When people hear about the "Oka Crisis," they usually think of 1990. They think of a summer standoff, razor wire, and that iconic photo of a soldier staring down a Mohawk warrior. But that’s a tiny fragment of the reality. Honestly, if you only look at 1990, you’re missing the point entirely. The real story is Kanehsatake 270 years of resistance, a grueling, multi-century marathon of legal battles, petitions, and physical standoffs that started long before Canada was even a country.
It’s about land. Specifically, the Pines.
The struggle didn't start with a golf course expansion. It started with a 1717 land grant from the King of France to the Sulpician Order. This was the "original sin" of the conflict. The Sulpicians were supposed to hold the land in trust for the Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka), but instead, they started selling it off. They treated the rightful inhabitants like squatters on their own soil. This isn't just "history"—it's a living, breathing legal nightmare that hasn't been woken up from yet.
The Long Game of Dispossession
Back in the 1700s, the Mohawk of Kanehsatake were already filing formal protests. Think about that. While the French and British were busy trading the continent back and forth like a playing card, the people of Kanehsatake were meticulously documenting why the Sulpician seminary had no right to the land.
They sent petitions to the Governor of New France. Later, they sent them to the British Crown. They even traveled to London. They weren't "rioting." They were using every diplomatic tool in the box. By the mid-1800s, things got uglier. The Sulpicians tried to restrict the Mohawks' right to cut wood for fuel or build homes. Imagine being told you can't use the trees in your own backyard because a religious order thousands of miles away "owns" them.
The resistance has always been about more than dirt. It's about the "Great Law of Peace" (Kaianere’kó:wa). This isn't some abstract philosophy; it’s a political framework that dictates how the Kanien'kehá:ka relate to the earth. When the Sulpicians started selling off parcels of land to settlers, they weren't just selling property. They were hacking away at the Mohawks' ability to exist as a distinct people.
By the time the 1900s rolled around, the Canadian government was fully involved, and not in a good way. The 1912 Supreme Court of Canada decision—Corinthe v. Seminary of St. Sulpice—is a gut-punch of a ruling. Basically, the court admitted the Mohawks had been there forever but said they had no legal "title" that the Canadian courts would recognize. It was a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario.
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Why 1990 Was Just a Pressure Valve Releasing
Fast forward to 1990. The Mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, wanted to expand a private golf course from 9 holes to 18. And he wanted to build a parking lot.
The catch? The expansion was going to pave over a Mohawk cemetery.
If you want to understand Kanehsatake 270 years of resistance, you have to understand the disrespect of that moment. It wasn't just a golf course. It was the final straw in a stack of straws that had been growing since the 1700s. When the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) stormed the barricades on July 11, 1990, they weren't dealing with a "protest." They were crashing into three centuries of pent-up frustration.
The death of Corporal Marcel Lemay that morning changed everything. The standoff lasted 78 days. The Canadian Armed Forces were called in. Operation Deliverance. Tanks in the streets of a small Quebec town. The world watched, but mostly, the world was confused. They didn't see the 1717 grant. They didn't see the 1912 court case. They just saw "Indians with guns" and "soldiers with tanks."
The Myth of the "Resolved" Conflict
A lot of people think the 78-day standoff ended and everything went back to normal. That is a massive misconception.
The federal government eventually bought the land from the developers to "stop" the golf course expansion, but they never actually returned it to the Mohawk people in a way that recognizes their sovereignty. It’s held in a sort of legal limbo. Kanehsatake is still a "checkerboard" of jurisdictions. You have federal land, provincial land, and private land all mashed together. It’s a recipe for constant friction.
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Since 1990, the resistance has shifted but never stopped.
- Tobacco trade disputes often mask deeper issues of jurisdiction.
- Illegal dumping on ancestral lands has become a massive flashpoint.
- Internal governance struggles created by the Indian Act continue to tear at the community's fabric.
Ellen Gabriel, who was a key spokesperson during the 1990 crisis, has spent the last 30+ years pointing out that the underlying land claim remains unresolved. Canada talks about "reconciliation," but in Kanehsatake, it often feels like a buzzword. The 270 years of resistance isn't a historical era; it's the current status quo.
The Reality of "Land Back" in Kanehsatake
You’ve probably heard the term "Land Back." In Kanehsatake, this isn't a social media hashtag. It’s a survival strategy.
The community deals with constant encroachment. Developers are still trying to build housing projects on disputed land. There’s a specific area called the "Seigneury of Lake of Two Mountains" that covers a massive footprint, and the Mohawk have never ceded their rights to it. Not once. Not in 1717, and certainly not now.
The nuance here is that the resistance isn't just against the government. Sometimes it’s a struggle to maintain cultural identity in the face of immense poverty and external pressure. When you are denied the right to develop your own economy because your land title is "clouded," you get stuck.
What Most People Get Wrong
People love a simple narrative. Good guys vs. bad guys. Protesters vs. Police.
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But the Kanehsatake story is about the failure of the British and Canadian legal systems to acknowledge a prior legal system. The Mohawk have their own constitution—the aforementioned Great Law of Peace. When the Canadian government says, "We are the law," and the Mohawk say, "We have our own law that predates yours," you have a fundamental clash of civilizations that a golf course cancellation can't fix.
Also, don't assume the community is a monolith. Like any nation, there are internal debates about how to move forward. Some want to work within the federal system to get the best deal possible. Others, often referred to as the traditionalists or the Longhouse, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Canadian state over their land at all. Both sides are part of the resistance.
The Economic Ghost of the Sulpicians
It’s wild to think that a group of French priests from the 18th century still dictates the property values and legal headaches of people in 2026. Because the Sulpicians sold off land they didn't technically "own" (according to the Mohawk), thousands of non-Indigenous people now live on that land.
This creates a massive political headache for Ottawa. If they admit the Mohawk are right, what happens to the thousands of homeowners in Oka? This fear of "opening the floodgates" is why the government has dragged its feet for decades. They’d rather keep the wound open than perform the surgery required to fix it.
Actionable Insights: How to Actually Support the Resistance
If you’re looking at this and wondering what "resistance" looks like today, it’s not usually about masks and camouflage. It’s about education and legal pressure.
- Read the actual history. Stop relying on high school textbooks that condense 300 years into one paragraph about 1990. Look into the Corinthe case and the 1717 grant.
- Understand the "Unceded" part. When people say Montreal or Kanehsatake is on unceded land, they mean there is no treaty. No one ever "sold" this land. Legally, that matters.
- Support Mohawk Sovereignty. This means respecting their right to govern themselves without the interference of the Indian Act, which is a colonial piece of legislation designed to make Indigenous people disappear.
- Watch the Documentaries. Alanis Obomsawin’s Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance is the gold standard. It’s raw, it’s biased (rightly so, towards the people being shot at), and it’s essential viewing.
The resistance in Kanehsatake is a testament to sheer willpower. Most cultures would have folded after 50 years of being told "no." These people have been saying "no" for nearly three centuries.
The next step is for the Canadian government to move beyond the "Comprehensive Land Claims" process, which usually requires Indigenous groups to extinguish their rights in exchange for a one-time payment. In Kanehsatake, the people aren't looking for a payout. They’re looking for their land back. Until that happens, the 270 years will turn into 280, 290, and 300. The barricades might be down, but the line in the sand hasn't moved an inch.
To truly understand the current state of affairs, one should look at the ongoing reports from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which has repeatedly called on Canada to address the land grievances in Kanehsatake. Monitoring these international legal developments provides a much clearer picture of the struggle than any local news soundbite ever could.