Settlement in Montour ouster

A confidential settlement has been reached between the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) and the former head of Mohawk Online, whose allegations of wrongful dismissal and defamation jolted the 2024 MCK elections.

Dean Montour was the chief executive of Mohawk Online, the MCK-controlled online gaming company that was once an important source of revenue generation for the community. That is, until November 2023, when he was terminated more than a year before his contract was set to expire, following a string of zero-revenue months.

In a lawsuit seeking more than $300,000, Montour alleged he was inappropriately dismissed following what he characterized as defamatory remarks about him made at a July 2023 Council meeting by current MCK grand chief, then chief, Cody Diabo. Montour alleged he learned of the comments from Council members who had been in attendance, including then-grand chief Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer.

At the time the lawsuit first came to light in The Eastern Door, Diabo and Sky-Deer were running against each other for the office of grand chief. The Eastern Door soon afterwards learned that Sky-Deer and MCK chief Ross Montour, also named in the lawsuit as having told Montour of Diabo’s alleged comments, had been secretly handed one-day suspensions within days of the story’s publication.

The demise of Mohawk Online as a money-making juggernaut also became a headline story in the election’s final days.

Dean spoke to The Eastern Door for that story, leading the MCK to countersue him for $45,000 for allegedly breaching his contract by breaking confidentiality and for allegedly defaming Council.

The defamation claim against Dean stemmed from this quote: “Mohawk Online was very successful, but it turned into a catastrophic failure because of the fact that they (MCK) interfered and intervened to basically make it fail.”

In the months following the 2024 election, the MCK announced that the exclusive deal with Entain that had once made Mohawk Online profitable had been mutually dissolved. The breakdown in the venture followed Ontario’s introduction of its iGaming regime in 2022, which required operators to pay the provincial government to participate.

The MCK had challenged Ontario iGaming in court, arguing that the province’s regulations for online gaming and single-event sports betting contradicted Canada’s Criminal Code and infringed on Kahnawake’s inherent rights.

This legal action failed, however, closing the book on a lucrative chapter in Kahnawake’s gaming history. In the years since, however, revenue from electronic gaming devices (EGDs) has grown dramatically, even as the MCK still faces a much bigger lawsuit – for $200 million – launched by Magic Palace, which had been one of two facilities with EGDs until it was shuttered following reports of alleged criminal ties.

Until it sputtered, Mohawk Online had generated more than $39 million since 2015, with $23 million going to the MCK, but at the grand chief candidates’ debate on June 24, 2024, days before Dean’s quotes on the demise of the venture were published in The Eastern Door, Sky-Deer confirmed Mohawk Online had “no future.”

While the terms of the settlement agreement with Dean Montour are confidential, a three-sentence announcement from the MCK noted that it resolves all matters between the two parties.

[email protected]

Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter