Although the siege ended, the land issues that were at the core of the dispute persist to this day. For Nation-to-Nation relations and an end to genocide of Indigenous Peoples | Fernand Deschamps

March marks 25th anniversary of Oka uprising, July 11, 2015.
“The plight of the Indigenous peoples of this country is a matter of great concern to everyone. This includes the Trudeau government. Unfortunately, the government’s concern is not to redress historical wrongs as the times demand. It is to achieve what has eluded previous governments – which is to extinguish Indigenous peoples’ rights once and for all, so as to steal their lands and resources. At the same time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seeks to restore Canada’s tarnished human rights record on the world stage. This is a reputation as a violator of human rights due to its abysmal record of criminal negligence of the conditions of life of the Indigenous peoples in Canada and crimes committed against them.” – Pauline Easton[1]
Thirty years ago, at dawn on July 11, 1990, about 100 heavily armed officers of the Sureté du Québec (SQ) attacked members of the Kanien’kehá:ka of Kanehsatà:ke (Mohawk nation, member of Haudenosaunee Confederacy) who had set up a blockade on a dirt road leading to a sacred Indigenous burial site to oppose the expansion of a golf club on Mohawk territory located close to the town of Oka, Quebec. For the project to proceed, the forest known as the Pines, as well as the Pine Hill Cemetery, the community of Kanehsatà:ke’s graveyard, would have to be bulldozed. To prevent this destruction, people of Kanehsatà:ke erected a barricade on a small, secondary dirt road through the Pines, as early as March 1990. Continue reading →