Thirty years after Oka, there’s still a crisis
Thirty years ago this week, on July 11, 1990, the Oka Crisis began. Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) land defenders engaged in a standoff, first with provincial police and later with the Canadian Armed Forces, that lasted for 78 days.
In the ensuing years, far too little has been done to address the underlying factors. The Oka Crisis was not simply a flash in the pan, but instead exists within a deeper and continuing conflict between Indigenous nations and the processes of land displacement, colonization and systemic racism. The Wet’suwet’en conflict is just one reminder of how little progress has truly been made toward reconciliation in this country.
We need only look at the state of Indigenous-crown relations to recognize that we continue to live in the midst of a crisis.
First Nations continue to grapple with outdated legislation — most notably the Indian Act — that limits our communities’ ability to exercise autonomy over our own affairs and territory. Successive governments have failed to uphold some of the most basic human rights, including access to clean drinking water and social services, let alone make the needed larger political and legal concessions.
Figures show a persistently large gap between Indigenous and non-indigenous people across a variety of socioeconomic indicators, including disproportionate rates of youth suicide, incarceration rates, income levels, education levels and access to secure food and housing.
And these aren’t just abstract numbers. They represent real people who have been consistently denied basic rights and amenities that have been made readily available to non-indigenous Canadians. These are kids who are denied access to quality education at the same level as their non-indigenous peers. These are families who aren’t even offered access to basic amenities like clean drinking water.
Given these realities alone, Canada cannot pretend that we’ve moved past a state of crisis.
Nor is the type of situation that led to the Oka Crisis a thing of the past. All too often we continue to see corporations or governments, acting for their own benefit or convenience, willing to trample the rights of Indigenous nations and communities, just as the rights of individual Indigenous people who get caught in the so-called justice system are so often disregarded.
As we grapple with the effects of colonization and systemic racism in Canada, we younger Indigenous people carry the wisdom and experiences of previous generations of Indigenous activists, including those at Oka. And, yes, the knowledge and activism captured in the weeks encompassing the Oka Crisis continue to serve as an example for younger generations of Indigenous activists, lawyers and change-makers. We see such incredible leadership from advocates like Autumn Peltier, or the land defenders of Wet’suwet’en.
And yet, as Indigenous activism grows based on the lessons of generations past, the country remains mired in much the same challenges.
If the past 30 years have shown anything, it’s that it can’t be only Indigenous youth who are willing to internalize and demonstrate the wisdom and compassion of our elders. If all of us in Canada ever, truly, expect to move past this current conflict — a conflict that is indeed a crisis that has plagued our country since Confederation — then we must be collectively willing to embrace the lessons of generations past. We cannot continue to accept a status quo in which Indigenous nations are denied their fundamental rights.
Tomas Jirousek is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai First Nation of southern Alberta. He graduated from Mcgill University this past spring as a valedictorian. He begins law school at University of Toronto in the fall.