Several of the state and corporate officials responsible for creating the current crisis in Kanehsatake are doing business in downtown Montréal. People of Montréal are encouraged to take action to expose these institutions for what they are--the pillars of empire, at home and abroad, guilty of genocide, theft, mass disinformation and illegal occupation. Their role in Kanehsatake has been monumental, and is a clear perpetuation of Canada's ongoing war against Indigenous Nations. It is time to take the fight to the doorsteps of these criminals and to demand Canadian decolonization now!

Hands Off Kanehsatake!

NO JUSTICE ON STOLEN LAND

July 1st, 2004

For the past 6 months, since January 12th, 2004, the Peoples of Kanehsatake have successfully resisted a federally sponsored, politically-motivated invasion of their community. They have put their lives and freedom on the line in order to stop the formation of a police-state headed by Grand Chief James Gabriel, whose leadership itself was imposed through a federal court injunction. Twenty-four Kanehsatake community members face charges of participation in a riot and forcible confinement of police officers, yet the threat of prison has not deterred their resistance. The struggle for self-determination in Kanehsatake is far from over and the Mohawk community is asking for our support.

Several of the state and corporate officials responsible for creating the current crisis in Kanehsatake are doing business in downtown Montréal. People of Montréal are encouraged to take action to expose these institutions for what they are--the pillars of empire, at home and abroad, guilty of genocide, theft, mass disinformation and illegal occupation. Their role in Kanehsatake has been monumental, and is a clear perpetuation of Canada's ongoing war against Indigenous Nations. It is time to take the fight to the doorsteps of these criminals and to demand Canadian decolonization now!

Jean Charest
Prime Minister of Québec
770 Sherbrooke West, 4th floor, tel:(514) 873 3411
The Liberal government of Jean Charest has been in power for over a year, pushing their agenda of cuts down our throats. We have seen the passage of laws that will radically change our access to social service and the general working conditions in Québec. The Charest gang has demonstrated, better than anyone else, that governments will bend over backwards to please their rich buddies. These vultures will profit from the income tax cuts and will stuff their pockets with the privatization of public services, the attacks against unionized workers, and the many subsidies allotted to companies. And under the Charest government we have seen a cranking up of the attack on Native sovereignty and self-determination.
The "re-engineering of the state" is neoliberalism by another name--it is the same policy being practiced in B.B. by Gordon Campbell's liberals and by the Mike Harris conservatives in Ontario (now replaced by the McGuinty liberals). Eliminating Native sovereignty is a cornerstone of this policy, and it has led to violent confrontations across the country. What is happening right now in Kanehsatake is not about crime or cigarettes, it's about a government policy to steal Native land, and it's a policy that comes from the top! We must tell Charest: hands off Kanehsatake!

Jacques Chagnon
Québec Public Security Minister
393 St-Jacques, Office 410, Tel (514) 873-2112, e-mail mini...@msp.gouv.qc.ca
Jacques Chagnon has repeatedly legitimized James Gabriel as "the sole legitimate authority in Kanehsatake." From the secretive signing of the new Tripartite Policing Agreement, which brings Kanehsatake under Québec jurisdiction, to the (illegal) imposition of banishment conditions on Kanehsatake community members facing charges for peaceful protest, to the offering of an SQ/RCMP-backed operation to establish "security" in Kanehsatake, Chagnon has more often than not been eager to support James Gabriel's attempt at creating a police state.
What's more, Chagnon has not been hesitant to express his bigoted and racist views of Aboriginal peoples. "I don't think it's a secret to anyone that in Aboriginal societies and in Kanehsatake society, there is a level of violence that is not found elsewhere," commented Chagnon in a recent session of the provincial legislature. He continued by saying that Kanehsatake is a "much more violent community than the rest of society." These comments were met with a slew of demands for Chagnon's resignation, which he unfortunately did not heed.

Gazette
1010 Ste-Catherine St. West, Suite 200, Tel: (514) 98702222, e-mail lett...@thegazette.canwest.com
The Gazette, along with other major Canadian news organizations, has continually described those opposed to James Gabriel's autocratic reign as members of "organized crime," referring to the community as a "hornet's nest" of "thugs" and "criminals." By arguing that Kanehsatake is plagued by "organized crime," the media has not only undermined the Mohawk Nation's traditional right to produces and sell tobacco, but also given James Gabriel and the Canadian and Québecois governments a blank slate to justify their repressive armed intervention in the community's sovereign affairs. The local media has set up a scenario of Kanehsatake as a "divided community" doomed with never-ending problems, thus allowing outsiders such as the federal and provincial government to wring their hands of any responsibility in the current governance and financial crisis of Kanehsatake. The racist articles that have come out in the local media argue that the community can't take care of its own affairs and needs external intervention, despite the well-known fact that any armed invasion of the community could lead to a blood-bath. Journalists have fallen into the easy stereotypes created during the so-called "Oka crisis" and fail to ask any questions as to how Kanehsatake's contemporary governance and financial crisis emerged (e.g. Gabriel's mismanagement and corruption) as well as to the role of the Canadian and Québecois governments in this current crisis.

Niocan
2000 Peel Street, Suite 760, Tel:(514) 288-8506, e-mail i...@niocan.com
Niocan, a Québec-based mining corporation, has proposed opening an underground niobium mine in Kanehsatake. James Gabriel is in favor of the project, despite community outcry. The mine has been exempt from environmental assessment because its projected production falls short of the levels for automatic inclusion. Says MiningWatch Canada: "The mine will have an impact on over 25 square kilometers of land in a dynamic agricultural area, which markets directly from the farms to the population of Montréal. This area includes the traditional territory of the Mohawks of Kanehsatake. Isotopes of radium and polonium exist in elevated concentrations in the ore body that Niocan proposes to mine. These and other radioactive materials...will be left behind in the large volumes of radioactive wastes left over from the mining operations in slag and tailings. It is intended to use water from the processing to water farmers fields. The Environmental Impact Study done for Niocan did not include any expertise on radioactivity, nor does the company have any management plan for dealing with these radiological effects." The collusion of corporate and political interests in Kanehsatake couldn't be more apparent.

Eric Maldoff
Senior Partner at Heenan Blaikie Law Firm
1250 Rene-Levesque, Suite 3500, Tel: (514) 846-2249, e-mail emal...@heenan.ca
Eric Maldoff was told in 1990 to "take Oka off the front pages" when he was appointed federal negotiator with the Mohawks to resolve the Oka Crisis. Maldoff won the Deputy Minister's Outstanding Achievement Award (1996-1997) for negotiating Kanehsatake's Tripartite Interim Policing Agreement which was signed December 18, 1996. In 2001, Maldoff was the primary architect and negotiator for Bill S024, the Kanehsatake Interim Land Based Governance Act, a deal the majority of the community were against and that municipalized Kanehsatake. Eric Maldoff is Canada's velvet glove on the iron fist of colonial dispossession.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers
1250 Rene-Levesque, Suite 2800, Tel: (514) 205-5000
Despite repeated requests from community members for impartial investigation into the Grand Chief's financial mismanagement, nothing was done until it was too late. DIAND (Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development) ordered Kanehsatake under financial trusteeship because legal fees on Gabriel's behalf had caused the deficit to increase by 1.8 million dollars. The Department of Indian Affairs turned over Kanehsatake's finance to accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers at a cost of $208,000, nearly half of the Band Office's annual budget. Pricewaterhouse Coopers ignores the approved budget for the community, and releases Kanehsatake's funds only on Gabriel's approval, resulting in further cuts to social programs.

Communications & Stratégie
417 St-Nicholas, Suite 100, Tel: (514) 844-1678
This past December 2003, Andy Mitchell took over the Indian Affairs Minister portfolio and was handed briefing notes from the feds urging less press on Native issues. "Aboriginal issues are traditionally a low priority for the Canadian public," the notes say, "unless the media forces public attention on them." The notes blame the media's focus on "flashpoints...conflict, accountability and the persistence of poor socio-economic conditions among aboriginal people" for derailing the objectives of the Department and tarnishing its image.
Communications & Stratégie are the specialists who've been hired to ensure Canada can maintain its ongoing colonisation against Indigenous peoples while keeping its image squeaky clean. Working for the likes of Abitibi Consolidated, the municipality of Oka, Industry Canada and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Communications & Stratégie justify Canada's globalization agenda--which requires a "final solution" to Canada's "Indian problem" in order to open land and resources to exploitation by major corporations--by keeping Canada's dealings with Indigenous Nations out of the press.
Now Communications & Stratégie manage James Gabriel's PR, and they have successfully distracted media attention from the core issues in Kanehsatake--such as a Canadian imposed "Grand Chief," a Canadian-sponsored coup of the police force, the municipalization of their Nation, and attempts to open a niobium mine--by calling the conflict an internal matter between crime-fighting Grand Chief and organized crime. It is estimated that Communications & Stratégie have been paid $3 million so far to avoid the derailment of Canada's objective to extinguish Indigenous rights and title.

Donations of non-perishable foods and money for the Kanehsatake Legal Defense Fund are needed.
For more information, email i...@resist.ca or call (514) 398-7432