Day 3 – Kahnawa:ke – Monday, June 12, 2017

One of the journey participants for Leg 2 was Kaniehtiio Horn-Batt, a Mohawk woman and a resident of the Kahnawa:ke Reserve just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. We spent the morning briefing on the ship talking to Tiio about her community. She told us about what it was like for her to grow up on the reserve with a Mohawk rights activist for a mother, and a white CSIS lawyer for a father. She gave us a brief history of the community, told us that the Mohawks are well known for being iron workers, especially right across the border in the US, and she told some incredible stories about her mother, Kahn-Tineta Horn, standing up for herself and her community. These aren’t my stories, so I won’t tell them here. Tiio says she is working on a podcast, to get her mum to share her stories with the world, and I hope she puts it out soon. A quick Google search for Tiio’s mum comes back with about a kajillion results, so you can learn all about her and her astonishing life, and I encourage you to do so.

Tiio spoke about the Oka Crisis of 1990, and how Kahnawa:ke stood in solidarity with the Mohawk people living at Kanesatake, AKA Oka when the protest occurred.

Just to give you a quick refresher: Kanesatake is a small native community west of Montreal, and like so many Native communities had (has) land-claim disputes. The owners of a 9-hole golf course on/near Kanesatake land wanted to expand the golf course from 9 holes to 18 holes. The expansion was to be built on a piece of disputed Mohawk land that included a burial ground. The Mohawks set up a barricade to halt construction. The police and then the army were brought in to shut down the protests. There was violence. I can’t possibly go in to all the details here, but you can get a much better refresher here, and there are lots of resources online.

After our briefing aboard ship, we all got on a bus and headed to Kahnawa:ke, to see the places Tiio spoke about. One of the great things about the C3 Expedition is the flexibility. Tiio suggested we start by taking a swim at the quarry, so that got added to the day’s agenda. In fact, it was our first stop. Apparently, this quarry was operational decades ago, until they hit a spring and it filled up with water. Now it’s the most tranquil swimming hole with crystal clear water. We would never have known the quarry was there if Tiio hadn’t been with us. It’s a hidden gem.

Our bus driver, Mitch, was also from Kahnawa:ke, and after the swim he and Tiio gave us a great tour of the community.

Mitch presented the C3 "Word Of The Day" that day. Photo by Martin Lipman.

They pointed out where the Mohawks from Kahnawa:ke set up their protest in solidarity with the people at Oka, and showed us where the army moved in and shot teargas at the protestors. Mitch has this massive scar on his forearm where the skin had burnt off when a teargas canister hit him. There is a hospital on the reserve, and a senior citizens complex adjacent to where the protest took place. The day the teargas was deployed the wind was blowing toward the hospital, and the hospital staff and patients were dosed with it. The people decided it was too dangerous to allow their elders to stay in the community, so they evacuated the seniors’ home and moved them out of town until it was safe for them to come back. Tiio and Mitch drove us down the evacuation route, a road lined with high-sided banks that goes under an overpass. White people stood on the banks and overpass and threw rocks at the old people as they were being evacuated... while the RCMP watched.

I know there are two sides to every story, but what kind of monsters throw rocks at old people? What kind of monsters deploy teargas on a hospital?  All this for a golf course? A GOLF COURSE?!?!? Seriously?  Think for a minute. What would happen if a developer came in built a golf course on your grandmothers’ grave? How would you feel? And to think the developer had the weight of the Canadian Armed Forces behind him. And public support not necessarily for the golf course, but against you. Think for a minute what that must be like.

One of my shipmates, James Raffan, wrote this really great piece about the visit to Kahnawa:ke, Tiio, and Oka. I would encourage you to stop reading this and go read that. He is far more eloquent than I can be on the subject. Plus, JR is a cool guy and you should get some exposure to him. 

There were some other great highlights on the informal bus tour of Kahnawa:ke, including stopping by Tiio’s mom’s place. After hearing the stories about her in the morning briefing, we practically begged Tiio to let us meet her. She boarded the bus to thunderous applause. What an honour to meet Mrs. Horn! Seriously, Google this woman. Her story is amazing!

Photo by Martin Lipman

As the bus tour continued, we drove past a small building with a few people standing outside and Tiio said, “Everyone look to the right! Look at those people!” She then explained that the small building, about the size of shed, is the local poutinerie. You walk up to the window and order your poutine, and then you hang out on the porch and eat it. In the Maritimes we have fish-and-chip stands, but Quebec? They do it up right! Anyway, the locals all call this poutine stand “The Porch Of Shame”, and apparently if you’re willing to eat at The Porch Of Shame (and who wouldn’t?) it is the right of anyone driving by to gawk at you. HAHAHA!!! I wish I had gotten a picture, but we drove by too fast and I was doing my part by having a good gawk! True confession: I wish we had stopped there instead of going to the quarry. If I had known there was a Porch Of Shame that served poutine I would have foregone the swim and walked there!

Next up, we visited the Karihwanoron Immersion School. Karihwanoron means "precious words", and the children who go there do all their studies in Mohawk. The children started the tour with the Mohawk Prayer of Thanksgiving or the "words that come before all else", in Mohawk of course. They begin and end every day with the prayer, which they recited based on a series of brightly coloured pictures around the classroom.

This, of course, was very useful to the largely non-Mohawk speaking group of listeners they were showing around. The things they were thankful for? The sky, the water, the plants, the animals, the people, etc. Such a simple and beautiful concept. Why don’t we settler-people do that in our schools? 

Next we made a visit to the Kahnawa:ke Environment Protection Office (KEPO) where we learned about the St. Lawrence Seaway and what a shitty deal it was for the community. Opened in 1959, the Seaway is a man-made channel that runs alongside the sections of the St. Lawrence that are too shallow for large ships to traverse. The Seaway cut a path through Kahnawa:ke, effectively cutting off the community (whose name means, ironically now, "place of the rapids") from the river.

Many homes and land were expropriated to build the Seaway, many of them given over unwillingly by the residents. Tiio’s great-grandfather had to be physically removed from his house the day the bulldozers showed up.  Try to imagine you have a gorgeous waterfront property. You can swim, you can fish, you can just set and look if you want to. And then to be told it is being taken away because industry giants need it more than you. Devastating. We have similar stories here in Nova Scotia (Shout out to Africville! Shout out to the fisherman who lost their livelihoods when the Canso Causeway was built!) and it is no less outrages than what we heard at Kahnawa:ke. Ah, the 1950s. What a time to be alive! The river was once a huge part of the community's recreation and culture, and the Kahnawa:ke Environment Protection Office is looking at ways to restore that connection to the water. There is a small bay that comes in to Kahnawa:ke from the St. Lawrence River, and the Environment Protection Office has put together a plan to make the bay useful to the community. As the water from the river enters the bay, its velocity slows dramatically causing any sediment being carried to settle out. This in turn causes the bay to be choked by vegetation, rendering it useless to the community as a recreational water body. No fishing, no swimming, no boating. The community is working with a consultant (AECOM) and has developed the first phase of a remediation program. Now for the hard part: the band needs to come up with several million dollars to implement the program. Being a field tech, I found the presentation and site visit fascinating, but I wasn't sure what my fellow C3ers were thinking. Turns out, they were all fired up too! In fact, there were brainstorming discussions for days afterward aboard ship about how KEPO might find the funds to get the ball rolling.  If anyone has ideas after reading this and might be able to help, contact me and I will put you in touch with the folks at KEPO.

We headed back to the ship after that, and had a wonderful dinner. Finally, around 6pm, after three incredible days in montreal, we pulled away from the dock!  We were underway, bound for Trois-Rivieres!

That evening, as we sailed down the St. Lawrence, we had our evening briefing in the open hanger, watching the river slip away behind the ship.

There was so much to talk about, after the day we had full of beauty and pain. So many of us were so shocked at the things we had learned about the systematic mistreatment of indigenous people in Canada. Hearts and minds opened, some for the first time. Andrea Menard, the wonderful and talented Metis singer and actor, was one of our journey participants for the leg, and made an excellent point that broke the whole thing open for me:

White people don’t know about the history of the First Nations, but the indigenous people think that we know and we just don’t care.  

Read that sentence again. It’s important. When we all understand that statement, reconciliation will begin.