KANESATAKE’S LONG STRUGGLE FOR LAND RIGHTS
The Kanesatake land claim has been described as “perhaps the most difficult” of any dating from before Confederation. Kanesatake is not an official reserve but a checkerboard of Crown lands, totalling 828 hectares in 1990. Here are some milestones in Kanesatake’s long struggle for land rights.
1676
Sulpician priests establish an aboriginal mission near present-day Sherbrooke St. W. and Atwater Ave.
1683
More than 200 indigenous people, including Mohawks, Algonquins and Hurons, live outside the mission walls.
1696
The mission moves to Sault-au-Récollet (present-day Ahuntsic), purportedly to remove natives from the temptations of liquor.
1716
The priests propose another move, promising that this time the aboriginals would have a large tract of land where they would never be disturbed again. King Louis XV of France grants three square leagues (52.41 square kilometres) on Lacdes-Deux-Montagnes “on condition that as soon as the Indians leave it will revert to the king.” The priests receive a smaller tract.
1717
The Sulpicians complain to the king that the costs of building a stone fort were so high, they should be granted perpetual ownership of both tracts. He agrees, but aboriginals are not told the terms have changed.
1721
The mission moves to present-day Oka.
1733and 1735
The king grants additional land to the Sulpicians, increasing the Seigneurie du lac des Deux-Montagnes to 673 square kilometres.
1763
Under the Treaty of Paris, France cedes Canada, a colony of 60,000 along the St-Lawrence River, along with vast fur-trading territories stretching to the Gulf of Mexico, to Britain. King George III issues a Royal Proclamation decreeing that Aboriginal Peoples in unsettled territories to the west of the Thirteen Colonies and Quebec “should not be molested or disturbed” in their hunting grounds.
1780
The Sulpicians start granting land in the seigneurie to white colonists.
1787
Mohawk Chief Agneetha presses his people’s claim to the land, which the Mohawks call Kanesatake, meaning “on the hillside,” with Sir John Johnson, superintendent general of Indian Affairs.
1840
The colonial government confirms the Sulpicians’ title.
1840s-70s
Aboriginals’ living conditions deteriorate as the priests restrict their right to cut wood, fine a Mohawk widow for renting out part of her farmland and confiscate a canoe built by a Mohawk for using their wood.
1854
Algonquins from Oka move to a new reserve in Maniwaki, 310 kilometres northwest of Montreal.
1867
The village is renamed Oka, supposedly after an Algonquin chief.
1868
A majority of the Mohawks in Kanesatake, led by Chief Joseph Onasakenrat, convert to Methodism.
1875
The Sulpicians demolish a Methodist Church built by the Mohawks.
1877
The Catholic church in Oka burns down; Onasakenrat and a dozen others are arrested but finally released in 1881.
1882
The federal government creates a new reserve in Gibson, Ont., for Kanesatake Mohawks, but most community members refuse to leave.
1912
The British Privy Council confirms the Sulpicians’ title.
1945
The federal government buys land in Kanesatake from the Sulpicians, but not the Commons (the Pines) because it is uninhabited.
1959
Quebec Premier Paul Sauvé passes a private member’s bill to create a nine-hole golf course on the Commons.
1975
A comprehensive land claim by Kanesatake, Kahnawake and Akwesasne to a vast swath of southern Quebec, including Oka, is rejected because the Mohawks had not occupied the land continuously since time immemorial.
1986
A specific land claim by Kanesatake to the former Seigneurie du lac des Deux-Montagnes is rejected because the Mohawks were judged never to have held title to it.
1989
Oka announces plan to expand the golf course and build condos.
March 1990
Mohawk protesters occupy the Pines.
June 30, 1990
Oka obtains an injunction ordering the barricade removed.
July 11, 1990
The Sûreté du Québec raids the Pines.
Sept. 26, 1990
The Oka Crisis ends when Mohawk protesters leave a drug-treatment centre where they had been holed up.
1990 to 2007
The federal government buys 179 properties to enlarge Kanesatake’s land base.
2010-2015
Negotiations resume on Kanesatake’s land claim to the former Deux-Montagnes seigneurie.