Voices Across Boundaries Vol.1 No.3: Who Is My Community?
Fighting for Community
The struggle for cohesion in Kanehsatà:ke
by Clifton Arihwakehte Nicholas
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Mohawk Terminology
Kanien’kehá:ka refers to the Mohawk people -- its literal translation is the People of the Flint
Kanien’ké:ha is the Mohawk language
Kanehsata’keró:non are Kanehsatà:ke community members
Rotinonhseshá:ka are the People of the Longhouse, also popularly known as the Haudenosaunee
Many readers will remember Kanehsatà:ke from the 1990 Oka Crisis, when Natives from the community erected barricades to oppose plans by the neighbouring town of Oka to expand its golf course from nine to eighteen holes on what Kanehsatà:ke community members, or Kanehsata’keró:non, consider traditional Native grounds. The months-long blockade exploded into a series of violent confrontations that July between Kanehsata’keró:non and the Sûreté du Québec, the Quebec provincial police. The Mohawk people’s right to self-determination was a key point in discussions. But when the crisis eventually subsided in September the issue was only partially resolved, as was the contentious question of Oka’s land claims within Kanehsatà:ke and the immediate vicinity.
Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. Kanehsatà:ke has known a great deal of violence throughout its post-contact history, from bitter struggles with neighbouring Sulpician fathers over land use and farming throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the present-day infighting between Mohawk factions. The more recent internal conflicts are not entirely unrelated to the standoffs with outside groups. Indeed, you could argue a causal connection between the two. For more than 300 years, Kanehsatà:ke has experienced the imposition of colonial rule, land encroachment, religious conversion, cultural oppression and political interference. It is no wonder that this community’s recent history has been subject to such divisiveness and strife. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that this is less a single community than several overlapping groups or factions struggling to find some cohesion amid at times conflicting identities.
Kanehsatà:ke is an ancient Native community on the shores of the Ottawa River. Archeological evidence shows a human presence here dating as far back as 2000 years ago. At the time of contact, Mohawk, Algonquin and Nipissing were all living in the area, although by the nineteenth century the Algonquin and Nipissing had been relocated to Maniwaki.
In the 1860s and 1870s, the century-long practice of land appropriation and crop restrictions by the Sulpician fathers finally sparked an angry collective response by the local Mohawk or Kanien’kehá:ka who converted in droves from Catholicism to Methodism. After the Sulpicians had the newly constructed Methodist church demolished, the Kanehsata’keró:non burned down the Catholic church in the neighbouring town of Oka in 1877. That summer, the police occupied Kanehsatà:ke for seventy-six days in what has since been termed the "first Oka Crisis." Some members were forcibly relocated to Ontario. Others defiantly remained despite their reduced circumstances.
A century later, Kanehsatà:ke underwent another theological shift, this time back to traditionalism and the principles of Rotinonhseshá:ka or the Longhouse. And like the mass conversion to Protestantism a century earlier, this more recent shift helped to give the community a new sense of cohesion.
Despite colonial and later federal policies of assimilation, Rotinonhseshá:ka spirituality and traditions were never fully erased from the culture. Kanehsatà:ke built its first Longhouse during the period of renewed Native nationalism in the 1960s, which itself was inspired by the Civil Rights movement of the time. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new revival brought the desire to rediscover indigenous identity and heritage. It also brought a renewed interest in Native language and culture, which eventually carried over into the education system.
Rotinonhseshá:ka traditions are now part of regular Kanehsatà:ke school curricula. The Rotiwennakehéte Kanien’ké:ha Language Immersion School is the first school in Kanehsatà:ke to immerse children in the Kanien’ké:ha language as well as to teach traditional belief systems, festivals and traditional music. The local high school, Ratihente, also incorporates Kanien’kehá:ka history, beliefs and language into its curriculum. The youth of the community and the children at these schools are the first generation to be raised formally learning their language and traditions.
Historically, the different religious shifts that took place in Kanehsatà:ke had an important impact on the community’s makeup and sense of cohesion. The population is mostly Christian, about a third of its members belonging to the Pentecostal Church, a quarter to the United Church (successor to the Methodist Church) and 5 percent to the Catholic Church. Traditionalists or Rotinonhseshá:ka make up about 15 percent of the population, while approximately 5 percent don’t identify with any religious tradition, being either atheist or agnostic. However, the divisions are not so clear-cut. Some members identify with both Christianity and their indigenous roots. Interestingly, a number of the more fundamentalist-leaning Christian members have maintained Native names and Kanien’kehá:ka traditions while simultaneously accusing the Rotinonhseshá:ka of making pacts "with the devil" or of practising witchcraft.
The religious divisions are complicated by political ones. In the 1970s and 1980s substantial government funds flowed to Native communities, but only to government-approved bodies and designated leaders, which inevitably bred rivalry and corruption. Canada’s Indian Act has fostered an adversarial system among a people whose political culture had traditionally been based on consensus. It created a new money-based hierarchy in which community members found themselves fighting for government-approved positions of power, with no means of adequately sharing the power once they got it or of distributing the money that came with it. Families were divided; lawsuits were filed; poor financial decisions were made; band councils went bankrupt and were taken over by the federal authorities. Because government-approved band councils in Kanehsatà:ke have tended to be primarily Christian, traditionalists have often chosen to withdraw from official community politics altogether and deny the band council’s legitimacy.
Since 1990, Kanehsatà:ke has been under a kind of microscope, and overexcited media reports have only helped deepen the confusion in the Canadian public’s mind about the complex inner dynamics of this community. The cumulative effects of a paternalistic and poorly structured political system have resulted in unnecessary poverty and poor mental health among many Natives. Current conflicts, much like previous ones, might be said to be the result of a historically rooted confusion, even split, among many Natives about their sense of identity and where they belong. Alienated from their traditional practices and often their own land, they are very rarely welcome or at ease in Canadian urban society.
Partly because of acrimonious political infighting and complacency in the face of an ineffectual Indian Act, the traditionalist revival in Kanehsatà:ke of the early 1990s began to wane by 1995, much as the 1960s revival did by the 1970s. Personal conflicts among members and lack of initiative and ability among established Rotinonhseshá:ka leadership led to a gradual and steady decline in interest in traditionalism. The community’s new sense of cohesion was dispersed. In recent years political divisions have only worsened and the current conflict is the result of a power struggle between traditionalist and nontraditionalist factions.
Is there hope for our community? I believe so. Many of today’s youth in particular express the desire to put past conflicts behind them. Partly inspired by the large and vibrant Rotinonhseshá:ka communities of nearby Kahnawá:ke and Ahkwesáhsne, some of the youth have begun organizing meetings with elders to reestablish the Rotinonhseshá:ka community in Kanehsatà:ke. They are also trying to find a balance between their indigenous identity and the highly appealing hip-hop culture that surrounds them. Drawing on anthropologist Jonathan Warren, I call this balancing act a kind of "post-traditionalist" stance, which offers these young people a way to cope with the modern world. Traditionalism can give them a genuine sense of personal and cultural identity, which in turn provides a more solid base from which they can step out into the contemporary world and take in what it has to offer.
The coexistence remains an uneasy one, however. Hip-hop culture, like much of contemporary Western urban culture, may encourage individual self-expression, but also gives the implicit message that an expensive and flashy ("bling bling") consumer lifestyle is the only way to go -- hardly conducive to a healthy self-image in any young person, Native or non-Native.
Ultimately, I believe the only way for us to rebuild community in Kanehsatà:ke is to acknowledge and use the rich traditions that are part of our culture. Without denying what the non-Native world has to offer, we must be allowed to work out our own problems without the constant federal and provincial political interference we’ve experienced all too often over the years. For Kanehsatà:ke to overcome its current political tensions, all community members from all factions need to be heard on an equal basis. The primary challenge is to eliminate the colonial adversarial and hierarchical system, which grants a single "Grand Chief" greater power than his or her colleagues on council. It is here that the animosity and discord began for us.
It would be more effective to return to a traditional consensus-based system, with a governing body made up of a council of representatives from all factions, who govern equally. The position of "Grand Chief" would be replaced by that of a chairperson, which would rotate from faction to faction every month or so. This resembles traditional Rotinonhseshá:ka systems of government, with the big difference that all are included in the governing council regardless of religious beliefs (or lack thereof). If all factions are given a real voice, I believe some meaningful and positive steps can be taken to rise above the recurring conflicts plaguing Kanehsatà:ke, to create a strong cohesive community and possibly to serve as a positive example to other indigenous communities throughout Canada.
Sken:nen (Peace)
Clifton Arihwakehte Nicholas is a student of anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal and is the editor of Karihwatatie, the journal of the Kanehsatà:ke Cultural Centre. He lives in Kanehsatà:ke.