Community responds to robbery

Community members are calling for more security to be implemented in Kahnawake, following the robbery of an elder in broad daylight this week.

Merrick Goodleaf, 87, was in his front yard at his home on Mohawk Trail around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, at the time of the incident, and had the chain he was wearing stolen from around his neck by the thieves.

“He’s shaken up, the entire family is shaken up,” said Goodleaf’s grandson, Tehosterihens Deer.

A camera facing the road from Goodleaf’s home captured the incident, and Deer said that he was able to see the thieves, who were in a white car, drive past the house initially, before slowly reversing back up the street and stop at the house.

An individual can be seen getting out of the car and approaching Goodleaf - according to Deer, that individual was a woman, wearing a head covering and long black dress. She told Goodleaf that she needed him to pray with her for a family member with cancer, and put what appeared to be a necklace of “prayer beads” around his neck.

She then removed the beads and the chain that Goodleaf had been wearing, stealing his necklace and returning immediately to the car, which Deer said was being driven by a man. There were potentially one to two other individuals in the backseat.

Deer added that the woman had also tried to hold Goodleaf’s hand in a perceived attempt to grab the ring he was wearing from his finger, but he jolted away.

“This is about community safety. Jewellery can be replaced, but he can’t be,” Deer said. “He’s okay, he’s healthy, he’s tough…but at his own home in his own community, it’s a place where he expected to feel safe and have a sense of privacy and comfort, and that’s clearly gone.”

The Kahnawake Peacekeepers said they were investigating the incident in a press release on Wednesday and appealed to community members to stay vigilant.

On Thursday morning, a group of community members gathered at the entrance to Mohawk Trail, stopping non-local cars to ensure they were meant to be in the territory, in response to the incident.

Non-locals were generally compliant, with most coming for deliveries or to pick up community members who had called for transportation, with at least one car turned around and advised to use a different route.

Community member Iotsitsanien Goodleaf, who is Merrick’s niece and lives close to the entrance to Mohawk Trail, was at the gathering yesterday. She is used to seeing non-Natives come through the road, often using it as a shortcut.

She said it affects her family daily, and that she worries about her five-year-old daughter playing in the yard.

“I tell my daughter about stranger danger. I tell her to never go up to a vehicle and never to talk to anyone who might tell her to come into their car. I never leave her alone,” she said.

Iotsitsanien said she often calls the Peacekeepers to report dangerous driving and suspicious vehicles.

“We’re sick of constantly harassing the cops. This is a huge problem,” she said.

Her father, Ronald Goodleaf, has lived on Mohawk Trail his whole life, and has seen the situation worsen in recent years.

“It’s changed a lot. We get a hell of a lot more traffic, we need more speed bumps and signs put up at each entrance to the reserve,” he said.

He said he’s not opposed to implementing checkpoints again, which were previously used in the community in the aftermath of 1990.

“We’ve got to start having patrols here, having cops here stopping people,” he said. “People come in and out constantly. Sometimes I’ll be in my living room at two o’clock in the morning, and I’ll see cars going down this road. They come any time.”

Concerns were expressed to Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) chiefs at a meeting earlier this week, and MCK grand chief Cody Diabo stopped by yesterday morning’s gathering at Mohawk Trail with MCK chief Ryan Montour, who is responsible for the public safety portfolio.

“We’ve got to have multiple different approaches, it’s not going to be a one size fits all to address this,” said Diabo. “Community members can’t be everywhere all of the time, Peacekeepers can’t be everywhere all of the time, we have to find a way that we can have that complement each other.”

Montour said that he and Diabo spoke with the Public Safety unit at MCK and gave them a mandate to look into remedies to increase community safety on an urgent basis within the next two weeks.

He said that will be presented at the next community meeting and would likely include additional funding on top of the more than $3 million reserved for public safety in the Council’s most recent budget.

That would include a plan to have public safety officers, which would be distinct from Peacekeepers, to either patrol or sit at locations the borders of the community to ensure oversight of who is coming in.

“We’d need to come up with a training plan for them, because we can’t hire regular community members without training, but that’s the plan for now,” he said. “That’s a direct response to numerous incidents, not just this incident.”

He said that path could ease the burden on Peacekeepers, which he said have more than 10 open vacancies, because that kind of public safety officer wouldn’t require the same lengthy training process that Peacekeepers do.

Diabo said an approach needs to be worked out with Public Safety and with the community to ensure it’s effective.

“If somebody says, ‘I’m just going down to one of the stores,’ how do you know that for sure? People are going to say whatever to bypass traffic, and where’s the line, where do we draw it, and how do we know for sure?” Diabo said.

Blue Sky and her mother Molly feel that part of finding a path forward includes taking immediate action. They were both present at the gathering yesterday (Thursday), stopping cars to ask where they were going on Mohawk Trail.

Molly said she felt compelled to do something after hearing what happened to Merrick.

“It was heartbreaking. Our people shouldn’t have to go through that,” Molly said. “It’s not right. It happened in broad daylight, on his own property.”

Blue said that she feels the community needs to demand more for safety.

“We’re here to protect our elders, that’s what we’re doing here, and we’ve got to put a stop to it,” she said.

Marnie Jacobs, who was also part of the group who mobilized to monitor traffic yesterday, said she wants action taken to protect the community.

“Everybody is very reactive to it, but I want to see sustainable, long-term security within our community,” she said

She said everything should be considered when coming up with a plan.

“MCK talked about different strategies they’re looking into and I’m grateful for that, and I’m grateful for community members coming up with suggestions and ideas on how we can combat this together as a community,” she said.

MCK plans to present proposals for increasing community safety at the upcoming community meeting on June 24.

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