The Oka Crisis of 1990 can be considered a defining moment in Canadian history. During an 11-week stand off, Canada watched as Mohawk Warriors fought for the right to autonomy over sacred burial and hunting grounds. The people of Oka had agreed to allow the Provincial government to expand a 9-hole golf course to an 18-hole golf course on the Kanesatake sacred land. The situation escalated when the Aboriginal Peoples created barricades around “The Pines” to keep police and construction crews out. During one of the protests, a police officer was shot and tensions began to rise. During the 78-day stand-off, tear gas was employed by the authorities, and Mohawk Warriors were stoned. The Oka Crisis of 1990 was shortly after the Meech Lake Accord …show more content…
However, it is important to remember that there was a certain level of disrespect given to Aboriginal Peoples by the Canadian Government in the pre-confederation era. Outlined within the Indian Act of 1876, Aboriginal Peoples were restricted to the Reserves that the Indian Act (drafted and enforced by the Canadian Government) had created, they could not file land claims without the Government’s consent, and First Nations peoples were forbidden from “expressing their identities through governance and culture.” (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act/) While many amendments were made to the Indian Act before 1990, the Oka Crisis shows the underlying issue between the Government and Indigenous relationship.
The Canadian Government purchased land in Gibson, Ontario, and attempted to force “Mohawk people of Oka to move” (http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) in 1881 – only a third of the Mohawk people left at this time. In 1886, the Mohawks restored avalanche-stricken land that would later become an important area of contestation knows as The
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In 1959, a 9-hole golf course was constructed on a portion of the Kanesatake’s land without their consent. In 1975, the Mohawk people filed a land claim that would give them ownership to “lands along the St-Lawrence River, the Ottawa River and the Lake-Of-Two-Mountains. The claim was rejected on the bases that the Mohawks had not possessed the land continuously since time immemorial, and that any Aboriginal title had been extinguished.” (http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) They tried to file a land claim again in 1977, but it as was rejected as well. In 1989, the plan for the expansion of the golf course on the Kanesatake peoples sacred hunting and burial land was announced. In July of the same year, “Several provincial and federal government representatives ask[ed] the Municipality of Oka to reconsider the development plans.” ((http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/features/oka-timeline-an-unresolved-land-claim-hundreds-of-years-in-the-making) The Mayor of Oka agreed to halt construction, but approved of the
The Mohawk warriors at Oka did carry the burden of peace because they were peacefully protecting their land, there was no act of violence shown by the Mohawk warriors at Oka against the army, and in the end they had peacefully walked out without putting a fight. According to Marian Scott form the Montreal Gazette, the Mohawks had used the Pines, to graze their livestock and cut wood. Since the 18th century Mohawk members and Mohawk warriors have been protesting peacefully and pressing the government to recognize their land claims, but their requests would always be
Members of the Canadian government and the Indigenous people signed Treaty 6 in 1876. Treaty 6 was “a formal and binding contract between two nations” that would help deal with important matters. Treaty negotiations included land, education, healthcare, government funding, and more. The treaty was created to help benefit both parties – the Canadian government, and the Indigenous people. However, the Canadian government broke this treaty many times. In the mid 1880’s there w...
The Grassy Narrows (Asubpeeschoseewagong) First Nation is an Ojibwa First Nation located north of Kenora, ON. The community has been fighting against environmental injustices imposed on them from various actors over the last 40 years (Rodgers, 2009, para. 10), involving issues with mercury poisoned fish (para. 1) clear cutting of their lands (para. 27) and subsequent degradation of their land, water and food sources. This essay will detail the environmental justice struggles of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, point out the unfair treatment and environmental racism they have been subject to and will also question the role that authority, power and litigation have played within the community.
Razack (20020 defines the historical legacy of the “white settler society” that has dominated the legal and historical rights to land usage in relation to indigenous peoples and people of color. In addition to this problem, Razack (2002) also defines the problem of “mapping” that has allowed a primarily racist Canadian government to marginalize or remove people of color from land ownership and placement in the white hegemonic community. In response tot this, Razack (2002) proposes an “unmapping” method in which the underlying racism of Canadian legal policies can be exposed and reconstructed to resolve the problem of racism in land usage in Canada. These are the important aspects of racial identity and spatial organization that define the conflicts of racism in Canadian law and in the “unmapping” of the “white settler society” that Razack (2002) identifies throughout the
The land of the Native Indians had been encroached upon by American settlers. By the
Until the 16th century, Aboriginal people were the only inhabitants of what is now Canada, hence, they were an independent and self-governing people till the Europeans had the capacity to dominate Canada's original inhabitants and possessors (Elias 1). The European Invasion brought about The 1876 Indian Act, which was developed over time through separate pieces of colonial legislation regarding Aboriginal peoples across Canada such as the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869. In 1876, these acts were consolidated as the Indian Act (Hanson). This essay aims to explain how the Indian Act tried to destroy the Aboriginal culture through residential schools and unequal recognition of women, successive acts,
The Oka Uprising was initially a peaceful protest over the expansion of a golf course on Mohawk territory that turned violent after Quebec’s provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, responded to the protest with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, eventually escalating to a gun battle between protesters and police. Years after the stand-off, revisionist military historians have praised the Canadian military for avoiding bloodshed because of their “personal commitment [and] calm and attentive approach to native reality,” in which they ought to be commended for “carrying the burden of peace” (Conradi 548). However, Robinson rejects this notion and instead proposes a re-imagining of the Oka conflict through the “adjustment” of First Nations people who fought at Oka with the “bombing of the last Canadian reserve” (Robinson 211). Through “carrying the burden of peace” the Officers are given the power to destroy any semblance of Indigenous tradition, such as the potlatch, and to violently corral all First Nations people to sectioned off “Urban Reserves”. By disrupting popular Canadian perception of law enforcement Robinson succeeds in creating a dystopian image of corrupted power that allows readers to sympathize with the subjection of First Nations people of
Generations of native people in Canada have faced suffering and cultural loss as a result of European colonization of their land. Government legislation has impacted the lives of five generations of First Nations people and as a result the fifth generation (from 1980 to present) is working to recover from their crippled cultural identity (Deiter-McArthur 379-380). This current generation is living with the fallout of previous government policies and societal prejudices that linger from four generations previous. Unrepentant, Canada’s ‘Genocide’, and Saskatchewan’s Indian People – Five Generations highlight issues that negatively influence First Nations people. The fifth generation of native people struggle against tremendous adversity in regard to assimilation, integration, separation, and recovering their cultural identity with inadequate assistance from our great nation.
Living in Canada, there is a long past with the Indigenous people. The relationship between the white and First Nations community is one that is damaged because of our shameful actions in the 1800’s. Unnecessary measures were taken when the Canadian government planned to assimilate the Aboriginal people. Through the Indian Act and Residential schools the government attempted to take away their culture and “kill the Indian in the child.” The Indian Act allowed the government to take control over the people, the residential schools took away their culture and tore apart their families, and now we are left with not only a broken relationship between the First Nations people but they are trying to put back together their lives while still living with a harsh reality of their past.
“The recognition of the inherent right of self-government is based on the view that the Aboriginal peoples of Canada have the right to govern themselves in relation to matters that are internal to their communities, integral to their unique cultures, identities, traditions, languages and institutions, and with respect to their special relationship to their land and resources." (Wherrett
The Calder Case was the spark that led to the Canadian government recognizing Aboriginals and their rights. Firstly, the aboriginals used the Calder Case to inform the government that they were taking away their rights. The Calder Case was launched after the Attorney General of British Columbia declared “that the Aboriginal Title, other wise known as the Indian Title, of the Plaintiffs to their ancient tribal territory...has never been lawfully extinguished.”1 The statement made by the government claimed that the Aboriginal Title did not exist in the eyes of the law and before the Calder Case, it allowed them to ignore Aboriginal land rights all over the country. In addition, The Calder brought the issues the Aboriginals were facing with land claims to the attention of the Canadian government. “According to Kainai Board of Education The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada where the court ended up rejecting the native's claims after being split on it's validity. However, the Supreme Court of Canada's recognition required new respect for Aboriginal land claims.”2 The Supreme Court of Canada's recognition of the Calder Case benefited the Aboriginals as the government was...
Nearly three decades have passed since the eleven-week armed stand-off between the Mohawk Warrior Society, Sûreté de Québec, and Canadian Armed Forces, commonly known among Settlers as the Oka Crisis. While the relative success of the conflict on the behalf of the Kanien’kehá:ka people is still widely debated today, it is undeniable that it fundamentally changed Indigenous-State relations in Canada. One concrete measure that stemmed out of the stand-off was the creation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples (RCAP) a year later in 1991. The largest and most expensive commission in Canadian history, RCAP was tasked with contextualizing the history of the Indigenous-State relationship and producing recommendations for its improvement.
Canada likes to paint an image of peace, justice and equality for all, when, in reality, the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in our country has been anything but. Laden with incomprehensible assimilation and destruction, the history of Canada is a shameful story of dismantlement of Indian rights, of blatant lies and mistrust, and of complete lack of interest in the well-being of First Nations peoples. Though some breakthroughs were made over the years, the overall arching story fits into Cardinal’s description exactly. “Clearly something must be done,” states Murray Sinclair (p. 184, 1994). And that ‘something’ he refers to is drastic change. It is evident, therefore, that Harold Cardinal’s statement is an accurate summarization of the Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationship in
It was during this time that the first obstacles to the government's progress first surfaced. The Métis people began to fear for their culture, rights and their lands as colonists sta...
Introduction “We are all treaty people” Campaign. The year 1907 marked the beginning of treaty making in Canada. The British Crown claims to negotiate treaties in pursuance of peaceful relations between Aboriginal peoples and non-Aboriginals (Canada, p. 3, 2011). Treaties started as agreements for peace and military purposes but later transformed into land entitlements (Egan, 2012, p. 400).