Quebec challenges Canadian Federation CANADA туто
International Viewpoint #191 • October 1, 1990
CANADA federal state or threaten the stability of the present socio-economic system. The impression of making gains will camouflage the fact that the basic instruments of the Canadian state remain.
He wants to set up a parliamentary commission that can bring together representatives of the Quebecois establishment, entrepreneurs, financiers and political figures such as Bouchard and the leaders of the Parti Quebecois (PQ). This commission would suggest a constitutional line of action for Quebec from now until next
For Lucien Bouchard, this relationship of forces demands that all socio-political forces in Quebec fall in behind the banner of sovereignty/association. His group in the federal assembly is meant to serve as a transmission belt for this project.
The PQ, meanwhile, finds its projects threatened. After the collapse of the party's electoral base after 1980, Jacques Parizeau took over from Levesque's successor, Pierre-Marc came to power criticizing Johnson for diluting the Q's stand for independence.
wants to see a prosovereignty leadership without sacrificing the PQ's respectable image, by participating in the national unity movement. His assent to the use of the Canadian army against the armed Amerindian group, the Warriors, is the clearest proof of this.
Sovereignty and national
The thinking in these circles is that the establishment of a strong pro-nationalist relationship of forces will give these political forces a valuable means of influence at the federal level, enabling the realization of sovereignty without turmoil. In terms of such a strategy, the establishment of a sovereign Quebec does not imply the national liberation of the Quebecois people. The idea is to reinforce Quebec's position within North American capitalism. The free trade agreement with the US, adopted last year by the federal parliament, has the unanimous support of the Quebecois political leaders, including Bourassa, Parizeau and Bouchard.
In reality, however, the dismantling of the Canadian state requires a clear and definitive break. The other options will lead back into the shifting sands of negotiations over a new statute. A unilateral declaration of independence is the only way for Quebec to enter onto the path to its liberation. Lithuania is already being cited as an example and a warning, although the pro-federalist forces are sure to point up the differences between Quebec and the Baltic States. Finally, complete independence raises the question of the social nature of a sovereign Quebec.
In May and June two union confederations in Quebec, the Teachers Federation 20 Trade Unions (CS), Confederation o
), adopted the per spective of independence for Quebec. Simply giving form to a widespread sentiment among the unions' membership, these resolutions were adopted almost without debate. This may seem surprising given these same organizations refused to take a clear position on the referendum. But times have
With its explicit support for the PQ and. with its overall social-democratic tradition in electoral terms, the position of the Federation of Quebec Workers (FTQ), affiliated to the Canadian Labor Congress independence. However, although the FTQ came out for a "yes" vote in the referendum, its positions remain compatible with a new statute negotiated within the
The positions of the three union federations are important milestones in the development of an independent workers' movement, whose absence weighs heavily in Quebec. The unions are steering clear of partisan political action, but after taking these pro-independence positions, the question of a political alternative is on Union support for bourgeois candidacy
The CSN's Gilles Duceppe stood on Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois ticket in a by-election on August 12. The union centrals gave their support to Duceppe's candidacy, which thus enjoyed a very wide political base. It included youth from the federal Liberal Party breaking with a centralist concept of the federation, the local deputies from the provincial Liberal Party well as city councillors, the official support of the PQ, different nationalist groups and the New Democratic Party of Quebec (NPD-Q), a formation consisting of Quebecois Socialists and Democrats who had split from the federal NPD. Nonetheless, the union movement cannot count on the leaders of the national movement to promote its social goals.
While Bouchard's group does not have party discipline he himself has supported recriminalization of abortion, the introduction of the indirect Tax on Products and Services (TPS), and the trade agreement with the Americans. The stand takcentrals provides a starting point for a discussion on an alternative to Bouchard's line. There is a long
To advance towards a political alternative, the union movement must start to challenge the total control by the bourgeois political parties over the national struggle. The unions have the possibility to increase their weight in the national movement. But it remains the case that the workers' movement cannot fully take the lead in the national struggle without its own independent political party. *
Native
Americans confront the state
IN SCENES horribly reminiscent of the massacres of native peoples by wnite armies in the 18th century, the
Canadian armed forces employed more than 3,000 soldiers and over 350 armored vehicles in early
September to occupy the whole of the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake on the south bank of the St.
Lawrence river, less than ten kilometers from
Montreal. They also surrounded the last twenty armed resisters and a hundred other Native
Americans on the Mohawk reserve of Kanesatake, 20 kilometers north west of
Montreal.
MICHEL LAFITTE
T
HE ONLY Mohawk territories that are not occupied either by the Sureté de Quebec (SQ - the
Quebecois police force) or the
Canadian army are the hunting grounds of
Donnacona, 50 kilometers north of Montreal. But 95% of the Mohawks of Quebec2 live in the occupied areas.
The current crisis is only the culmination of several centuries of attempted genall the regimes of European origin in the Americas, and of active or passive resistance from the native peo-
For several years, the Conservative federal government of Brian Mulroney has been slashing public expenditure. Native peoples have been among the foremost victims of this policy — cuts in subsidies for health and social welfare, reduction of the personnel of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, cuts in the money
October 1, 1990 • #191 International Viewpoint allocated to post secondary education for native peoples, and so on. The response of the native peoples has been very varied, ranging from rallies and demonstrations to occupations and lawsuits.
The question of land rights also remains very central to the concerns of native peoples. The events of this summer were sparked off by a police attack on July 11 on a barricade erected by Mohawks on the reserve at Kanesatake. The thousand Mohawks of the area were attempting to stop the municipality of Oka from transferring land that they have claimed for over 150 years to a private
The historic reserve, as well as the only virgin pine forest to survive in the region, are also found on these lands. No (municipal, provincial or negotiate. Only some ecologists, concerned about the forest, had given their support to the Mohawks. It seemed to be a minor conflict. But small conflicts become big when they take on the character of a symbolic and exemplary strug-
On July 10, the mayor of Oka asked the SQ to implement a judicial injunction
Mohawks to dismantle their barricades on the roads and railways which cross the reserve and the municipality of Oka. The Mohawk community strengthened the barricades and about 15 armed members of the paramilitary group, reserve, joined the community.
On July 11, over 100 SQ agents the barricades using assault rifles, concussion grenades and tear gas. In the shooting that followed, an SQ corporal was killed, in circumstances which remain unclear. The SQ, which has accustomed over the past ten years to brutalizing native peoples, encircled the reserve and stopped the entry of
In solidarity, members of the community of Kahnawake, protected by armed warriors, established barricades around the reserve to the south west of Montreal and cut all access to the Mercier bridge across the St. Lawrence river. They threatened to blow up this bridge (one of five which give access to Montreal from the south bank) if the SQ attacked the Kanesatake community again. The SQ immediately encircled the Kahnawake reserve with their own barricades, depriving the 7,000 permanent inhabitants reserve of supplies and medicine. Some
2,000 armed policemen surrounded the two reserves until the entry into action of the Canadian armed forces on August 29.
On July 12, the minister of Indian Affairs in Quebec, John Ciaccia, agreed to negotiate at Kanesatake. The subsequent negotiations have been disrupted by the repeated refusal of the provincial government and, later, the federal government, to discuss any thing other than the lifting of the barricades and the unconditional surrender of the armed natives. The federal government offered to buy the lands of the Oka gulf club, but this was to be done with funds already allocated for the reserve.
Propaganda campaign and racist mobs
The mass media exploded in denunciation of the Mohawk "terrorists". The general sympathy among the Quebecois population for the Mohawks began to erode under the tide of anti-Mohawk declarations coming from all the bourgeois politicians and virtually all the media. A phenomenon new to Quebec emerged — angry racist mobs, led to a large extent by former policemen of the SQ and heavily 1. The Canadian armed forces consist of a small number of professional soldiers (40,000), equipped and trained primanly for counter-insurrectionary struggle. Only the Israeli army has a higher ratio of officers and non-commissioned officers to ordinary soldiers and a higher ratio of mobile arms. 2. There are between 80,000 and 100,000 people in Quebec who identify themselves as being of native origin, out of a total population of 6,500,000
French speakers constitute 80% of the population and English speakers 8%. Other ethnic groups, of recent immigrant origin, are for the most part integrated into the still dominant anglophone community. 3. In 1608, Samuel de Champlain, the leader of the
1608 and 1667, there were three wars between the French colonists and their native allies and the Iroquois (in this case their Mohawk compo-
CANADA infiltrated by previously marginal far right groups. But it was the "anti-terrorist" declarations of Mulroney and Quebec premier Robert Bourassa which legitimized the racist mobilizations.
As for the leader of the Parti Quebecois party in Quebec),
(the main nationalist
Jacques Parizeau, his denunciation of the
"weakness" of the Bourassa government has only opened the road to the xenophobic nationalist sects.
The frustrations of proindependence Quebecois have thus been channelled into traditional ultra
Catholic and ultraanglophobe themes. Slohave gans appeared against "the new Anglo-
Iroquois alliance"*3
The roots of the current crisis can be found in the history of the native nations and their relations with white Canada
Nobody knows the size of the native population of
North America before the first European colonists arrived at the beginning of the 17th century. Onc thing is certain - it was very much bigger than traditional white historiography has maintained. Some there were at least a million people speaking Iroquoian (farmers, unlike many other before the arrival of diseases transmitted by the Europeans. The demographic and social impact of the epidemics which raged in the course of the 16th century was enormous.
After an initial period of collaboration.
the native peoples began to resist the genocidal incursions of the colonists and the
Dutch and armies. One of the first groups to lead this resistance in the north east of the continent was the Iroquois confederacy. And the Iroquois nation which was located the furthest to the east and bore the brunt of the European attacks was the Mohawk
150 years before the establishment of nent). In these wars, the Iroquois accepted arms first from the Dutch and then from the British. In the course of the wars, the Iroquois won several victories against the French colonists
These are characterized by official historiography as anti-French massacres. During the conquest by the Iro quois of territories controlled by the Hurons (Wendats)
allies of the French, three French Jesuit missionaries were killed, becoming the "holy Canadian martyrs" of
Catholic hagiography.
From 1667 onwards, there was a peace treaty between the French, the Iroquois and the Hurons and it was at this time that the reserve of Kahnawake was established.
4. The term "tribe" is completely chauvinist — as the
African film maker and author, Ousmane Sembène, has ironically put it, "is it not obvious that 14 million Hau-
21 sas are only a tribe whereas 200,000 Icelanders constitute a nation?".
International Viewpoint #191 • October 1, 1990
CANADA the first European colonies, around 1450, five people-nations which spoke variants of the same language, and which occupied all the north of what is now New York state, united. This union of the Mohawks, the Onondogas, the Oneidas, the Cayugas and the Senecas called itself, and still does, "Haudenosaunee" or the Confederacy of the Long House. The European invaders called them the Iroquois, and the school books and in the hagiography of the "holy Canadian martyrs" of the Catholic church3 testify to the power and tenaci-
The structure of this confederacy was complex, combining the broadest unity with the minimum of coercion. Each nation was divided into an equal number of matrilinear clans. Each clan of each nation had the right to a certain number of representatives to the Confederacy Council, who interpreted and applied the Great Constituent Law. These representatives (who the whites called "chiefs" although they were not military chiefs, the latter being named only provisionally, for the duration of a struggle) were named by the matriarchs (the Mothers) of the clans. The biggest and strongest nations on the military plane (the Mohawks in the east and the Senecas in the west) had less representatives than the others to block any desire for domination. The goal was a consciously chosen unity. Without complete consensus, nobody could pretend to act in the name of the Confederacy. Native peoples divided during
Revolution
This structure, at once centralized and democratic, made the Haudenosaunee the most powerful native people of the north east of North America. At the time of the American Revolution, the Confederation was not able to arrive at a unanimous position. The Mohawks opted for an alliance with Britain, whilst some small groups allied themselves with the rebel colonists and the majority remained neu-
After the defeat of the British, the majority of Mohawks and a great part of the five other nations crossed the new white frontier and settled on reserves in what became Quebec and Ontario. they never recognized this frontier, and in 1792 a treaty between Britain and the new American republic confirmed the right of the Iroquois to pass unhindered across the frontier with their goods. There are today nearly 25,000 Mohawks in all, and 1012,000 in Quebec, on the three reserves of Akwesane, Kahnawake and Kanesatake
Successive white governments, whether US or Canadian, have not been content simply with stealing the land of the native peoples, or killing them with alcohol, dis22 ease or bullets. They have always tried to assimilate them to bourgeois values - individual private property, male domination and capitalist democracy with suffrage restricted to men.
Over a period of years, white federal governments have created Band Councils (on the Canadian side) and Tribal Councils (on the US side) to administer the funds "granted" to the native peoples.
Generally less than 20% of the inhabitants of the reserves participate in the "elections" to the Band Councils or the Tribal Councils — they are perceived at best as being irrelevant and at worst as a simple relay of white power.
The relationship of the native peoples of Canada to the anglophone/francophone division of that country has been complex. In the 19th century, the beginning of an alliance was forged between French speakers and a big part of the native peoples of British North America against the anglophone drive to assimilate them. The majority of the native and mixed race peoples of Quebec and the Canadian west used French as a second or maternal language. At the time of the execution of the mixed race leader, Louis Riel, in 1885, there were mass demonstrations in Quebec leading to the mobilization of the Canadian army. Iroquoian language dying out among youth
To counter this alliance, the federal government decreed in the early part of this century that English would be the only language taught on the reserves.
two effects amongst the Mohawks. Firstly, Iroquoian became a minority tongue as a maternal language amongst the Six Nations, almost disappearing amongst the youth. Secondly, English replaced French as the language of communication with the white majoridistancing the Mohawks from the Quebecois majority. Amongst the other native nations of Quebec, only those denied official recognition by the white bureaucracy retained French as a language of communication with white soci-
Yet the tradition of the "Long House", of the Great Law, has never totally disappeared among the Six Nations. In the 1960s, amidst the revolt of all the non-white peoples of North America, a movement developed that was both a renewal of native culture and a demand for territo-
Unnoticed by all but a few whites, the
House, the traditional cultural-religious (and in the final analysis, political) structure, began to regain its influence among the Six Nations. This Mohawks. The "traditionalists" contested the Band Councils, with growing success.
In the mid-1970s, the Long House sanctioned the creation of the Warriors Society, according to the tradition of the Great Law where the military leaders were subject to the authority of the representatives of the clans and the nations. They were to replace the white police forces and defend the rights of their people.
Since World War 2 more and more young Mohawks, on the Canadian side as much as the US, have found employment in the US Marines. It was the Mohawk veterans of the Vietnam war who were to constitute the Warriors.
The macho ethos of the Marines did not prepare these Mohawks for a protracted struggle. When some Seminole peoples in Florida found a legal loophole in the mid-1980s which allowed them to open lucrative casinos on their reserve, the US government found the ideal way to foster "native capitalism" as a solution. Congress speedily adopted the Gaming Act" encouraging the creation of
Some of the Warriors, impatient in the face of the apparent impotence of the "old guard" of the Confederacy, were seduced. On the US side of Akwesasne casinos were opened, creating a few hundred jobs at five or six dollars an hour for Mohawks, whilst the "investors" pocketed millions.
Because of this situation, a conflict developed between the Warriors and the Confederacy Council, tragically culminating in a mini civil war at Akwesasne in the spring of this year. Since then Akwesasne has been occupied by the Suretés from Ontario and Quebec and by the State
At Kahnawake, there was also a conflict about gambling and the sale of cigarettes? although this dispute never degenerated into physical battle.
### Competing political structures on reserves
Thus at the beginning of the current crisis, there existed three more or less competing structures on the Mohawk reserves the Band Council, the Confederacy Council and the Warriors Society. But the frontiers between the different groups were not very clear. Mohawk culture does not promote vendettas or permanent political factions and extremely fluid alliances between currents are common practice. A form of permanent election of representatives, recallable at any time, was part of the Great Law of the Six Nations. On the other hand, native Americans, like any other people, are not immune from internal conflicts or even sometimes the settling of accounts.
The refusal of all layers of government and media to even try to recognize and understand the native nations explains in part their confusion in the face of the multiple changes of the Mohawk delegation to the negotiating table. But this has also served as a pretext to repeatedly break the negotiations and finally to send the army
On August 12 the government accepted the Mohawks' demand that a team of
Electoral gains for Canadian left
October 1, 1990 • #191 International Viewpoint observers from the International Federation of Human Rights investigate the situ-
Warriors are armed). But the
NDP's provincial parties,
CANADA ation.
Their report, made public on
ANOTHER sign of growing turbulence in
August 26, criticized the failure of the fed-
Canadian politics was the surprise victory of eral and provincial governments to the New Democratic Party in the September 6 respect the agreement on the free passage provincial elections in Ontario, Canada's of provisions, medicine and spiritual leaders. On August 27, when the Bourassa richest province. The NDP, which describes itself as social democratic, won 74 of the 130 government again suspended negotiations and resorted to the army, the observers seats, overturning a big Liberal majority. The withdrew.
party also made substantial gains in Manito-
At Kahnawake, the army and the Warriba. The NDP candidate in Ontario has, according to The Economist of September ors agreed to dismantle the barricades without bloodshed. At Kanesatake, there
15, promised to raise the minimum wage by was no agreement but it seems that the nearly 50%, index pensions, and cushion matriarchs of the clan intervened to block laid-off workers with increased severance pay. However "moderate" the NDP may be, any attempt at armed resistance by the
Warriors.
this election shows the depth of opposition
Meanwhile the negotiations reached in Canada to the attacks on welfare undertakdeadlock, even though the federal governen and planned by the Federal Conservative ment said for the first time on September
1 that it was ready to negotiate on the territorial demands of the community of
Kanesatake. The SQ has not yet intervened, leaving that to the army, but hundreds of agents still surround the two reserves. The SQ can be expected to make many arrests — they have already been accused of maltreating and even torturing
Mohawks arrested since the assault on
July 11. At Kanesatake, 30 arrests are already reported.
Silence of the workers organizations
The most worrying aspect has been the weakness of the non-Mohawk response to the events. Certainly there has been a of solidarity movement with the