot," but cooler heads prevailed
and they didn't.
They managed to take their...
injured colleague and tend to his injuries.
People were still quite insistent
that they were going to leave.
That they had no choice in the matter.
The soldiers themselves... they were scared...
because they could see the anger and the hatred
in our people for them being there.
They also raided the marina itself
and for whatever reason, they seized alcohol and records
and all kinds of things which, from what I know...
from what I understand, have never been returned...
and they asked for time.
They said, "Look, we have X number of people
on the island over here.
In order for us to evacuate, we will need to make several...
several trips, in order to pick everybody up."
Some people said, "We don't care how they get out of here.
Let 'em swim if they want."
- We stayed there 'till nighttime,
'till they were ready to move out.
- We stopped them from coming into our territory,
and we sent them right back home,
same way they came in.
- [filmmaker] The confrontation lasted seven hours.
The army could not enter the town as they had planned.
At sundown, the helicopters airlifted
the 140 soldiers off the island.
- The last Chinook that took off
almost didn't even make it off the ground.
That's how overloaded they were
and in a hurry to get out of here.
- [filmmaker] In late afternoon,
the 78-day siege came to an end.
(blues music)
- Come on, get up! Get the fuck up!
- The soldiers handcuffed everyone except the children
and put them in waiting buses.
They were taken to an army camp.
In Farnham, they remained in the buses
until 4 A.M. then,
one by one, they were interrogated
by the army and the police.
Their lawyers argued for hours to see their clients.
When they finally were allowed in the base,
they were not permitted to be present at the interrogation.
The Warriors were released
nine days later, after the laying of criminal charges.
- The spirit was high.
Confidence was always high up here.
There was no other...
no other motive for anybody being here
other than defending this land,
and when it comes to land, Native people
have very little left.
They've either had it treatied away, stolen away...
or outwardly taken from them, including rights,
just general disregard for our heritage,
so nothing can shock a native
because it's already been done to them
repeatedly throughout history.
(chanting and percussion)
- I have no fear of going to jail.
If I go to jail, I'll go to jail with my head high.
I'll come out of jail
with my head 10 times higher than that.
- If you go to any Native territory
throughout North America,
and you ask if we're guilty, we're not guilty,
and that's what counts.
As long as our people feel that we're innocent,
then I'll go to jail
because while I'm in jail, I know I'll have the support
of all Aboriginal people throughout North America.
(chanting and percussion)
- You all know what we all had to went through
over the years
when we had to talk about this land.
(speaking Mohawk)
This land we live on, this earth is very pitiful now.
A lot of hurt has been happening here,
not only to us people, but to the land, to the territories.
(speaking Mohawk)
This is all our concern,
all of us different tribes
on this earth.
We all only have one heart.
(chanting and percussion)
I give the Mohawk people,
the six nations of this territory
all the respect that I could ever give them.
I can't do enough for them,
but to say I thank them for opening my eyes
along with other nations across Canada.
- [filmmaker] The crisis was far
from being over in Kahnawake.
The police continued to harass the people nonstop
for the next two years.
- When you came back to Kahnawake, was the army still here?
- Oh yes. Oh yes.
They gave us a hard time when we were coming back.
- What happened?
- Somewhere on Highway 30,
we had to show all our stuff what we brought back,
all our birth certificate,
and what helped us out was my birth certificate.
It's written that my father was at war.
The First World War.
That's the year I was born,
and then the Provincial police... he says,
"Okay, you can go."
We went maybe from here across the seaway.
There was another bunch that we had to stop there.
We had to report again that, you know, we were coming home.
Again, we were checked.
Below the Mercier Bridge.
Again, there was another bunch,
and there was about five or six cars behind us.
We were all stopped.
We had to get out, checked what we had in there,
and once we got in Kahnawake, well, I made the sign
of the cross, and I thanked God that I was back home.
- Every time you go out of town, they harass you.
They pull you over, they check your trunk,
they check underneath your seats.
Even the cops... if your tire's low,
they give you a ticket for that,
and they search you,
your I.D., your car, everything.
Like two minutes later, you're going back out.
They know it's you, they search you, they do it again.
It's just harassment.
They had no business here after that.
If you're a Mohawk, you're in trouble.
- The primary law enforcement agency
in the territory of Kahnawake
is the Peacekeepers.
- One evening, we were returning from St-Constant
where we had our motor vehicle repaired,
and Assistant Chief White and myself
had come into the first checkpoint within the reserve,
and we're stopped by the military police
and asked to step out of our vehicles,
asked to put our hands over our head,
then we were advised we were placed under arrest
for possession of unregistered, restricted weapons.
Well, we've been carrying firearms
as a law enforcement agency
within Kahnawake for approximately 20 years,
and we've never had a problem until Monday.
- The Peacekeepers are going to continue to function
as peace officers in the community of Kahnawake.
They're going to continue to patrol
the community of Kahnawake.
They're going to continue to apprehend
offenders in the community of Kahnawake,
both Indian and non-Indian.
Anybody who comes into the community who thinks
they can commit a criminal infraction and get away with it
because of this possibility of charges are sorely wrong.
I understand that the decision to investigate
the possibility of laying charges
was made by the Provincial police.
- I hope the Surete decides to be reasonable about this
because it can have a reciprocal effect.
- It is a very serious problem because, you know,
whenever they want to do something in Kahnawake,
they feel they can come and they don't have to consult.
We have a legitimate police agreement
with the Federal Government
and Provincial Government that says otherwise.
I think at that time,
we probably were the most heavily policed community
you'd find anywhere in North America.
(sirens)
- We were living in Chateauguay,
and I was the president of the school committee
of St. Willibrod School,
and they came out with the saying
that we better not let the Mohawk children come back
right away because it's not safe for them,
and I decided to speak out, which I did,
and there was a meeting of the school board.
We were in the French board at the time,
and I went prepared with two speeches,
one in French and one in English,
and I didn't even get a chance to start.
The hatred was fierce in the room.
People were attacking the Gazette reporter.
They threw his phone across the room.
I felt very threatened and I said, "Let's get out of here."
I know that hatred is evil,
and I don't care if it comes out of a white man,
a red man, a black man... it affects us.
- I kept them in French school, but I sent them to Lachine
because there was just too much trouble in Chateauguay,
and it was...
they started late.
They didn't let them start
at the beginning of the school year.
They had a corn party the first day,
but our children weren't invited.
They were thinking of protecting our children
'cause the English teacher asked why. She says,
"You have... you're having a corn party," she says,
"and it was the Indians that gave you corn,"
and she says, "All of the Indian children
are not in school."
- I went to summer drama camp,
and we learned how to make, like, a box... like a stage.
This is my school, St. Willibrord.
This is our schoolyard,
and we're doing the round dance, the four people,
and this is me. There's a few kids in my class:
Amy, Amanda, and Julie. They were interested
in Indians, and I showed them the round dance,
and there's about three Indians in our class,
and we, like, do a few dances,
and then James and them... James, Danny, and Brock...
they make fun of us
because, like, it's different.
- So Heavenly Father, as this smoke rises,
we ask you to send your holy spirit,
your great spirit to look upon and bless it.
Purify the fire and purify this feather
that we will be using tonight, as we share
one another.
Purify the circle to strike out against another.
- I participated in a few healing circles.
- Grandfather, Great Spirit, Jesus Christ, Gitche Manitou,
and all the many names that we address you with.
- I went to a sweat lodge.
I'm just...
I'm still in search, you know,
but I've come a long way from where I was.
- In 1990, that summer that many of us remember
in different ways... it is good to recall it
because like any healing, when we're wounded,
and unless the wound is cleansed deeply
and profoundly, the infection will continue to fester.
- And the circle is really...
really working, I think, Ron
because we've all come together and...
sit with the non-Native brothers and sisters,
and we're all working together,
and leaving our hurts here.
- My main attitude was that of indifference,
making jokes about the Warriors
and about the masks and all this,
and as men generally do, we like to kid
and make jokes about things we don't understand
and things over which we have no control,
and it was that ignorance
and that lack of control that was really controlling us.
We got to meet these people, and they became friends.
They became brothers.
We needed healing, the healing of our indifference
because we started to care.
- I had in my classes so many children from Kahnawake.
I felt... after the crisis was over...
I felt it was important to do something,
and if I could help build bridges of reconciliation
between Chateauguay and Kahnawake,
then that was what I wanted to do,
and I enjoyed a feeling of family here
in this healing circle that I had never known.
- We didn't open many stores in 1990, '91, '92, '93.
It was the lowest development years in the province.
We had a crisis then,
but it's improving now.
The majority of the citizens of Chateauguay are pleased
with what's going on between Chateauguay and Kahnawake.
- There was a long period of time
before I even wanted to go back and give any of my business
or associate with anything to do with Chateauguay,
so even now, it's a very thin layer of tolerance
that's still there, and probably you'd peel that back
if there was... any kind of a situation was to occur...
very quickly that thing would flare back up.
(gentle music)
They say time heals things.
Yes, it does to a certain extent,
but I think the underlying problems are still...
haven't been addressed there.
- Now had not the Mohawk land been as important,
then we would have not done that.
As a result of it,
our community has been economically devastated.
- So the first time I went back, which was to actually go
and shop there, was maybe a year later,
and I felt very uncomfortable.
I thought people were looking at me, you know.
I guess we'll never forget it. It'll always be there.
- One time, I went at Zellers,
"Ah, these people!" (speaking French)
That's...
Then my daughter Mona, she says, "Hey."
She says, "We're not savages."
She says, "It's the people that throw stones at my mother...
they're the savages."
So anyways, that stopped.
The manager, I think, came and he told them to stop,
so we didn't even buy nothing that day.
We came back out, and we went home.
- I find people are still staring at you.
- Here, but look at this one. You always liked big glasses.
- Let me check further down.
- I try. I try...
to remember the ones that helped.
- If we want to improve relations,
we can't look back all the time.
We have to look forward.
We may not forget, but we have the obligation to forgive.
On both sides.
- I know people like to think about forgive and forget,
you know, and let's not bring up the past.
Whether it's good or bad, it had a beginning somewhere.
There's a cause for it.
It's always necessary to look back in time
at what has created a situation.
Why are people doing things at that point?
Why are there difficulties? Why is it so difficult
to live in the province of Quebec, you know?
And why is it that much more difficult for Native people
and, in this instance, Mohawk people, Kahnawake...
to have a relationship with their neighbors?
- The land issue is something beyond my capacity.
I understand the situation, but I cannot resolve it.
- We look at the world around us,
and there's not many great things to look at, you know.
We see disparity, wars going on, oppression, you know,
violation of human rights.
There's a lot of negativity.
It's very rewarding because you see them
developing physically,
you see them developing spiritually,
and you see them developing mentally,
and when you see a being develop like that,
it's pretty hard to intimidate them,
to make them walk off a good path.
Beautiful. Beautiful.
- For our future generations,
well, we gotta think of our little kids that are growing up,
that are coming up and, you know...
to take care of whatever we have left on the reserve.
(speaking Mohawk)
- The 78 days that we were home on the land,
the peace that was there, just to be unified,
will help us to always remember
the seven generations that follows,
from the unborn that's coming yet.
In our language, they would turn around and say,
(speaking Mohawk)
"Their faces are not here, they're coming though."
Mother Earth gave us life, just like a woman will give life,
and each generation anew will bring happiness and joy,
and that will be the most beautiful that we can live,
but we need to work together,
not just my people, but the people of the world.
(gentle music)
- That we don't have to go to the Canadian Government
and ask for our sovereignty.
That we don't have to go to the Canadian Government
and ask for our rights to be self-determining.
We have those.
They're inside of our hearts.
They're in our beliefs.
We have to ensure that those rights
continue to exist into the future,
so that our children do not have
to go through that kind of struggle,
so that they will enjoy the peace and the respect
and the honor of being Onkwehonwe.
So I ask you, all of you, to keep your commitment strong,
to keep your prayers strong,
and I ask all of you to begin to work in your communities,
to begin building your nations, build your Government,
build your people,
demonstrate and respect and honor
that these people had made a commitment over 75 days.
Always remember them.
- [filmmaker] To have the treaties respected and recognized
by the Government and its citizens has always been
a struggle for all Aboriginal people in Canada.
(somber music)
The experience of treachery and loss is their history.
The 1990 stand by the Mohawks of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake,
was not in vain.
Negotiations on land rights and self-management
have been going on with the Federal Government
and several nations across the country.
This time, the Aboriginal people must be certain
that any agreement will be best, not only for the present,
but also for future generations.
(hopeful music)