Canada The Army Breaks the Barriers

By Guy D. Garcia

In the garbled dialogue between conflicting cultures, mutual trust is essential -- and it has been sorely lacking in the seven-week impasse between Mohawk Indians and Canadian authorities. Late last week, just as a possible resolution of the standoff appeared to be in sight, another factional skirmish broke out behind the barricades of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, near Oka, 18 miles west of Montreal. The incident was relatively minor: two Mohawk men were severely beaten with baseball bats by a group of members of the militant Mohawk Warriors Society. But it was enough to break the impasse. In response, Canadian troops, backed by armored vehicles and helicopters, swept into the Mohawk reserve to restore order. The action was taken, declared General Armand Roy, commander of the Canadian Forces' 5th Brigade, "to guarantee the security of civilians and of my soldiers."

Scarcely a day earlier, Warriors from another Mohawk community, the Kahnawake reserve, had agreed to put down their rifles and had actually begun to help Canadian soldiers tear down the barricades the Indians had erected to block the Mercier Bridge into Montreal. That was the best news in weeks, and a sign that the crisis might be easing. But that was before the army's action at Kanesatake.

The on-again-off-again stalemate began in early July when Quebec police raided a four-month-old blockade the Indians had erected at Kanesatake. The Mohawks were protesting a proposed expansion of a local golf course into what they regard as ancestral land. In the ensuing gunfight, a police officer was killed. The same day, on the other side of the St. Lawrence River, the Kahnawake Mohawks showed their solidarity with the Kanesatakes by blockading the Mercier Bridge.

As the crisis dragged on, skirmishes erupted sporadically between Indians and police. Two weeks ago, Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa replaced the police with army troops. After that, all but a few hundred of Kanesatake's 1,500 residents left the reserve for safer ground.

Meanwhile, representatives from the two sides searched for a compromise. A key issue was the government's insistence that the Warriors' illegal weapons be destroyed in the presence of the army, which the Indians refused to do. Negotiators also clashed over whether the Mohawks should be granted immunity from prosecution, which the Indians insisted should not be described as an amnesty. "We call this a peace treaty because it is done nation to nation," said Chief Joe Norton. "No nation gives another nation an amnesty."

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney flatly dismissed the Mohawks' claims to sovereignty as "unrealistic" and "bizarre." The federal government said it was prepared to negotiate agreements that would give the Indians greater control over their affairs, but balked at attempts to make the Mohawks exempt from Canadian law.

Hoping to avoid further bloodshed, the government purchased, on behalf of the Mohawks, the parcel of land that has been at the center of the dispute. Last week the authorities further emphasized that they were ready to negotiate with the Kanesatake group over its grievances as soon as the last barriers had come down. But before any such negotiations could begin, the fighting broke out again and the army moved in.