An award-winning documentary is retelling the story of the Oka Crisis through the eyes of the women who stood up to government authorities at the start of the siege.
Directed by Indigenous activist Ellen Gabriel, who was on the front lines of the crisis, Kanatenhs – When The Pine Needles Fall will screen at Montreal’s International First Peoples Festival this weekend.
“I was really naive thinking that, you know, the cops would not shoot at us,” Gabriel said in an interview. “I lost my innocence that summer.”
On July 11th 1990, Indigenous land defenders had set up a blockade to prevent a golf course expansion onto their ancestral lands in Kanesatake, northwest of Montreal. A developer had plans to bulldoze a sacred pine forest and graveyard to turn them into a parking lot.
As police are moved in, a group of Mohawk women, including Gabriel, went to the front to meet them. Before long, activists were met with tear gas and live gunfire.
“I call it the siege, the 1990 siege of Kanesatake and Kahnawake. We were occupied,” Gabriel said.
The standoff would last 78 days, but it’s the very beginning that Gabriel focuses on in her documentary, telling the story through the eyes of the women at the front.
“To be able to reclaim that narrative and tell our story from our perspective, it’s extremely important because that voice was was taken from us by by the media and by the government,” she said, adding that activist women were making key decisions as the crisis wore on for months.
Gabriel recently brought her advocacy to the screen, after she studied documentary filmmaking at the New York Film Academy for a year. She initially signed up for a four week course, but the school offered her a full scholarship. Kanatenhs – When The Pine Needles Fall was her thesis.
“It’s extremely emotional. It took me years — if not longer, like decades — to actually feel comfortable about looking just at the footage and not crying,” she said.
Gabriel got her hands on archival images and recordings of the crisis, and also used her own artwork in the film.
The film has screened at festivals in San Francisco, New York, Europe and Australia, winning nine awards.
This Sunday, it will be screened at the International First Peoples Festival with Gabriel and other participants in attendance.
“It’s not being taught in the schools, so it was really important for me to create some kind of legacy in education for not just the world, but for my community,” she said.
Gabriel has been happy to share her perspective on the Oka Crisis with international audiences who hadn’t heard of it, but is more nervous for an upcoming screening in Kahnawake.
“It’s like people who experienced it in a different way. So I’m anxious to hear what they have to say. I’m anxious to hear their stories,” she said.
Gabriel wants to see her film used in classrooms, and is already working on another one about the solidarity shown by Kahnawake when they blocked the Mercier Bridge during the siege.
She points out that the Oka Crisis completely sparked a decades-long seismic shift in how Canada interacts with Indigenous people, starting with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1991.
“It’s really important for people to remember that from the Royal Commission came the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, those came all from this small little community. We just thought we’d be arrested.”
The screening is Sunday, Aug. 13 at 4 p.m. at Cinema du Musée.
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