Monthly reports to end

Community members will no longer have access to monthly reports from Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) chiefs, with “low level of community interest” being given as the reason for stopping the initiative.

Out of 16 months of reporting, there has been no single month where every member of the Council table has submitted a report, with some months seeing as few as two to three chiefs participating in the initiative.

Reporting started in September 2024, with the goal of increasing transparency. Each month, MCK chiefs provided updates in a “report card” style, with information about the number of wellness and vacation days taken, as well as a list of their meetings and portfolio updates.

MCK chief Tonya Perron was the most active participant in the initiative, submitting a report for every month except for July 2025. MCK chiefs Arnold Boyer and Paul Rice were also consistent, submitting 14 reports each - Rice submitted some reports late following his medical leave in early 2025.

There were large discrepancies in the number of reports submitted by each chief over the 16 months covered by the initiative - Melanie Morrison submitted 11 reports, David Diabo submitted 12 reports, and Ross Montour submitted 10 reports, while Ryan Montour submitted six reports, as did Jeffrey Diabo.

Iohahi:io Delisle submitted four reports, with Jeremiah Johnson and Stephen McComber submitting only one report each throughout the entire 16 months - Johnson submitted his sole report for December 2024, with McComber submitting one for the very last report cycle which was released this week and covers December 2025.

MCK grand chief Cody Diabo has not submitted a report since January 2025, having submitted four reports in total.

Ryan said that he felt the reports took too much time to complete without having a large number of community members interested in reading the chiefs’ activities.

“It was kind of redundant. For me personally, it felt like patting ourselves on the back and saying, ‘Oh look, this is that I’m doing,’ because there was no traffic, people weren’t looking at it,” he said. “I just didn’t feel it was an effective tool.”

He said that he’s not opposed to updating the community about his monthly activities, but feels that other methods of communication, like community meetings and video segments on KTV, are more successful in relaying messages.

“I felt like I was campaigning every week and that’s not my job to campaign, I have a job to do,” he said, adding that the reports took about an hour and a half to compile every week between meetings.

“It’s a lot of administrative work, and it’s hard to be done by a Tuesday when we’re lost in Council meetings,” he said. “It’s a great accountability tool for people who are checking up on what the chiefs are doing, but at the same time, that can be covered in other places.”

Community member Darlene Alfred said she was disappointed to hear that the reports would no longer be happening.

“They shouldn’t cancel it, for some people that’s the only way they know who they are and what their portfolio is,” she said. “That’s still important, to try and reach out to people in any way possible.”

Kim Beauvais argued that the reports should be continued regardless of low community interest, pointing to the way reports can be used as a tool to review what MCK chiefs have been doing throughout their terms.

“It’s also about transparency for decisions being made or not being made,” she said. “Don’t underestimate the moccasin grapevine. Someone can read the report and discuss it with others.”

All 16 months’ worth of reports remain available to view on MCK’s website.

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