The three Squamish Nation women featured in this week’s Lifestyle section feature, “Soaring above racism and segregation,” said many things that have stuck with me since sitting down with them for that interview.
Especially given it is the 25th anniversary of the Oka Crisis, one thing Charlene Williams said that keeps playing on a loop in my head is that for many First Nations people, moving away isn’t an option.
“We can’t move, we won’t move; this is our home,” Williams said. “We are the land and the land is us.”
Non-native Squamish residents, all of us immigrants whose families at some point settled in Canada, often pick up and move, from one city to another, across provinces or even from one country to another for work or love or for change itself.
Not so for many Squamish Nation members.
The 1990 summer-long Oka Crisis woke many Canadians to this connection of First Nations to their land. The municipality of Oka was planning to expand a residential development and golf course onto Quebec Mohawk traditional territory.
Violence broke out when work began on the projects without consultation with the Mohawk people. The armed standoff of 600 Mohawks and their 2,500 supporters versus 4,500 Canadian Forces soldiers and 2,000 RCMP cost a soldier and Mohawk elder their lives and lasted until the municipality postponed the project. Oka’s mayor later cancelled the project. The Mohawk could not be moved, figuratively or literally.
We have come a long way in 25 years, as the Squamish Nation conditions and the subsequent pause on the Woodfibre LNG environmental review process attest. Yet it is easy to forget this connection in the various debates around developments currently in the district hopper, such as the Cheekye housing proposal and the Garibaldi at Squamish ski resort. The Squamish Nation was here long before non-natives and will likely be here long after many have moved away.
So, ultimately what we trespassers want should matter far less than what Squamish Nation members want, whatever they decide. The most we should expect is to follow their lead.
