Synopsis
An account of the Mohawk civil war describes how the killing of two Mohawks during an all-night shoot out in the Akwesasne territory in 1990 led to a war between two rival factions over the introduction of gambling casinos on the reservation.
Reviews
A blow-by-blow account by veteran Village Voice writer Hornung of the recent upheaval on Mohawk lands in New York and Canada, which culminated in the 1990 takeover by Mohawks of a major bridge into Montreal. Although the roots of the conflict are centuries old--the product of confinement on tiny reservations where rivalries and tensions can only intensify--for Hornung the chronology of events begins in 1987 with the seizure by N.Y. State Police of slot machines in casinos operating on the Awkwesasne reservation. This intervention by nontribal authorities, and others that followed, brought Mohawks supporting and opposing the gambling activity into confrontation--a situation exacerbated by a militant third group, the Warriors, whose position against any encroachment on native sovereignty allied them with the pro-casino faction. Roadblocks, armed displays, vandalism, and riots, and the shooting down of a National Guard helicopter ensued, with two Mohawks killed in a particularly fierce firefight in the spring of 1990. Meanwhile, Kanesatake Mohawks opposed to the expansion of a golf course onto a tribal burial ground on the outskirts of Montreal erected a barricade on the site, with their defiance increasing after an armed assault by Quebec police in which one trooper died. Seizing the Mercier Bridge, the Kanesatake Mohawks forced a tense, month- long standoff in which the Canadian Army replaced the police and were ready to move in if negotiations failed. With an agreement forged, the roadblocks fell, but Mohawk resisters, including many Awkwesasne Warriors and their lawyer, were arrested. Remarkable for letting the parties involved speak for themselves, though long on daily events and short on analysis; still, this is a good reporter's view from the scene of another sorry chapter in Native American history. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
The political struggles of the Mohawk people of New York and Canada have been in the news over the past year or two. First, a conflict over gambling and casinos on the Akwesasne reservation in New York State, then the dispute with Quebec over expansion of a golf course in the town of Oka at Kanestake. Hornung's book makes it clear that this struggle goes much deeper than a tug of war over land or Indian gambling. The key issue is over the sovereignty of the Mohawks over their own lands, and the thesis of Hornung's book is: who defines that sovereignty? The warriors who support the casino owners as exercisers of Mohawk independence? The casino owners, who claim that they are bringing much-needed jobs and dollars to the reservations? The traditional chiefs, who hold that gambling casinos bring crime and anarchy to the reservation? Or the non-Indian governments of the United States and Canada? Hornung's book is more balanced than Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera's The People of the Pines: The Warriors and the Legacy of the Oka (Little, Brown, 1991), but all write as outsiders. Nevertheless, until the Mohawks write their own account of this complex issue, this is as good a look as we are likely to get.
- Lisa A. Mitten, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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