Kanesatake seeks to solidify Indigenous Treaty against Energy East with sacred items

The Mohawk community at the centre of the Oka Crisis is leading plans to hold a ceremony aimed at solidifying an Indigenous alliance against the proposed Energy East pipeline.

Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon said the ceremony is expected to take place in British Columbia this coming spring.

Simon said he first raised the idea of the alliance during a September Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs meeting. Simon said the “Indigenous Treaty” would create a “formal alliance between anyone who would be inclined to reject the pipeline proposals going through native territories.”

Kanesatake was at the centre of the 1990 Oka Crisis triggered after the neighbouring village tried to bulldoze Mohawk burial grounds to expand a golf course.

The primary goal of the treaty aims to limit the expansion of Alberta’s tar sands. Simon said the alliance would focus initially on stopping TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline which would ship Alberta-mined bitumen to the East Coast.

Kanesatake would be directly affected by TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline project if approved — a portion slicing straight through traditional hunting territory. The hunting grounds stretch almost 200 square miles to Sainte-Scholastique, Mirabel and all the surrounding areas, said Simon.