STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
Coincidence
I remember when we left Standing Rock, we were just taking a stroll and there were two bald eagles sitting in the tree very low. As we drove back home, we hit the state of Michigan, and I looked up at the sunroof in the car and there was a bald eagle circling the car making sure we got back safely.
Kanenhstatonhkó:wa
Now that guy, Jimmy Carter, came down from France. I know his real name is Jacques Cartier, but I like to see people's puzzled faces when I call him Jimmy Carter.
Forcibly removed
The people of Kanehsatà:ke were brutalized by the Seminary of St. Sulpice. The sulpicians were a society of priests from France, rich blue bloods filled with evil and greed. They were so rich that they could hire their own security forces to go in to violate and harass our people. Their goal was to get our people to leave our land.
Now it’s ours
They said it is Terra Nullius - uninhabited land. So now begins the idea of superiority and dominance over Indigenous people. That’s right in Genesis. Pick up a catholic bible and read genesis, what does it say after God created men? “So therefore, ye shall be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the world and have dominion over everything.”
All deception and lies
The Earth is our mother in our Creation story. She gives us all this unconditional love and that gives us all these things from water, to animals, to corn, and beans and squash. Tell me then, what gives you the right to say that you’re going to buy it and that you have the right to sell it?
Tell them not to shoot
In 1990, in the middle of August, a month after the Kanesatake resistance began, I was at work. I was a council member.
Not just a hobby
I learned to plant when I was a boy with my grandfather, so I’ve been planting a garden for the past almost 50 years now. When I was 18, I made a garden at my parents’ place. I just went out, turned the land over and planted. I didn’t ask what to do. I already knew what to do. It’s like it’s in you.
Women and Mother Earth
The most important thing in our culture is the women, not the men. We are only tools of the nation.
Farm abundance
My father was laid back, a man of not many words. When I was younger, I asked him, “What did you do during the depression?" He looked at me kind of funny. He had a habit of kind of shrugging his shoulders.
Stone foundation
When I was a kid, we used to go walking under the bridge along the train bridge towards the farms in 9C area. They used to cut the hay in this neighbourhood, and when I bought this property here, I found a bull horn in the grass.
Cows, fruits, vegetables, and farms
In the area, people were growing rhubarbs, apple trees, and any kind of currents, berries, and everyone had gardens. We’d go all the way out, past the golf club, over the tracks. There were other farms there.
Running water
When I was a little kid growing up, we had electricity, but we didn’t have running water. It was emptying the shit pail, having to carry water, having to do chores, all of those kinds of things.
Growing up in Kahnawake
When I was growing up in the village of Kahnawake, the area was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Kahnawake before 1955
There’s a little house on the map named Tom Jacobs. Right behind that, by the river, there was a Manhattan beach, they called it. It was my brother’s place, William Cross The River.
The river and the land
When I was born, the seaway had just opened. The water at the river was still clean. I don’t think you could drink it at that time, but the water was clear.
