Canada Shuns Quebec Dispute With Mohawks

The Quebec government scrambled Saturday to resolve a four-day standoff sparked by a resort town’s plans to extend a golf course onto Mohawk ancestral territory. The federal government stayed on the sidelines.

Quebec’s minister for Indian affairs, John Ciaccia, asked the Canadian government Friday to intervene in the conflict in Oka, which flared this week when provincial police stormed the Mohawks’ illegal barricades in the town of Oka. A police officer was killed in a brief gun battle Wednesday morning.

But federal Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon refused to get involved in the territorial dispute despite the unrest spreading throughout the French-speaking province.

A poll published Saturday showed that 53% of Montreal residents believe the Mohawks are right to defend their ancestral land. An overwhelming majority--87%--say the police should not attempt another confrontation.

In addition to the tense standoff between the Mohawks and police at Oka, there have been clashes between residents of a Montreal suburb and Mohawks from another reservation who have closed a bridge into the city and threatened to blow it up.

At the root of the conflict is the Oka town council’s decision last summer to expand a nine-hole golf course into a pine forest that the Mohawks say belongs to their tribe. Mohawks from the Kanesatake settlement near Oka erected barricades on the road that runs across the disputed territory.

Police stormed the barricades Wednesday but retreated after one officer was killed, leaving behind several police cruisers that the Mohawks used to build a second roadblock.

In an effort to prevent a second raid, Mohawks from the Kahnawake reserve south of Montreal blocked the Mercier Bridge and closed several roads in the adjoining Chateauguay suburb.

Although more than 1,000 police have surrounded the Mohawk stronghold at Oka, they are not expected to launch another assault.

It is unclear how many Mohawk warriors are manning the barricades.