Word: oka
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...essential -- and it has been sorely lacking in the seven-week impasse between Mohawk Indians and Canadian authorities. Late last week, just as a possible resolution of the standoff appeared to be in sight, another factional skirmish broke out behind the barricades of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, near Oka, 18 miles west of Montreal. The incident was relatively minor: two Mohawk men were severely beaten with baseball bats by a group of members of the militant Mohawk Warriors Society. But it was enough to break the impasse. In response, Canadian troops, backed by armored vehicles and helicopters, swept into...
...Indians initiated the blockade to force the town of Oka to drop plans to expand a golf course onto land the Mohawks consider sacred property. An aborted police raid last month to break the boycott ended in the fatal shooting of an officer...
...gathered outside the barricade that Mohawk Indians raised across the approach to the Mercier Bridge, a major artery into Montreal. Rowdies grappled with police and burned effigies of Mohawks hanging from a lamppost. Since a policeman was killed two weeks ago during an assault on another Mohawk blockage at Oka, 19 miles to the west, that town and Chateauguay have become scenes of an edgy standoff over the volatile issue of Indian land rights. The Indians have been protesting plans to expand a golf course into a forest that they say contains a sacred burial ground...
Since 1947, the 1,000 Mohawks of the Kanesatake reserve near Oka have claimed land that the village wants to use to expand a golf course. The federal government in Ottawa rejected that claim in 1986, but the Mohawks demanded further negotiations and last March finally set up a blockade to prevent the extension...
Police ignored the roadblock for months, but finally acted when called in by Oka Mayor Jean Ouellette. At week's end, the Mohawks and up to 1,000 heavily armed police eyed one another across a tense no-man's-land...