The Oka Crisis
A golf course extension over a burial ground, and 78 days of barricades
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Kanesatake is a Mohawk community west of Montreal, and the land at issue was a pine wood with a burial ground the community had claimed for over two centuries. The crisis forced the question of land claims into Canadian public life and led directly to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which produced one of the most extensive inquiries in the country's history in 1996. It is also an early example of live television coverage of an Indigenous confrontation shifting opinion as it happened. The land in question was eventually bought by the federal government, but never formally transferred to Kanesatake.
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A town in Quebec wanted to extend a golf course over ground the Mohawk regarded as a burial site and as their land. The Mohawk set up barricades, and the standoff lasted 78 days with police and the army present.
Sources
- Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996)
- York & Pindera, People of the Pines (1991)
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