The Intolerance of Racism

"Two people in the pro-eviction [group], they were trying to break my front door down. They started handling the handle, banging on the door, banging on the porch."
"People were on the side of my porch in the back where the pool is. I had the back door gate locked by the pool, they're trying to kick it in. 'Get the f--k out of here, get the hell out of here. We want him out!' And the police are standing there doing nothing."
Amanda Deer, Kahnawake resident

In 2010 the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake sent out eviction letters to 30 households located on the reserve. These were families where one half of the union was not of First Nations birth. Most often it was an aboriginal woman marrying or cohabiting with a non-aboriginal man, both wishing to live on the reserve. But the reserve practices the kind of racial discrimination that is illegal in Canada.

Elder says prayers during Rally in support of the Kahnawake Membership Law in Kahnawake on Monday October 27, 2014. The Membership Law rules that Mohawks who marry non-natives must leave the community.
Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

No problem, as far as the reserve, like others in Canada, that states that as a sovereign nation it makes its own laws and has no need to respect the protection of the equality clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Residents involved sued the council on the basis of harassment and intimidation. Those who launched the lawsuit argue that the band policy violates both Canadian and Quebec charters of rights.

Earlier in May, people in Kahnawake protested in front of the home of another mixed couple - a Mohawk and non-native. (CBC)

The council defends of course Kahnawake's Mohawk residency law, prohibiting any Mohawk who marries a non-Mohawk from living on the reserve as a family. The law is grandfathered to 1981. It targets any such alliances from 1981 forward. Couples find their homes vandalized, and they feel threatened by the hostility that comes their way from their neighbours.

Mixed native and non-native couples in Kahnawake report receiving letters from a group of residents making it clear that their presence is considered anathema; they are in violation of the reserve law, largely supported within the community whose purpose it is to prevent assimilation, and to protect the identity of the community and its land ownership. Anywhere else in Canada, in a non-native community this would be seen as a human rights violation and a civic disgrace.

Last weekend a couple and their 11-year-old son left Kahnawake after a group of protesters, other residents, formed a cordon around their house. Some of those people, neighbours in fact, made an attempt to break down the front door of the house, according to Amanda Deer, who finally left their home, with her non-native boyfriend.

Courtesy of Kahnawake resident    A family in Kahnawake woke up to graffiti on their house and car on Saturday as a May 1, 2015, deadline passed for them to leave. 

Earlier in the month Terri and Marvin McComber, again a mixed couple on the reserve, saw their home and car spray painted. Signs near their home read: "Marry out get out", and "Mohawk land for Mohawks". The reserve has been host to similar signs all month; clearly a campaign is under way to clear the area of non-native residents and their native spouses.

This, from Canada's aboriginals who decry majority Canadian racism behind their historical presence in the country as second-tier citizens.