Visiting Oka and Chateauguay like stepping back in time

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Visiting Quebec in the middle of the standoff with Mohawk Indians brought to the surface images of the Southern United States in the 1960s and Quebec in the 1970s.

It was like stepping back in time to a less civilized age when either the mob or the army called the shots.

At Chateauguay crowds burned effigies of Mohawk Indians not unlike the planting of crosses on the lawns of black families in the southern U.S.

And journalists in Quebec told horror stories of having had police point guns at their heads and of having had their camera equipment and film taken.

A European photographer, who claimed he had $7,000 worth of photography gear taken by police at Oka shortly after police stormed the Mohawk blockade July 11, said he's till waiting to get it back.

Surrounded by Surete du Quebec police officers in an Oka coffee shop, a camera man for a Montreal English television station, recalled the current crisis was very similar to the FLQ crisis two decades ago when civilians were indiscriminately arrested.

But SQ officers were like Boy Scouts compared to soldiers, he said.

Despite the heavy police presence at both Chateauguay and Oka, I was determined not to be denied entry to Kahnawake and Kanesatake.

Persistence got me into Kahnawakw, although it was not without intrigue.

I badly wanted to get behind police lines to meet Warriors, to see if they were the fierce characters they were being made out to be.

They weren't. They were certainly the equal of Surete du Quebec police officers in friendliness and a lot more hospitable. But the police did loosen up after they were blasted by the Quebec Human Rights Commission for human rights' violations.

They didn't search vehicles as thoroughly or detain them as long as they did before.

But just a couple nights before a group of journalists had stayed behind the Mohawk blockade at Oka until about 10:30 p.m. to catch their news conference.

To avoid breaking the Mohawk law of not going through the woods after dark and because it was easier, we trudged down the gill only to be detained one by one by poise and to have our gear searched thoroughly.

There were about 10 of us and it took each of us about five minutes to clear police security. Then each of us had our names taken down by another officer.

While police called out "an autre" (another), reporters sat on the pavement in no man's land bathed in the light of Mohawk and police spotlights, furiously filing their stories by cell phone.

The Mohawks at Kanesatake had a number of other rules:

no shooting unmasked Warriors

no shots without permission

and no entry without signing in.

Their accreditation process was equal to the SQ's. Each journalist was checked thoroughly. The Mohawks were especially paranoid after a couple of police officer had gotten briefly behind their lines in the guise of journalists - but the Mohawks had been monitoring police communication lies and knew they were coming.

On my first visit to Oka, tensions were still high and police weren't taking any chances. Security was very tight at all approaches. At the first police blockade, I had to produce my accreditation card and my driver's license. My car was also searched thoroughly, first under my hood, then the trunk and then my glove compartment and camera bag.

In the days after the police assault on the Mohawk blockade journalists flooded in from across North America and clambered up steep cliffs and walked through poison ivy to get behind police lines.

I lucked out on my first attempt. I started walking through the white pine forest and soon found myself on the now famous golf course where I met two non-Natives, who directed me to a group of journalists near the Mohawk blockade.

There I had to proof my identity.

At Kahnawake I was given a closer look behind the lines, where life seemed to be going on as usual, although the reserve was surrounded by police. I saw many elders sitting on their front porches and teenagers riding their bicycls along the reserve's narrow, twisting roads - some of which go beneath the Mercier Bridge - or swimming at the village pool.

And at the dock on Kateri Tekakwitha Island I saw a young boy fishing on the dock, which made as strong a statement as the many guns I saw on both sides of the St. Lawrence River.

He seemed to symbolize both hope and despair.

His community was under siege, but he had gone fishing.

What was his future? Could he be killed if the army took Kahnawake by force?

And if he lived, how would he be shaped if his brother, sister, father or mother was killed by a police bullet?

These were thoughts that haunted me.

And I though of Georges Perillard, the 72-year-old Oka resident who was accidentally teargassed when police stormed the Kanesatake blockade.

Everywhere I saw people whose lives had been changed by that day.

And up closer I saw two once peaceful communities, Oka and Chateauguay, that were now up to their necks in racial tensions.

That it all started over a golf course seemed so stupid.