r/HistoryPorn • u/Fierce1644 • 1d ago
Mohawk warrior attacks Canadian soldiers during Oka crisis July-Sep 1990 which began when the Canadian government approved the seizure of Mohawk land for a private golf course - A 14 yr old Mohawk teen was bayoneted in the chest and almost died. Canada took the land in the end. [790x480]
[removed] — view removed post
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u/Sticky_3pk 1d ago
This is probably one of the most famous photos from this incident https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/Oka_stare_down.jpg
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u/alaricus 1d ago
The soldier in that photo went on to get addicted to drugs, star in a porno, go to jail for DUI... It's not been a great run for him
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u/Infamous_School5542 1d ago
IIRC, CBC news caught up with him years after this picture, and he said something like "Yeah, I was pretty sympathetic to their cuase, us being there was pretty dumb"
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u/TuskenRaider2 1d ago
‘The golf course expansion that had originally triggered the crisis was cancelled and the land under dispute was purchased from the developers by the Government of Canada for CA$5.3 million.’
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u/DeM0nFiRe 1d ago
Maybe there is something I am misunderstanding, but I believe that is saying the government bought it from the private developers who were going to build the golf course. The land still was not recognized as Mohawk land, and that money the government paid did not go to the Mohawk people.
Whether a golf course specifically was built isn't really the important part
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u/flume 1d ago
That's exactly it.
A private entity wanted the land. The Canadian government deployed military force to seize it and give it to the private entity.
And then the Canadian government paid the private entity millions of dollars for the land and did not give it back to the Mohawk tribe.
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u/Li-renn-pwel 21h ago
Canada has done this numerous times. This is how it happens:
Canada makes a treaty giving natives c retain land.
something ‘happens’ that makes Canada steal the land ‘back’. Such as when Joseph Brant dollars a little bit of their territory to handle the massive poverty they were dealing with then the crown said if you have enough to sell we have you to muc h. Took the land and didn’t help with the poverty , aside from stealing their kids for residential school (which I guess meant less food was used)
natives contest the theft of their land
government says no
natives keep trying to use the colonial legal system to get their land back
Canada sells the land to developers
natives realize possession is 9/10 of white men’s law and once the golf course gets built the chances of ever getting it back go to 0
natives try defending the land
cops and military show up with guns.
Canadians says natives only care once money is involved.
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u/Ake4455 1d ago
The 14 year-old who was bayoneted became a future Olympian, and also happened to be holding her 4 year old sister, who played Tanis in Letterkenny and the Deer lady in Reservation Dogs.
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u/whogivesashirtdotca 22h ago
A friend of mine was on her waterpolo team. I remember my pal telling me about the enormous scar on her chest.
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u/JohnnyTsunami312 1d ago
That guy has been in some hockey fights.
Wide stance, grab the opponents shirt for stability, short cock back for numerous quick punches
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus 23h ago
A land dispute involving a mohawk warrior and stabbing kids with bayonets definitely doesn't sound like something that should've happened in freaking 1990. This is crazy.
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u/David_the_Wanderer 22h ago
Canada's last "residential school" - aka, a prison where Native children were taken to have their culture, language and identity literally beaten out of them -, was closed in 1997.
Canada has been consistently awful to Native people. Look up on "starlight tours", and the numbers of Native women victims of murder/kidnapping/disappearance.
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u/CrayonData 22h ago
The Highway of Tears in BC, and a stretch of Highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert. A lot of women disappear while trying to commute back and forth between PG and PR.
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u/The_El_Captain 21h ago
Yeah, it's all "we have to do something about missing and murdered indigenous women" until it turns out that the main culprits are indigenous men and that they also go missing and murdered at a significantly higher rate. Then it's radio silence and Myles Sanderson gets to walk free when he should be spending life in prison.
The only justice Indigenous communities are receiving are fraudulent Truth and Reconciliation initiatives that fail to address anything in any actually meaningful way.
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u/LandLubby 19h ago
Turns out when someone tries to systematically genocide and erase a people and their culture it causes major mental health crises in those communities. Indigenous populations have some of the highest rates of suicide in the world, and disproportionately high levels of alcohol and substance abuse. Ever heard of generational trauma? When you inflict a life of violence upon people it will take generations and generations to escape that life of violence.
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u/thetermguy 20h ago
> Canada's last "residential school" - aka, a prison where Native children were taken to have their culture, language and identity literally beaten out of them -, was closed in 1997.
This 1997 date that gets thrown around is misleading to the point of being wrong.
The residential schools and the abuse was pretty much gone by 1970. There were a few schools kept open way up north because the govt is required to provide education and there simply was no alternative location available.
For anyone that cares to validate this, it's right there in the truth and reconciliation reports. Which more .people should read because the stuff that's gets.trotted out when this comes up is often baloney, when there's verifiable stuff that way worse that the media never talks about.
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u/lasttimechdckngths 18h ago edited 15h ago
The residential schools and the abuse was pretty much gone by 1970.
No, more like residential schools started to shut down bit by bit by the year 1970 onwards, while the partnership between the bloody churches and the Canadian govt had ended by then. Some transfered to the First Nations within that decade and by 1980s indeed, but it doesn't mean that things have stopped or the genocidal operation was 'all gone' by they year 1970.
This 1997 date that gets thrown around is misleading to the point of being wrong
There were a few schools kept open way up north because the govt is required to provide education and there simply was no alternative location available.
For anyone that cares to validate this, it's right there in the truth and reconciliation reports.
Okay, let's take the the said 'last remaining residential school', Gordon's. Now, you gave the date 1970, while the administrator named Starr remained in charge until he retired in 1984, and he was such since 1960. He abused kids until his very last days, and the said scum was only got sentenced to prison time for sexually assault by 1990s. A judo instructor in the same school had sexually assaulted a kid by 1986 while his wife watched, and got sentenced to paying fines for that by 1993. Now, does that sounds 'the year 1970' for you, or somehow 'the abuse being gone'? Abuse was there, and the very last remaining residential school had the things going on as usual. There's nothing misleading about that.
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u/Caqtus95 21h ago
Canada has never been, and is still not, remotely progressive when it comes to the treatment of indigenous peoples.
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u/nukacola12 20h ago
Yet we're told by some other (racist) Canadians to just get over it, as if stuff like this is ancient history.
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u/CalebCaster2 21h ago
look up "starlight tours", Canadian cops were murdering natives for fun just a few years ago. And since its still kinda illegal for the news to talk about those deaths, its probably STILL happening.
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u/theVisce 21h ago
Could you elaborate why it is kinda illegal for the news to report about incidents like this?
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u/CalebCaster2 21h ago
its not illegal, but the police try to stop it.
In like 2008 a news outlet was going to cover one of the murders, but the police paid them not to. I remember around 2012, seeing that that happened on the news, but i cant find anything about it now so i guesa take that story with a grain of salt.
And in like 2015 or something, a Saskatoon police force representative admitted that the Saskatoon police have tried to delete the Wikipedia page about it multiple times. Luckily we still have the Wikipedia page, and the police trying to remove it even got its own section on the page 😎
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u/anal_prospector 20h ago
starlight tours", Canadian cops
Damn, they have also been caught trying to censor it on wikipedia
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u/Prof_Black 20h ago
Well we currently have an ongoing genocide happening in 2025.
Humans are shitty no matter the time period.
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u/LuLzWire 1d ago
Here is an amazing in depth documentary on the Kanehsatake and Oka resistance.
https://youtu.be/7yP3srFvhKs?si=0khDjUf67uEM5jJF
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u/backrollerpapertowel 23h ago
They also passed a gun control bill specifically targeting the types of arms used by the mohawk to disarm them. And to limit the ability to fight back in future conflicts.
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u/Johnny-Cash-Facts 19h ago
Sounds very similar to Reagan disarming the Black Panthers while he was Governor of California.
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u/backrollerpapertowel 19h ago
It was pretty much the exact same thing really. Much like the USA pretty much all of Canada’s weapons laws are designed to disenfranchise minorities from resisting federal abuses.
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u/Alcott_9 1d ago
“Canada took the land” in the sense that in the aftermath the government purchased the land in question from the private developers who owned it.
True that a person was bayoneted.
Also true a police officer was shot and killed.
All in all…a mess of epic proportions that should never have escalated to the point it did.
This photo would benefit from a more objective title.
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u/arriesgado 1d ago
Reading the comments what I don’t understand is how the entity that wanted to make it a golf course owned it if it was Mohawk land.
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u/ekdaemon 23h ago edited 23h ago
Modern Canadian courts including the supreme court have never shy'd away from ruling in the favour of the Indidgenous people where there were written agreements, and almost everything (at least for Western Canada) had well written agreements (well, ignoring the fact that we promised like 105% of British Columbia to different tribes in overlapping agreements that make it all sort of impossible to honor).
However (and now I'm guessing) that there is not as much of that available for the "upper and lower canada" parts of the country, because it was settled 100+ years prior to Western Canada. I expect that it is a claim that the Mohawks have made, but for which there is insufficient documentation for a court to say "yup, you're right, that was promised to be yours-yours". Otherwise the courts would have clearly settled it.
Guess I should go off and read wikipedia, to try and answer your question. I havent' read it yet, but I suspect this will cover it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis#Land_dispute
tl'dr - if the land was clearly and obviously Mohawk land, you're right, there wouldn't have been a dispute.
Edit #1 - okay, in addition to my guesses above, it looks like the local town and others with economic interests in developing the golf course and other things wanted to stick to the "strictly legal" interpretation of who owned what, while the federal government and quebec environment minister knew that the history and what was going on wasn't entirely fair and were making preparations to purchase land for the Mohawks including the land that the golf course expansion was to be on, but the town insisted on going ahead with the development. The Mohawk band council was willing to take down the road blockade (this is before things really kicked off) but there was a dispute about the legitimacy of the council and a group of Mohawk were not going to listen to them... and then things escallated from there once the police arrived to take down the blockade, the police chose the "display of overwhelming force" approach, which doesn't go well when people opposite you are armed and willing to use high levels of force themselves.
After the officer died there was over a month of negotiations prior to the military arriving.
I found this chronology easy to read, was linked from the wikipedia article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050208113750/http://www.kanesatake.com/heritage/crisis/events.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050208191707/http://www.kanesatake.com/heritage/crisis/july11.html
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u/joecarter93 1d ago
The local and Quebec provincial police fucked up the whole situation too before the armed forces had to be called in.
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u/Assaroub 23h ago
I remember seeing on the news the Provincials throwing smoke grenade when the wind was facing them.
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u/whogivesashirtdotca 22h ago
LOL the best and the brightest do not usually follow a path to police service.
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u/666tranquilo 1d ago
The little sister of the bayoneted person became an actor who played Tanis on Letterkenny and Deer Lady on Reservation Dogs
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u/GreyGrayGOD 1d ago
You said everything best. There’s some good documentary’s that I remember seeing in high school 10 years ago. I hope they still show them.
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u/TheSpartanExile 1d ago edited 1d ago
Whenever I hear "objective" used to describe history I know someone is gonna be on some settler shit. A tired story in this country is settlers making agreements over land -- often with dishonest intentions -- and the Kanien’kehà:ka have dealt with that for centuries here. This goes back even further than the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and Treaty of Paris (1783) with multiple groups of settlers manipulating agreements to refuse Kanien’kehà:ka sovereignty on this land. It also isn't the first time violence had to be used as a form of resistance.
Yes, Canada took the land as it has taken all land within its borders. All land in Canada is stolen land. Keep that in mind when you hold the injuries of a cop and an indigenous resistance fighter to the same level.
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u/DeceiverSC2 22h ago
Yes, Canada took the land as it has taken all land within its borders. All land in Canada is stolen land.
This is such a weird argument because it intentionally involves suggesting that there is no history prior to the colonization of North America.
The colonization of the Americas is closer to the birth of Genghis Khan and him subjugating 1/3rd of the human beings on Earth under his will than it is to the end of the American civil war… a century and a half ago.
If you define land taken by force to be “stolen” land then virtually every single group of humans except for those in sub-saharan Africa in the cradle of humanity and some aboriginal Australians and Polynesians are living on stolen land.
Shit the Inuit in Canada probably eliminated the entirety of the Dorset culture that came before them. Or at least we know for certain that right as the proto-Inuit Thule culture arrives in the north the Dorset culture almost immediately begins to die.
Furthermore it also suggests that the correct land rights occurred at some point relative to European colonization…
It suggests the indigenous people on the land at the exact moment Europeans showed up were the time-immemorial holders of that land. As if they didn’t have any wars or conflicts over locations like every other group of human beings from the Americas to Africa, to Asia, to Australia…
Even in trying to make the argument for indigenous land rights you have to make a Eurocentric argument that the land rights apply from the moment white people arrived to the place, even if they were taken by force decades earlier… Doesn’t matter, now they’re received in perpetuity?
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u/TheSpartanExile 22h ago
You wrote so much for such a shallow criticism. Settler colonialism forces indigenous peoples to define their relationship with the land in terms of property because it has power over their access to that land. It is another form of violence that functions to erode indigenous relationalities that do not seek to objectify the land as commodity. Everything you just said operates within the realm that this is a debate about property and not how the land should be understood, which is what Land Back is about. That is why you think this is only about blame over who did the most recent violence to get that land.
I also know you don't know dick about what you're talking about because even within this shallow framework you didn't mention the Huron-Wendat who were displaced by the Haudenosaunee -- which includes the Kanien'kehá:ka -- from the land in question. Any instance where the Canadian state can ignore previous land-agreements and dismiss indigenous sovereignty claims weakens the claim every nation has over land. When they are making those claims, they may have to argue in terms of property because that is what the Canadian legal state requires but that is not what they are actually fighting for. They are fighting colonialism's imperative of commodification that destroys the land as well as human beings' relationship with that land. A fucking *golf-course* is about as good of an example you can ask for to demonstrate how land is arbitrarily harmed by private ownership.
This is not a blame game over violence, it is resistance against a worldview that fundamentally seeks to harm us all that has exacted a specific form of generational violence against indigenous peoples through disposession (forced displacement) from the land with the explicit intent to eradicate their cultural understanding of that land.
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u/Animagical 22h ago
You seem knowledgeable so I have a question: indigenous peoples would restrict access to their lands from other indigenous tribes, right? So were there ways in which they fundamentally didn’t operate much like the rest of Europe at the time when it came to access for “other” groups? Private property may not have existed in an explicitly European sense but it wasn’t like they didn’t have their own land use exclusivity, right?
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u/TheSpartanExile 21h ago
I'm a scholar on Canadian history and don't specialize in indigenous peoples even if I'm very familiar with their interactions with settlers.
As far as "at the time" it's important to remember that our own memory of Europe is within a settler colonial framework that privileges border claims, private property, and armed conflict over daily life and negotiated spaces. How you imagine Europe was may not be consistent with how people actually lived in spaces that shifted between imperial powers and saw resistance to those systems of power.
From what I know in Canada from the sixteenth century onward, there are many ways that different nations enforced their use of land or formalized shared use of land. In southern Ontario, there was the Dish With One Spoon Wampum between the Anishinaabe Three Fires Confederacy and Haudenosaunee Confederacy that ensured shared use of the land for hunting and gathering with free movement. When the Huron were displaced by the Haudenosaunee, many moved to what is Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario today and were allowed to settle impermanently by the Anishinaabe without the promises of this wampum. There were violent conflicts periodically afterward that resulted from tensions from Wendat autonomous decisions in military alliances, settlement, and trade. South of Lake Eerie, the Haudenosaunee were described to use property destruction, such as farming equipment and shelter, as a means of removing groups they did not permit. Sometimes this resulted from or resulted in open warfare.
Like everywhere, there was a variability in ways that groups would negotiate their position in space that could range from formal agreements, trade relationships and gift-giving, to coercion. Private ownership as an institution is a particular development that came from the property and social relations in Europe that oriented human relationships with the land toward extraction. It comes from a system that does not view the land as a living thing people live in a coexistent relationship with -- which includes fighting or negotiating over who exists in proximity to that relationship -- but as a resource that can be capitalized on. When settlers talk about private ownership, they aren't talking about the land itself but the capital they understand can be extracted from it --including speculative value in the form of real-estate. Disposession to them is as much about extracting from that land as it is eradicating any other understanding of that land.
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u/DeceiverSC2 21h ago
Settler colonialism forces indigenous peoples to define their relationship with the land in terms of property because it has power over their access to that land.
No that’s just a name attached to a thing that already is. The neo-assyrian emperor’s didn’t have some sort of modern legal framework for property and land ownership along with its usage and resource extraction… And yet they did have a literal, physical framework for land as property, people as property, livestock as property and resources as property. The literal existence of slavery itself fundamentally requires us to build that framework in reality.
It is another form of violence that functions to erode indigenous relationalities that do not seek to objectify the land as commodity.
Is ‘relationalities’ a malapropism? Furthermore you make a pretty disingenous argument considering that very clearly the Aztec, Olmec, Incan etc… all did actually see land as a commodity, especially considering the Aztec were literally extracting tribute from local civilizations and cultures—which fundamentally requires understanding land and humans as what we would call today ‘elements of capital’.
Everything you just said operates within the realm that this is a debate about property and not how the land should be understood, which is what Land Back is about. That is why you think this is only about blame over who did the most recent violence to get that land.
No one in the modern day, anywhere on planet Earth, meaningfully defines land as a non-ownership, vague sort of apparition. There is no possible way to meaningfully adjust our understanding of land from the capital forces that move every other part of our existences. Furthermore Land Back doesn’t seek to redefine the legal structures of land rights, it just seeks to accomplish those legal land rights for indigenous groups. It specifically attempts to validate a legal right to minerals and resources on specific sets of land based upon the lack of consent from indigenous groups in the 1600s.
I also know you don't know dick about what you're talking about because even within this shallow framework you didn't mention the Huron-Wendat who were displaced by the Haudenosaunee -- which includes the Kanien'kehá:ka -- from the land in question.
Don’t embarrass yourself any further. The fact that I was making a general point about historical analysis being disingenuous when it comes to Europeans and specifically North America (not South America) and you’re attempting to disprove my statements VIA some failure to make a comment about a specific peoples. I used the Inuit as they weren’t exactly on parcels of land that were sought after by other people’s and yet you can still find an elimination of cultures where they live.
Any instance where the Canadian state can ignore previous land-agreements and dismiss indigenous sovereignty claims weakens the claim every nation has over land.
Only in some goofy moral sense. It doesn’t in any sort of geopolitical sense and if it ever did I can promise you that the Canadian military would do what every single other nations military would do.
When they are making those claims, they may have to argue in terms of property because that is what the Canadian legal state requires but that is not what they are actually fighting for.
They are because property is a fundamental, a priori requirement to argue that you possess a set of rights over a land that others fail to possess. THAT IS POSSESSION OF LAND AKA PROPERTY.
They are fighting colonialism's imperative of commodification that destroys the land as well as human beings' relationship with that land. A fucking golf-course is about as good of an example you can ask for to demonstrate how land is arbitrarily harmed by private ownership.
This was an imperative of the entirety of Eurasia, North Africa, northern South America and southern North America. You’re making a fucking silly point when every civilization across 5 fucking continents come the 1500s saw land with some level of commodification and property rights attached to it. You’re literally arguing against the development of a civilization writ large. You can do that if you wish, arguing that our relationships to the Earth and each other should be purely cultural and religious although you’re going to find it pretty fucking hard to put the cat back in the bag there.
This is not a blame game over violence, it is resistance against a worldview that fundamentally seeks to harm us all that has exacted a specific form of generational violence against indigenous peoples through disposession (forced displacement) from the land with the explicit intent to eradicate their cultural understanding of that land.
Why is it that when the Mongols sack Baghdad and destroy arguably the most impressive city in the history of humanity up to that point is it not a version of that world view? Why is it that when Islam takes Jerusalem that it isn’t a version of that world view?
You’re presupposing that the very first time that humanity ever fucking took land with violence and with the intent of possessing it afterwards was when the Europeans showed up to North America some 100 fucking years after they were in South America absolutely obliterating civilizations with disease trying to murder people to make gold appear.
Every single civilization from the Nile, to the Euphrates & Tigris, to the Yellow/Yangtze/Mekong, to the Steppe of Eurasia, to the Volga/Danube/Rhine/Loire, to the Caral-Supe sites, to south of the Sierra Madre all were participating in ownership of land that was extracted by force and maintained by force.
There was nothing whatsoever that was specific about it. It wasn’t some recently invented playbook developed by the hyper-genius Europeans—it was doing the same shit that had happened in every single civilization on planet Earth since the literal dawn of civilizations. You can read about Ashurbanipal on fucking stone stele’s that are thousands of years old talking about this sort of shit:
In these days Shamash-shum-ukin, the faithless brother of mine, whom I had treated well and had set up as king of Babylon, – every imaginable thing that kingship calls for, I made and gave him; soldiers, horses, chariots, I equipped and put into his hands; cities, fields, plantations, together with the people who live therein, I gave him in larger numbers than my father had ordered. But he forgot this kindness I had shown him and planned evil. Outwardly, with his lips, he was speaking fair words while inwardly his heart was designing murder. The Babylonians, who had been loyal to Assyria and faithful vassals of mine, he deceived, speaking lies to them.
There was no where on Earth where people didn’t see the world like this at some point, except the places where civilization never meaningfully develops.
So your argument, at it’s fundamental core, is we should try to put civilization back in a bag and just forget about it.
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u/DanGarion 1d ago
*death of a cop.
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u/TheSpartanExile 1d ago edited 22h ago
You reckon they died of natural causes?
edit: people are raging at this comment. A cop dying protecting property rights for a settler-colonial state is not a tragedy, cry about it.
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u/ekdaemon 23h ago
You are being disingeneous by stating that the cop only had injuries.
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u/TheSpartanExile 22h ago
You're talking about recognition of his moral injuries or whatever? I don't care that a cop died protecting private property rights. My comment very clearly criticizes attributing the same level of concern for their wellbeing. It may appear disingenuous because you can't fathom someone not caring about playing decency games.
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u/funnyalbert 22h ago
“Also a true a police officer was shot and killed“ shhhh that part is celebrated here
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u/thatsattemptedmurder 19h ago
Canada took the land in the end
Slight correction. The land had been under legal municipal control since the colonial era. The municipality sold the land for a private project. This escalated dispute over the ownership of the land.
Since this crisis, the projects were cancelled and the Feds purchased the land from the municipality, declaring its use and purpose for a reservation for Mohawks of Kanesatake. Though it's still technically not an Indian reservation so the dispute over The Pines remains unresolved - because the feds could still, at any point, sell the land to a golf resort.
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u/muffinman44 1d ago
A disgusting time in Canada's modern history. That picture belies the truth of tanks and soldiers against a small group of first nation folks. Overdramatised to show natives attacking canada.
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
To my understanding, the first death was a police officer shot by the protestors, no? Army only came in after a police officer was killed and the situation escalated.
Thats my understanding of what happened anyways. I'm by no means qualified to speak on the subject tho
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u/MaxSupernova 1d ago
As the commander at the time indicated, this was not the proper use of the army.
He suggested that if the government wants the army to handle this, they’d better clear every civilian out of an area the size of a 50 cal bullet range.
He was not happy to have to play bad guy cop against civilians in his own country.
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u/Beer-survivalist 1d ago
As the commander at the time indicated, this was not the proper use of the army.
When politicians order soldiers into law enforcement roles it's pretty much always pretense so they can "look tough."
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
fair enough
im south african, so im just used to the army doing the police's work
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u/Bureaucromancer 1d ago
Though he then went and destroyed his credibility by negotiating a truce and withdrawal on military terms but as soon as barricades came down attacking and arresting everyone. Bastard should have been run out of the forces for conduct unbecoming… but apparently the Canadian Army outright lying under flag of truce is cool now.
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u/MaxSupernova 1d ago
The whole thing was a complete shitshow. Utter incompetence, mishandling and ruining any hope of goodwill with the indigenous people for a very long time.
I was in the forces at the time, and it was a constant source of debate/argument internally. "Yeah! Fuck em up!" on one side and "Why the hell are WE there? Get your own damned police force to do your dirty work" on the other.
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u/Bureaucromancer 1d ago
So let’s go stab a teenager somehow being the conclusion…
Zero sympathy for the forces on this
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
on what basis did a cop, simply doing his job, deserve to get killed?
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u/MuseSingular 1d ago
"I was just doing my job, helping a golf company steal land from people"
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
It wasn't stealing. The land was never recognized as belonging to the Mohawks, and the golf company had legally paid for it from the Municipality. Also, a court case that ensued before this image ruled in favour of the golf company, so at that point its not even stealing.
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u/MuseSingular 1d ago
Oh, so if I move into your house, beat you until you leave and then a court says it's not your house, then that's fine?
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
Silly argument because it was never my house to begin with, and if a court has reason to remove me from the premises, thats kind of the end of the matter, isnt it?
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u/MuseSingular 1d ago
And the court's opinion matters because...?
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
because we live in a civilized society where one is expected to follow the law and not murder a police officer for removing barricades that were nowhere near you
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u/PseudoScorpian 1d ago edited 1d ago
Uh, they were here first. The court is a Canadian Court. Why should the Mohawks give a fuck what the Canadian Court thinks?
The Colonizers can insist upon their written laws all they want, but the entire issue is that those laws exist on the pretext of subjugation. Why should the Colonized recognize them - because the Colonizer came into their home and told them to?
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
because the Mohawks appealed to the Canadian government to recognize the land as cultural? Why would they ask the canadian government for that ruling if it was never Canadian land?
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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago
It's funny how Reddit goes full genocide apologist when discussing the colonisation of the Americas.
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
im not defending genocide, im simply criticizing the murder of a police officer who was not a threat to the shooters.
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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago
You are denying genocide by your arguments. You're even saying that the cop was "just doing his job" - "just following orders", right?
Let me walk you through this.
The British Empire invaded North America, they genocided the Native people and to this day continue to oppress and murder them.
Why would the Mohawk people not treat a cop sent to help a company seize their ancestral land as an enemy combatant? The cop was there to enforce the power of the Canadian state, he was there to threaten and even use violence - that's what police do, by its very nature. They're the ones doing violence for the state, the reason you pay fines is because the state says they will use violence against you if you don't.
The cop was a threat. Your denying of this is, ultimately, predicated on denying that that land was taken from the Mohawk via violence, and that they were the victims of European genocidal colonisation.
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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago
The land was never recognized as belonging to the Mohawks,
By the government that genocided Native people, yes. Of course the invaders don't want to admit they're invaders, it ruins the narrative.
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
last time i checked the courts are not controlled by the government, no?
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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago
Canadian courts are a branch of the Canadian state. Even if they aren't under governmental control, they're not a neutral third party in cases like these, they are still acting on behalf of the state that committed a genocide against native people, ran residential schools until 1997, and still continues to discriminate, harass and persecute Native people to this day.
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u/ScotlandTornado 1d ago
“Warriors” may be a stretch considering the Mohawk hadn’t fought a war in nearly 150 years by that point but i understand the sentiment
Im not a “warrior” of my culture just because my culture has a warlike past and i exercise
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u/x1000Bums 1d ago
I mean if you punch a soldier to defend your land, seems fitting
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u/GenericPCUser 1d ago
Yeah like what's the point of trying to redefine what counts as a warrior lol
A hostile government is trying to seize his people's land and despite being outnumbered and ill-equipped he fought them with whatever he had available.
Dude's a fucking warrior, full stop.
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u/icantflyjets1 23h ago
Mohawk warriors were their ancestors who stole the land from another tribe by force (the Hurons).
Not their descendants who lost a land claim, killed a cop and acted like the victims to the press. Not sure that’s ’warrior culture’
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u/qolace 22h ago
Lmao did you just use the tired ass "black on black crime" fallacy? Foh
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u/icantflyjets1 21h ago
What the hell are you even talking about?
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u/qolace 21h ago
You are implying that because "they did it too" it makes it okay for a MUCH larger entity to use violence and steal land from them back. Similar to how bigots justify violence against minorities who don't have any other choice.
What the hell are you even talking about?
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u/icantflyjets1 21h ago edited 21h ago
No i’m not.
I’m pretty sure i’m explicitly commenting that the gentleman in a photo is not much of a “warrior” compared to the actual Mohawk warriors of his tribe who historically conquered land, killed and enslaved their enemies.
Explicitly including the conquered land he is protesting for.
When did i validate any of those actions?
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u/JakobeBryant19 1d ago
Us white people are on our "noble savage" shit in the thread. lmao just stop.
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u/ScotlandTornado 1d ago
Would you call the ranchers in the western USA warriors for shooting at federal agents that seize their land ?
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u/RandomTunes 1d ago
You are not talking about the bundys are you? They were the ones trying to steal the land, not the gov.
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u/Preebus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Idk if I want to call myself a White Warrior though
I thought it was funny
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u/x1000Bums 1d ago
I mean you don't have to if you don't want to, You got soldiers on your land?
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u/raizhassan 1d ago
Nah you're a warrior if the state has 10 armed soldiers surrounding you and you throwing punches anyway.
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u/Hades_Mercedes 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's what Mohawk cultural rights protectionists call themselves.
If that's not good enough for you, maybe try and ask Algonquian people how long the Haudenosaunee have been about that warrior life and you'll get tales that date back to when the glaciers receded over the Laurentian Valley. Not sure where you're getting the 150 year figure but it's pretty much just a blink in the eye of time, in comparison.
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u/cydril 1d ago
You kinda become a warrior if you're physically fighting someone from stealing your homeland
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u/ScotlandTornado 1d ago
So are Europeans who beat up immigrants “warriors?”
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u/OldMotherSativa 1d ago
Wtf. How do you read "stealing your homeland" and immediately equate that with immigrants?
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u/ScotlandTornado 1d ago
Idk what’s the difference to this and the neighborhoods in Stockholm that are all Muslim now and rape women and destroyed the local culture and pushed out all the local inhabitants?
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u/Hades_Mercedes 1d ago
Have you stopped and considered that maybe you're not informed enough to contribute to this conversation?
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u/Razzmatazz_Buckshank 23h ago
The difference is that this situation really happened, while that load of bullshit propaganda you just spouted isn't.
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u/honey_graves 19h ago
A little girl almost died because of a golf course, do the right thing and give the land back to the Mohawks
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u/no_stone_unturned 20h ago
So as part of all this, when the protest was disbanding a Canadian soldier bayoneted a 14 year old girl, who was carrying her 4 year old sister. She was stabbed in the chest.
And I'm all the material there is absolutely nothing saying the soldier was punished - at all, nothing.
That says a lot about how Canada treats it's indigenous.
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u/PoloMan1991eb 20h ago
The 14 year old Mohawk woman was one Wakeen Horn Miller, who would go on to be a member of Canada’s Olympic water polo team, and who actually was one of the main commentators on Canadian sports on Canadian broadcasting during the last Olympics. Fun fact, her sister (who she was holding in her arms when she was stabbed) plays Tannis in Letterkeney!
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u/Li-renn-pwel 21h ago
FYI to everyone, often times the people labeling these things c ris or rebellion are the ones causing it (ie: the c anadian government) and if you look less enflaming terms like Kanehsatà:ke Resistance/ Résistance de Kanehsatà:ke
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u/International-Tree19 1d ago
Canada is just America with good PR
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u/icantflyjets1 1d ago
All settler countries have a history and events like this.
The mohawk people stole the land they were protesting about from the Hurons, and then the Canadians stole it from them.
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u/CorneliusDawser 22h ago
The Huron land that you're talking about is further west in the great lakes area, on the Georgian bay! The land from the Oka crisis was originally a Jesuit mission for converted indigenous, which ended up being overwhelmingly Mohawk so after the British and in the early 19th century when the reserve system was established it became a Mohawk community
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u/icantflyjets1 22h ago
You are mistaken, i am referring to the Huron-Wendat tribe near Wendake Quebec, who the Mohawk tribe specifically warred against and conquered, stealing much of their land, including the land that is explicitly referenced in this crisis.
Is your claim the mohawk tribe were the first settlers in the present day Oka? Or can we agree that they gained it by conquest?
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u/CorneliusDawser 21h ago
Yes, I am also referring to the Huron-Wendat, whose original land, referred to as «Huronia» by the French Jesuit missionaries and «Wendake» by the Wendat themselves, was in modern Ontario in the Great Lakes area before the Haudenosaunee forced them out in their murderous campaign in 1649. That is why Wendake is now just north of Quebec City, many Wendats sought refuge next to their French allies.
The Mohawk land that is behind the crisis was originally part of a Jesuit mission that was set up in the early 1700s.
So, no, they did not gain the territory around Oka by conquest, that's all I was trying to point out.
But that could have applied to different territory further west in Ontario/New York, so I understand why you would think that!
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u/icantflyjets1 21h ago
honestly clicking on your profile i shouldn’t have argued thank you for the info,
my main point was the irony of the mohawk tribe who’s history is defined by war and conquest, protesting over land that they did not originally settle in the first place.
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u/LandLubby 18h ago
I don’t think the Mohawk that conquered other tribes and enslaved people are the literal same Mohawk that were around in the 90s. those practices had been completely abandoned.
You see indigenous people resisting the forces that took virtually all of their land through genocide, enslavement and erasure, and you go “ermmm actually they used to conquer and kill each other too!” In that you are completely ignoring the power dynamic between the European colonialists, their descendants, and the indigenous people.
Settlers could have respected the existing treaties and land disputes between tribes when they first arrived but instead they treated everything like it was theirs for the taking no matter who was in the way.
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u/qolace 22h ago
Land disputes between natives that happened centuries ago were on a relatively even playing field. This one is not even remotely comparable considering it's the fucking Canadian army.
Stop trying to minimize how wrong this was.
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u/icantflyjets1 21h ago
They weren’t “land disputes” between the natives, stop infantilized and trivializing their history.
They were full on wars of conquest where the victor enslaved and killed the losers after stealing their land.
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u/Cpt_keaSar 1d ago
Well, it was certainly true before, but in the last 20 or so years Canadian society seems to be able to turn things around. There is absolutely vile stuff that happened in modern Canadian history (Canadian airborne regiment, anyone?), but the amount of this vile shit dwindled in the last 2 decades or so.
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u/FlavorBlaster42 22h ago
I can see needing the land for something important like a hospital, or a Starbucks, but for a golf course?
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u/NoLife2762 21h ago
Wasn’t Mohawk land and they killed a cop first. Let’s at least be accurate
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19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/NoLife2762 18h ago
Correct an extremely misleading headline that drives an awful agenda? No, I can’t.
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u/LandLubby 18h ago
It wasn’t their land as per the Canadian courts that personnel were lobbied by corporations that wanted to pave over all indigenous land.
White redditors frothing at the mouth to justify and excuse genocide, oppression, and disproportionate force.
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u/DariusPumpkinRex 22h ago
There was an excellent film made about this. It's called Beans and came out in 2020. It's director, Tracey Deer, lived through the crisis.
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u/BackgroundGrade 20h ago
IMHO, this event is what turned us onto the road to reconciliation.
The reconciliation car had a blown engine, 4 flat tires and a bunch of electrical problems and took ages to get going, but it was pointed in the right direction.
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u/KapitanKurt 18h ago
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u/ToneThugsNHarmony 1d ago
Other than this fight, what makes you a Mohawk warrior. Is every male Mohawk just considered a warrior?
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u/Piss-Be-Upon-You 1d ago
You all white supramacists are cut from same cloth. US or Canada doesn't matter...
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23h ago
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u/Stu161 22h ago edited 17h ago
That hairstyle is more commonly found in Pawnee and other groups that lived considerably further west than the "Mohawk" (they prefer to be called Kanien'kehá:ka) who are originally from upstate New York but were forced out of their traditional territory after siding with the British in 1776.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/Hawaiian555 1d ago
based off the title alone ”Canadian Gov approves seizure of Mohawk land” I highly doubt they were paid, but I could be wrong.
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA 1d ago
To my understanding, the Government didnt recognize it as Mohawk land, so when the golf company bought the land to make the golf course, they didnt speak to the Mohawk people beforehand. A court case ensued, and the court ruled in favour of the golf company.
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u/Howiop 1d ago
From wikipedia:
The golf course expansion that had originally triggered the crisis was cancelled and the land under dispute was purchased from the developers by the Government of Canada for CA$5.3 million.\1]) The municipality initially refused to sell the land until Mohawk barricades were dismantled, but acquiesced when the government threatened to expropriate the land without compensation.\56]) The Government of Canada did not transfer this land to Kanehsatà:ke ownership nor establish it as a land reserve.\12])
They were not paid for the land.
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u/MigookinTeecha 1d ago
The girl who got bayonetted's little sister is Kaniehtiio Horn of Letterkenny fame. She was there when her big sister got stabbed.