Women’s group stands up

Following the July 11 march through the Pines to mark the 35th anniversary of the Siege of Kanehsatake, members of the Ionkwatehontsénhne women’s group assembled to raise awareness about continued encroachments on their plot of protected land.

The group put up a banner at the site, which they have declared the Onen’tó:kon Preservation Spot, in a bid to protect it from cannabis stores that have razed the pine forest along Highway 344 and continue to seek expansion.

For years the group has worked to protect the site.

The land lies between AAAA and Big Chiefs, both of which have bristled at the boundary. As reported by The Eastern Door, the women’s group was incensed weeks ago to discover that Big Chiefs, owned by Joshua Gabriel, had brought excavators onto the land they designated and carried out work on the protected area, including cutting trees.

“I hope the community wakes up and realizes we don’t have a lot left,” said Kawisaiénhne Albany, one of the women behind the group.

Although Gabriel retreated from the centre of the site, he subsequently encroached on several feet of land adjacent to his store’s pavement stretching all the way to the back, where further work is being done, which he said is to put in a drainage system and finish the septic system. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “We’re not doing anything in the dark.” Gabriel said his goal is to put in a restaurant and that he wants to put a food bank there.

He claimed the trees he has cut were dead or otherwise unhealthy or unstable, but he acknowledged that the work along the pavement protrudes onto the protected site.

The women gave media interviews on the land on July 11 expressing their outrage. At the time of writing, a video posted by Albany on Facebook the same day documenting the work has been viewed 18,000 times and garnered more than 125 shares.

Albany said she believes the further work was retaliation against the group for speaking out.

“Unfortunately, at this point, it feels like it’s Mohawks versus Mohawks, which is sad to think about. We should be united as one,” she said.

She invited members of other Kanien’kehá:ka communities to participate in the fight against environmental destruction and other harms to the community that are being perpetrated by private businesses. “We need help, too. We need support, if we could have that,” she said.

“Once this is gone, realistically, we go back there, how are the trees going to look? A lot of them are already dying. You have gas here, you have casinos, you have pot stores. People are littering. It’s destroying forest. They’ve done worse to the Pines than the golf course ever did,” Albany said.

One of the organizers of the July 11 march through the Pines, Albany also expressed anger about the contrast with Gabriel’s participation in the commemoration.

“It was like a joke to see Josh, who’s doing this right now, standing right beside our trailer while we’re singing, waving the Warrior flag, while he’s destroying the land right now,” said Albany.

Although Gabriel said he understands the feelings of those who disagree with his actions, he doesn’t believe he has done anything wrong and feels that his expansion is not incongruent with the legacy of the Siege of Kanehsatake.

“You have people that stood for the land, and then you have people that stood for the trees. That’s a little bit of a conundrum, that’s what I would say we’re in,” said Gabriel, comparing the division in Kanesatake to a left-wing/right-wing or Liberal/Conservative divide. 

“There’s people that were in ‘90 who have stores, and they did cut trees and they did expand and build on the land. I don’t know,” he said.

He said the legacy means different things to different people.

“People that don’t really understand or know the full history of it, you get a different version from somebody. They get what they thought it was about, and you get other people that tell you what for them it was about. It was about keeping our land and protecting our land and keeping it for ourselves to use,” he said.

For him, the charges of hypocrisy are deeply personal.

“When my father (Leroy Gabriel) was in ‘90, after ‘90 they were telling the Warriors they were going to be there for them. My father committed suicide in ‘95,” he said, adding that his father was left to fend for himself.

“I don’t know how to answer that to the people when they ask. My father might be happy with it, who knows. My dad couldn’t even get a job, because he was a Warrior, after. There was no work here. There was nothing for the people. This is a step for me, this is a stepping stone to get something better and bigger into the community.”

He argued the businesses that have been opened in the past several years have been an economic lifeline in the community.

“You have people that are doing business, and you have people that aren’t. It’s kind of mixed like that. I’m open to suggestions on how to get everybody on the same page again,” he said.

Karonhienhawe Nicholas, one of the women behind the group, said it is not acceptable for businesses to eye the land just because it is undeveloped.

“If everybody says they can claim land and build on it, we can claim land and not build on it,” she said, referring to Big Chiefs and many of the other stores being built on community land. “There’s people that came up to us, ‘What are you going to do with it? Are you going to develop it?’ No, it doesn’t need to be developed. It needs to stay just like that. That’s the whole reason why we fought in ‘90.”

She said Gabriel has committed to not taking anything more, which Gabriel also told The Eastern Door.

“Of course, that remains to be seen. We’re watching it closely, and just because we’re not there every day doesn’t mean we’re not keeping an eye on it,” said Nicholas, adding that the group just wants it left alone.

“We will refuse and we will fight against anybody trying to develop on our little piece that we claimed to protect as the rightful land defenders, the women.

“We are the land protectors. We will refuse to allow anybody to develop our land that is not beneficial to the environment, to the ecosystem, and to that area. Leave it as it should be,” she said.

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Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter