Stories by Steve Bonspiel

At the Siege of Kanehsatake commemoration event in Tiohtià:ke last year, this saying was shared: “You can break one arrow very easily, but if you take a bunch of arrows, you cannot break them.”

Wáhta season, the time when maple sap flows. It carries powerful cultural significance, and has nourished Kanien’kehá:ka since time immemorial. It heals, it calls for ceremony and thanksgiving.

If we offer you two knocks in the arm, and you ask for none, then naturally one is a good compromise, right?

And just like that, with no pomp, no fanfare, not even a press release, the Chateauguay oil spill lawsuit is no more.

Everything I write about is through the lens of a grizzled veteran reporter/editor who has seen far too much.

Okwire’shòn:’a. The trees. They’re mentioned in our old ways of giving thanks because they are that important. They help us breathe cleaner air, they add beauty to our landscape, they protect us from wind and from other people, yet they are so often forgotten these days, most notably with the latest fiasco - Hydro Quebec giving out the contract to cut a ton of them and clear space for their lines.

So much for transparency.

That’s the feedback, quite loudly, from many corners of the community, especially on social media, about the hush-hush Dean Montour settlement last week.

It’s been 24 years already, a generation, two decades: a lifetime.

It’s the most exciting time for parents, the old joke goes, because your children are back in school.

The recent grotesque unveiling on social media of an account that victimized local women, including minors, blew up into the public sphere after the community stood up and said enough was enough.