Historical land claim Kahnawake was created under what was known as the
Seigneurie du Sault-Saint-Louis, a territory which the French Crown granted in 1680 to the Jesuits to "protect" and "nurture" those Mohawk newly converted to Catholicism. When the seigneury was granted, the government intended the territory to be closed to European settlement. But the Jesuits assumed rights as
seigneurs of the Sault, and permitted French and other European colonists to settle there and collected their rents. The Jesuits managed the seigneury until April 1762, after the British defeated France in the
Seven Years' War and took over their territory east of the Mississippi River in New France. The new British governor,
Thomas Gage, ordered the reserve to be entirely and exclusively vested in the Mohawk, under the supervision of the
Indian Department. Despite repeated complaints by the Mohawk, many government agents continued to allow non-Native encroachment, and mismanaged the lands and rents. Surveyors were found to have modified some old maps at the expense of the Kahnawake people. From the late 1880s until the 1950s, the Mohawk were required by the government to make numerous land cessions to enable construction of railway, hydro-electric, and telephone company industrial projects along the river. As a result, Kahnawake today has only . In the late 20th century, the Mohawk Nation was pursuing land claims with the Canadian government to regain lost land. The modern claim touches the municipalities of
Saint-Constant,
Sainte-Catherine,
Saint-Mathieu,
Delson,
Candiac and
Saint-Philippe. Led by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake and the reserve's Inter-governmental Relations Team, the community has filed claims with the government of Canada. It is seeking monetary compensation NOTE: Kahnawake is not seeking financial compensation for the mismanagement of the land. Kahnawake recognizes the full extent of the 'seigneury" to be Kahnawake Mohawk Territory and is moving to reacquire its land along with financial compensation for infrastructure criscrossing the territory. and symbolic recognition of its claim.
Multi-cultural community Kahnawake was settled by a variety of historic Indigenous peoples, although the Mohawk became by far the majority. They and other tribes had a practice of adopting captives into the tribe, often to replace people lost to illness or warfare. They generally chose to adopt young women and children taken in raids, as these were believed to be more amenable to assimilation. Individual families adopted such captives, and made them full members of their clan and tribe. The practice preceded European encounter, but later some European captives were also assimilated as Mohawk. The Mohawk had a
matrilineal kinship system, with children considered born into the
clan of the mother and deriving their status from her family. There was some European settlement after the reserve land was "donated" by the
French Crown in the mid-17th century. The French government stationed
French colonial troops there (who formed liaisons with local women and had children by them). Shopkeepers also formed families, and through the 18th century, many marriages occurred between European men and Indian women. Multiracial children born to Mohawk mothers were readily assimilated into the mother's family, clan, and nation. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the English and French were competing in North America and in Europe. Together with allied First Nations or Native American tribes, they conducted raids along the undefined border between the territories of New France and New England. Captives were sometimes held for ransom, and European families and communities worked to buy them back. In some cases, families of the Indigenous communities kept captives for adoption. For instance, more than 100 captives were taken during the 1704
Raid on Deerfield; they were forced overland to Montreal and Kahnawake. The minister of Deerfield was ransomed, but his teenage daughter was kept by a Mohawk family. She ultimately married a Mohawk man and had a family with him, choosing to stay with her new family rather than return to Deerfield. As a result of this history, many Kahnawake people have been of mixed ancestry but identify as Mohawk. Backgrounds may include ancestry of other Iroquois tribes, such as the
Oneida,
Onondaga,
Cayuga,
Seneca, and Tuscarora; and/or French, English, Anglo-American, Scots and Irish. At times there has been more tension about the relations of full-blood and mixed-race members of the tribe, both in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In other areas of Canada, particularly the
Red River region in the west,
Métis descendants of European trappers and Indigenous women, gradually developed what has become a separate, recognized ethnic group, based on a distinct hunting and trading culture.
Kahnawake surnames, such as Beauvais, D'Ailleboust, de La Ronde Thibaudière, Delisle, de Lorimier, Giasson, Johnson, Mailloux, McComber, McGregor, Montour, Phillips, Rice, Stacey, Tarbell, and Williams, represent the evidence of tribal members' adoption of and intermarriage with non-Natives. Tarbell ancestors, for instance, were John and Zachary, brothers captured as young children from
Groton, Massachusetts in 1707 during
Queen Anne's War and taken to Canada. Adopted by Mohawk families in Kahnawake, the boys became assimilated: they were baptized as Catholic and renamed, learned the Mohawk ways and were also given Mohawk names, married women who were daughters of chiefs, reared children with them, and became chiefs themselves. (Major de Lorimier), sketch, c. 1810. Historic sources document the sometimes strained relations between Mohawk and ethnic Europeans at Kahnawake, usually over property and competition for limited resources. In 1722, community residents objected to the garrison of French soldiers because they feared it would cause "horrible discord" and showed the French did not trust the locals. In the mid-1720s, the community evicted the Desaulnier sisters, traders who were garnering profits formerly earned by members of Kahnawake. In 1771, twenty-two Mohawk pressed British officials to help them prevent two local families from bringing French families to settle "on lands reserved for their common use". In 1812, many were opposed to specific types of "mixed" marriages. In 1822, Nicolas Doucet, an
agent of the British Indian Department reported that the community was growing frustrated by marriages in which white husbands acquired rights over the lives and properties of their Mohawk wives according to British Canadian laws. This was in opposition to Iroquois culture, which had a matrilineal kinship system, with descent and property invested in the maternal line. Abuse of alcohol was a continuing problem. In 1828, the village expelled white traders who were "poisoning" the Iroquois "with rum and spirituous liquors". Tensions rose at the time of the 1837-38 Lower Canada Rebellion. The Mohawk had suffered incursions on their land, including non-Natives' taking valuable firewood. The Kahnawake cooperated with the British Crown against the
Patriotes, largely over the issue of preserving their land and expressing their collective identity. Before and after the Rebellions, the community was fiercely divided regarding the rights of mixed-race residents, such as Antoine-Georges de Lorimier (the son of
Claude-Nicolas-Guillaume de Lorimier), and whether he should be evicted. Although his mother was Mohawk and native to Kahnawake, because of his father's and his own connections to the European community, Georges de Lorimier became a controversial figure in Kahnawake, even after his death in 1863. The inequalities in landownership among Kahnawake residents led to resentment of the wealthy. For instance, in 1884, the multiracial sons of the late Georges de Lorimier were the largest and wealthiest landowners in the community. Some Kahnawake residents questioned whether people who were not full-blood Mohawk should be allowed to own so much land. The Mohawk Council asked members of the Giasson, Deblois, Meloche, Lafleur, Plante and de Lorimier families to leave, as all were of partial European ancestry. Some, like the de Lorimier brothers, gradually sold their properties and pursued their lives elsewhere. Others, such as
Charles Gédéon Giasson, were finally given permanent status at the reserve. Because the Indian Department did not provide adequate support to the reserve, the community continued to struggle financially. At one point, the Kahnawake chiefs suggested selling the reserve to raise money for
annuities for the tribe. Social unrest increased, with young men attacking houses, barns and farm animals of people they resented. In May 1878 an arson fire killed Osias Meloche, the husband of Charlotte-Louise Giasson (daughter of Charles Gédéon Giasson, noted above), and their home and barn were destroyed. Under the Walbank Survey, the national government surveyed and subdivided the land of the reserve, allotting some plots individually to each head of household eligible to live in Kahnawake. The violence stopped as the new form of privatisation of land was instituted, but antagonism toward some community members did not. The small community was devastated by the loss of so many men. They erected crosses of steel girders at both ends of the reserve to honour them. Many Kahnawake ironworkers went to New York City to work during the first half of the 20th century. Its building boom stimulated construction of notable skyscrapers and bridges. For more than a generation, many Kahnawake men participated in building the
Empire State Building, and other major skyscrapers in New York City, as well as many bridges. They brought their families with them, and most Mohawk from Kahnawake lived in Brooklyn. They called their neighbourhood "Little Caughnawaga" after their homeland. While the men worked on skyscrapers, the women created a strong community for their families. Many also worked outside the home. In the summers, the families would return to Kahnawake to stay with relatives and renew connections. Some of the people who grew up in Brooklyn as children still have the local New York accent, although they have long lived in Kahnawake.
Late 20th century to present The elected
Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) have generally established predominance in governing the reserve. This elected government is the only body with which the Canadian government will deal. The MCK said that its policy was to preserve the people's cultural identity. In the 21st century, they did not want non-Natives living at the reserve, even if a person had adopted the Mohawk language or culture. The policy is based on a 1981 community moratorium on non-Native residency, which Kahnawake enacted into law in 1984. All couples who had a non-Mohawk partner were sent eviction notices regardless of how long they had lived on the reserve. The eviction resolution, endorsed by all 12 chiefs of the MCK, caused an uproar within and beyond the community, attracting national press attention. Steve Bonspiel, publisher and editor of Kahnawake newspaper
The Eastern Door, said that the issue dated back to 1973. At that time, when non-Native people with no ties in the community were asked to leave, they were harassed and even physically attacked. Bonspiel thought the council's 2010 threat to publish the names of people ineligible to live on the reserve was inappropriate as a means to use public pressure and potentially physical threat against them. Coverage of this issue by the
Eastern Door that year resulted in the council reversing their decision. The
Federal Indian Affairs Minister
Chuck Strahl said there was nothing illegal about the band's eviction of non-members:
Ellen Gabriel, the head of the Quebec Native Women's Association and a Mohawk resident at
Kanesatake, criticized the MCK. She said their actions did not represent the traditional inclusiveness of Mohawk communities, which had historically assimilated adoptees and marriage partners. She criticized the council for interfering in the private lives of persons who had chosen non-Native partners. She noted the Mohawk had long been successful at integrating people within their communities, and have still preserved their language and culture over the centuries.
Restorative justice Before European contact, the Iroquois Confederacy (
Haudenosaunee) had a long tradition of justice administered within the clan and council system. The clan would govern the behaviour of clan members, and conflict between members of clans would be settled by consensus of the council. Clan mothers as well as chiefs had roles in this system. The goal was to quickly
restore peace to the community and control behaviour that threatened it. The system was based on the four principles of reason, persuasion, satisfaction and compensation, with both wrongdoer and victim as part of the process. It was intended to achieve "[d]ue compensation and condolence, and a promise of agreement" between the parties. Many at Kahnawake and other First Nations communities believe their people are not being well served by the
Canadian justice system. First Nations people are over-represented in it and in prisons. They believe this is in part due to the imposition of the Canadian justice system on traditional ways, by which the government has tried to assimilate the First Nations into European-based culture. The Canadian government has gradually favoured "indigenization" of the system. Kahnawake used section 107 of the Indian Act to nominate community members as
justices of the peace, and in 1974 Justice Sharron was appointed as the first justice of the peace at the reserve. Many of the cases have dealt with traffic and parking violations, but her scope is wider, as the JP has jurisdiction over Criminal Code offences related to the following four areas: cruelty to animals, common assault, breaking and entering, and vagrancy. The
Kanien’kehá:ka wanted further improvements. Since 2000, Kahnawake has started to reintroduce ''Skenn:en A'onsonton'' (to become peaceful again), the traditional justice system of the Iroquois. It wanted to create an
alternative dispute resolution process, as developed by the First Nation, or "reintroduced" according to its principles. The Justice Committee of the MCK and representatives of the Longhouse jointly presented the initiative to the community. Based on wrongdoing that has taken place within the geographic area of Kahnawke, the system is intended for use before any arrest of an affected party under the Canadian system. It has procedures to be used by the victim and offender, and their supporters. With assistance by trained facilitators to resolve issues, the process is intended to restore peace and harmony, rather than to be an adversarial process. In contrast to the Canadian system of adversarial justice it, The initiative has challenges, for instance, gaining the support of Peacekeepers and community members who may not be familiar with these traditional cultural principles. But, it is an important means of re-education into principles that offer an alternative to the current Canadian system, and helps build a future especially for the young people of the community. ==Geography==