From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Non-Stop Harassment:
Date: 14 Apr 92 21:40:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: mont.1992Apr14.214023.3097
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: University of Missouri
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

From: PENN@MITLNS.MIT.EDU (steve penn 26-567, 253-1521 Remember Our Humanity; Science is Not Neutral; MIT War Research Kills.)

Included below is an article from the New Liberation News Service
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NLNS  Packet 2.8  -  31 March 1992
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Non-Stop Harassment:
Kahnawake Mohawks Under Police Siege

Norman Nawrocki, McGill Daily, Canadian University Press

	A schoolboy, 10, cuts his finger to dab blood on a drawing of 
his people, who are all dead. In his words, "that's what the police 
want."
	A 17-year-old grabs a broom in a fit of rage and turns his 
classroom into a mock battlefield. He machineguns invisible police 
and politicians while his classmates cry.
	A four-year-old girl in the front seat of a car routinely ducks 
her head at the sight of any police cruiser. She asks her mother if the 
police have gone so she can sit up.
	The stories go on. But these aren't children from Belfast or 
South Africa. They're from Kahnawake, the Mohawk community not 
far southwest of Montreal. They are survivors of what some natives 
call "the Canadian crisis at Oka."
	Two years after the explosive 78-day standoff over Mohawk 
land at nearby Kanesatake, the 5000 Mohawks of Kahnawake now 
live under a virtual police siege. They face unrelenting harassment 
by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Surete du 
Quebec (SQ) who patrol their territory.
	Although the community itself is a "no-go zone" for the police, 
Mohawks say the RCMP and the SQ have turned Kahnawake into a 
pressure cooker of institutionalized racism by terrorizing the 
population.
	Kenneth Deer, the editor and publisher of the Kahnawake 
community paper The Eastern Door, says the three highways that cut 
through the 25-square-mile community are "the most heavilly-
patrolled roadways anywhere in Canada, if not in North America."
	Deer says police constantly stop Mohawk vehicles for random 
roadside searches.
	"It's 'put your two hands on the wheel and don't move," says 
Deer. "The police will then ticket Mohawks for low air in the tires, for 
dim taillights, for snow on the windshield, for anything."
	Anyone who passes through the territory or stops at any 
business is a likely target. Deer says the RCMP once followed a car 
that bought gas on the reserve. They pulled over the driver and 
asked her if she knew she had bought gas from native people.
	"They asked her if she realized she could have been raped or 
robbed by the Indians," Deer says. "They didn't realize she was 
native." The RCMP has denied the story.
	In another incident, the RCMP pulled over a volunteer human 
rights observer working beside the Mohawks. When she asked for 
the officer's name, he refused.
	"But when she pulled down her visor to show him her official 
papers, he told her that he just had to give her a ticket for doing 70 
in a 70 km/h zone."
	Deer says the incident is only one of dozens of stories told 
every week by Kahnawake residents.
	But SQ spokesperson Andre Blanchette says only seven percent 
of the people stopped by police on the three highways are Mohawk. 
He could not provide the exact number of SQ officers patrolling the 
Kahnawake territory.

SCHOOL'S OUT
	Pauline Lahache, a Mohawk artist and teacher at the 200-pupil 
Kahnawake Survival School, says it takes her five minutes to drive to 
work. Every day, she sees four patrol cars in either direction.
	"Every day, no less than two or three Mohawks are pulled over 
in their cars by the RCMP or the SQ," she says. "They're parked all the 
time across from the school. Everyone, students and staff, is afraid of 
being stopped for one reason or another."
	Lahache says one Mohawk refused to give his name to the 
police when he was stopped while walking down the road.
	"He was hauled off to the police station, held over night and 
charged with assaulting a police officer," Lahache says. "He's still in 
court over it."
	Lahache says the 34 teaching staff at the school are trying to 
make the school day as normal as possible for the children. But the 
constant police presence make it hard to get their minds off what 
happened two summers ago when the Quebec called the army in 
after the SQ botched a raid on the barriers at Kanesatake. And only 
now are teachers noticing that students are experiencing the 
aftereffects of Oka.
	"Students are drawing pictures of soldiers and cops, guns, 
knives and graveyards all the time," she says. "They aren't turning to 
violence against each other, but they're angry with themselves for 
not being able to do something."
	As a mother, Lahache saw her 17-year-old son grapple with a 
Canadian soldier during one of the army's forays into Kahnawake in 
1990. She heard him yell at the soldier, "You tear-gassed my mom, 
you're trying to kill my mom."
	"In his eyes," says Lahache, "he was trying to protect me."
	In her classroom, students will sometimes break down crying, 
talking about how they are willing to die to defend their land. 
Lahache says the pressure of being the role model or "sounding 
board" for the students each day in school isn't easy.
	I'm still having a hard time myself coming to terms with what 
happened here," she says. "We, as teaching staff, are going through 
stress therapy to work it out for ourselves."


Racist Rage 
	There is also the memory of the anti-Mohawk rage that shook 
the adjacent francophone suburb of Chateauguay during the standoff. 
The Kahnawake Mohawks occupied and barricaded the Mercier 
Bridge in solidarity with the Mohawks at Kanesatake, preventing 
Chateauguay residents from getting to their jobs in Montreal.
	Mohawks were beaten up outside their territory, chased from 
local shopping malls by gangs of non-natives, and picked up and 
tortured by the SQ. Mobs tried to storm the barricades and called for 
an all-out army assault on Kahnawake.
	"The children don't understand the burning of effigies, the 
stoning of their people, of their families (by Chateauguay residents)," 
Lahache says.
	Nor could the children understand helicopters full of soldiers 
with guns ready, or military jets flying low over the community.
	Deer thinks the unrelenting police intimidation is meant to 
break Kahnawake spirit.
	"When we reported the incidents to Claude Ryan (Quebec's 
public security minister), he wouldn't believe us," Deer says. "All he 
wants is for us to take down our checkpoints."
	There are now four Mohawk checkpoints ringing the entrances 
to the village of Kahnawake. Each consists of a little wooden 
guardhouse, a concrete roadway barrier, and a handful of Mohawks 
standing guard. Hand-painted signs nearby warn, "No RCMP or SQ 
access allowed." Visitors to the village are politely asked about their 
destinations, the purpose of their visit and how long they intend to 
stay.
	Deer says the checkpoints, though symbolic, are an assertion of 
Mohawk sovereignty. "But for the Canadian government, they're a 
pain in the side."
	The police used to try to get past the checkpoints, but they 
don't often bother anymore, Deer says. Instead, they throw the 
Canadian Criminal Code or traffic laws at the Mohawks every chance 
they get.
	Meanwhile, negotiations with the government over land claims 
are at a standstill and Mohawks are on trial for the Oka crisis.
	And the police won't go away.

Just One More Night of Police Violence
Norman Nawrocki

	Her three-day-old girl in her arms, the 31-year-old mother 
was homeward bound after leaving the hospital behind. Beside her, 
at the wheel of the car, her husband was beaming at the newest 
family member.
	But what should have been a joyful occasion for Wilma Lahache 
and Phillip Deer turned into another scene of police violence.
	On the night of October 29, 1991, they were driving home to 
Kahnawake through Chateauguay when the police tried to cut off 
their car three times.
	"They'd slam on their brakes in front of us but never try to 
stop us," Lahache says. When Deer turned off the highway onto an 
exit, three cars boxed them in. An RCMP car blocked the road ahead, 
another pulled alongside and a Surete du Quebec car came up behind 
them.
	I got out of our car to ask the driver (of the SQ car) why he was 
driving like that, trying to kill us," she says. "He yelled at me, pulling 
my arm. I told him I had a baby in my arms, that I had just got out 
of the hospital. I showed him my hospital bracelet, but he kept 
yelling at me, hitting me."
	My husband yelled at him not to hit me, not to touch me or the 
baby. But the SQ officer said, "What do you expect? You're Indian."
	Lahache says he tried to hit the baby, but she moved out of the 
way and hit her in the stomach. She kicked him in the leg and ran. 
She was able to pass the baby to another woman who was by the 
roadside. She told her to take the baby to her mother's, while the 
police chased her "like a swarm of bees."
	She ran in circles, trying to get away, until they grabbed her 
and slammed her into a police car, cuffing her behind her back. Her 
husband kept yelling at them to leave her alone, as they beat him.
	Finally, she was shoved into a police car and it spun off, sirens 
wailing, the driver occasionally slamming on his brakes so she would 
lurch forward in the back seat. One of the SQ officers took his gun, 
turned around and waved it in her face, saying he'd use it on her. 
She didn't know if she'd live or die.
	"Outside the station," Lahache says, "they beat me, lifted me by 
the cuffs and left me on the ground. Then they threw me into a cell."
	"I could hear my husband pleading with them from down the 
hall, telling them I just gave birth, not to hurt me. But they didn't 
care." The police called an ambulance only after her husband 
insisted. The next day, at another hospital, doctors put a brace on her 
injured arm.
	Lahanche and Deer were both charged with assaulting a police 
officer and obstructing an officer in the line of duty. On January 6, 
after several court appearances, she and her husband were both 
tried and convicted. They were both sentenced to 15 days, "ex 
parte"--neither they nor their lawyer were present in the Longeuil 
courtroom (their lawyers had given them the wrong trial date).
	Two days later, they were jailed. After filing an appeal, both 
were released on bail. The Montreal judge said she was astonished to 
hear about the ex parte sentencing.
	Now, Lahache says she is terrified to leave her house alone. 
And since the incident, she says police stop her husband all the time. 
Once, when their car was hit in a parking lot, she decided not to 
report on it.
	"All they'd say to me is, 'What do you expect, you're Indian."

Canadian University Press can be reached at 126 York St., Suite 408, 
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 5T5; (613) 562-1799.

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