33 Years On: History Changed In The Pines
Written by Jeremy Zafran on 11 July 2023
33 years ago today, history was changed in the Pines in Kanesatake. In studio on Tetewatharen, the party line talk show today on K1037, with host Peggy Mayo Standup, Ellen Gabriel was the guest. Gabriel reminiscing about the Oka crisis and why don’t we teach our youth about what went down:
“I don’t know why, the community schools, especially the ones that are directly impacted are not teaching this and not asking the people who were there, ‘what happened,’ because I think a lot of youth have the wrong impression of what this was about. I think a lot of them think it’s about guns and weapons and it’s like, no, it started in March, we had a lot of community discussions. The women agreed when the police arrived that they would go to the front and we did, with our arms in the air to show them that we didn’t have weapons, we told them that the people are not leaving.”
Gabriel on the deception and blame that continues:
“All the games that the colonizer has played over centuries of lying to us and them blaming us for the inconvenienced motorists the inconvenienced people, in Kanesatake and I say Kanesatake, because people call it the ‘Oka Crisis’ but it’s not.”
Akwirente Deer was in Kahnawake at the time. This morning he and several of the warriors from that day, as well as others are at the Greenspace on the 132 at the foot of the Mercier Bridge to remind people of the beginning of the crisis.
