Kahnawake Mohawk Council Criticizes CAQ for Recognizing Canadiens’ Lands

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QUEBEC – The Mohawk Nation expressed its “displeasure” on Thursday with the Quebec government for its comments on the “uncompromised land” in Montreal, while praising the Montreal Canadiens for choosing to do a land survey before each game in home.

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On Wednesday, the Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Ian Lafrenière, said it may have been a “mistake” for Canadians to claim that Montreal is an unconquered Mohawk land, saying that historians are divided on the issue.

“Quebec media comments insist that it may be wrong to refer to specific nations when recognizing the people to whom the undisclosed territory belongs.” the MCK wrote in his statement . Although Quebec’s comments are not surprising, MCK is repulsed by Quebec’s attempt to politicize a genuine reconciliation action by a sports club, which undermines the presence of Kanien’kehá: ka (specifically) in the traditional territory of Tiohtià. : region ke (Montreal) “.

The council called for an end to “schoolyard tactics of using the media to advance political agendas” and responsible collaboration and education on indigenous history.

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“When we talk about land, it is an essential part of who we are as Kanien’kehá: ka,” Chief Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer said in the statement. “Comments with opinions that challenge and discredit our presence are not only insulting, but are taken as displaced attacks on our existence.”

Archaeological and historical records point to an indigenous presence in Montreal before the arrival of the first European explorers, but some historians believe that the people first contacted by Jacques Cartier, the Iroquoians of St. Lawrence, are a separate people from the Nation. Mohawk and were erased. after contact for reasons that are not clear. The Kahnawake Mohawk Council has described these arguments as “a contemporary version of the doctrine of ‘no man’s land’ that was used to justify the appropriation of indigenous lands by European powers” and criticized a Eurocentric interpretation of the archaeological records and the oral history.