Канаваке: Могавк халқының тарихы мен жері

The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory (, in the Mohawk language, Kahnawáˀkye in Tuscarora) is a First Nations reserve of the Mohawks of Kahnawá:ke on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, across from Montreal. Established by French Canadians in 1719 as a Jesuit mission, it has also been known as Seigneury Sault du St Louis, and Caughnawaga (after a Mohawk village in the Mohawk Valley of New York). There are 17 European spelling variations of the Mohawk Kahnawake. Kahnawake's territory totals an area of Its resident population numbers slightly above 8,000, with a significant number living off reserve. Its land base today is unevenly distributed due to the federal Indian Act, which governs individual land possession. It has rules that are different from those applying to Canadian non reserve areas. Most Kahnawake residents originally spoke the Mohawk language, and some learned French when trading with and allied with French colonists. Together with most of four Iroquois nations, including the Mohawk, they allied with the British government during the American Revolutionary War and the Lower Canada Rebellion. They have since become mostly English speaking. Although people of European descent traditionally refer to the residents of Kahnawake as Mohawk, their autonym is Kanien’kehá:ka (the "People of the Flint"). Another meaning is "those who speak [the language] Kanien'kéha"). The Kanien’kehá:ka were historically the most easterly nation of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) and are known as the "Keepers of the Eastern Door". They controlled territory on both sides of the Mohawk River and west of the Hudson River in present day New York, where they protected other parts of the confederacy to the west against invasion by tribes from present day New England and the coastal areas. Kahnawake is one of several self governing Kanien’kehá:ka territories of the Mohawk Nation within the borders of Canada, including Kanesatake on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River northwest of Montreal; Tyendinaga in Ontario; Akwesasne, which straddles the borders of Quebec, Ontario and New York across the Saint Lawrence River; and the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario north of Lake Erie. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British considered Kahnawake one of the Seven Nations of Canada. The name is derived from the Mohawk word kahnawà:ke, meaning "place of the rapids", referring to their major village Caughnawaga near the rapids of the Mohawk River in what is today central New York. When converted Catholic Mohawk moved to the Montréal area, they named the new settlement after their former one. The proximity of the Lachine Rapids also influenced their naming decision.

Kahnawake is located on the southwest shore where the Saint Lawrence River narrows. The territory is described in the native language as "on, or by the rapids" (of the Saint Lawrence River) (in French, it was originally called Sault du St Louis, also related to the rapids). This term refers to their village being located along the natural rapids of the St. Lawrence. But in the mid 20th century, the path of the river was changed with construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway canal and the people lost access to the river. The French colony of New France used Kahnawake as part of a southwestern defence for Ville Marie (later Montreal) and placed a military garrison there. The Jesuits founded a mission to administer to local Mohawk and other First Nations. This was also a base for those missionary priests who were sent to the west. Jesuit records give a settlement date of 1719.

Kahnawake was created under what was known as the Seigneurie du Sault Saint Louis, a territory which the French Crown granted in 1680 to the Jesuits to "protect" and "nurture" those Mohawk newly converted to Catholicism. When the seigneury was granted, the government intended the territory to be closed to European settlement. But the Jesuits assumed rights as seigneurs of the Sault, and permitted French and other European colonists to settle there and collected their rents. The Jesuits managed the seigneury until April 1762, after the British defeated France in the Seven Years' War and took over their territory east of the Mississippi River in New France. The new British governor, Thomas Gage, ordered the reserve to be entirely and exclusively vested in the Mohawk, under the supervision of the Indian Department. Despite repeated complaints by the Mohawk, many government agents continued to allow non Native encroachment, and mismanaged the lands and rents. Surveyors were found to have modified some old maps at the expense of the Kahnawake people. From the late 1880s until the 1950s, the Mohawk were required by the government to make numerous land cessions to enable construction of railway, hydro electric, and telephone company industrial projects along the river. As a result, Kahnawake today has only In the late 20th century, the Mohawk Nation was pursuing land claims with the Canadian government to regain lost land. The modern claim touches the municipalities of Saint Constant, Sainte Catherine, Saint Mathieu, Delson, Candiac and Saint Philippe. Led by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake and the reserve's Inter governmental Relations Team, the community has filed claims with the government of Canada. It is seeking monetary compensation and symbolic recognition of its claim.

Kahnawake was settled by a variety of historic indigenous peoples, although the Mohawk became by far the majority. They and other tribes had a practice of adopting captives into the tribe, often to replace people lost to illness or warfare. They generally chose to adopt young women and children taken in raids, as these were believed to be more amenable to assimilation. Individual families adopted such captives, and made them full members of their clan and tribe. The practice preceded European encounter, but later some European captives were also assimilated as Mohawk. The Mohawk had a matrilineal kinship system, with children considered born into the clan of the mother and deriving their status from her family. There was some European settlement after the reserve land was "donated" by the French Crown in the mid 17th century. The French government stationed French colonial troops there (who formed liaisons with local women and had children by them). Shopkeepers also formed families, and through the 18th century, many marriages occurred between European men and Indian women. Multiracial children born to Mohawk mothers were readily assimilated into the mother's family, clan, and nation. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the English and French were competing in North America and in Europe. Together with allied First Nations or Native American tribes, they conducted raids along the undefined border between the territories of New France and New England. Captives were sometimes held for ransom, and European families and communities worked to buy them back. In some cases, families of the indigenous communities kept captives for adoption. For instance, more than 100 captives were taken during the 1704 Raid on Deerfield; they were forced overland to Montreal and Kahnawake. The minister of Deerfield was ransomed, but his teenage daughter was kept by a Mohawk family. She ultimately married a Mohawk man and had a family with him, choosing to stay with her new family rather than return to Deerfield. As a result of this history, many Kahnawake people have been of mixed ancestry but identify as Mohawk. Backgrounds may include ancestry of other Iroquois tribes, such as the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora; and/or French, English, Anglo American, Scots and Irish. At times there has been more tension about the relations of full blood and mixed race members of the tribe, both in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In other areas of Canada, particularly the Red River region in the west, Métis descendants of European trappers and indigenous women, gradually developed what has become a separate, recognized ethnic group, based on a distinct hunting and trading culture. Kahnawake surnames, such as Beauvais, D'Ailleboust, de La Ronde Thibaudière, Delisle, de Lorimier, Giasson, Johnson, Mailloux, McComber, McGregor, Montour, Phillips, Rice, Stacey, Tarbell, and Williams, represent the evidence of tribal members' adoption of and intermarriage with non Natives. Tarbell ancestors, for instance, were John and Zachary, brothers captured as young children from Groton, Massachusetts in 1707 during Queen Anne's War and taken to Canada. Adopted by Mohawk families in Kahnawake, the boys became assimilated: they were baptized as Catholic and renamed, learned the Mohawk ways and were also given Mohawk names, married women who were daughters of chiefs, reared children with them, and became chiefs themselves. Historic sources document the sometimes strained relations between Mohawk and ethnic Europeans at Kahnawake, usually over property and competition for limited resources. In 1722, community residents objected to the garrison of French soldiers because they feared it would cause "horrible discord" and showed the French did not trust the locals. In the mid 1720s, the community evicted the Desaulnier sisters, traders who were garnering profits formerly earned by members of Kahnawake. In 1771, twenty two Mohawk pressed British officials to help them prevent two local families from bringing French families to settle "on lands reserved for their common use". In 1812, many were opposed to specific types of "mixed" marriages. In 1822, agent Nicolas Doucet reported that the community was growing frustrated by marriages in which white husbands acquired rights over the lives and properties of their Mohawk wives according to British Canadian laws. This was in opposition to Iroquois culture, which had a matrilineal kinship system, with descent and property invested in the maternal line. Abuse of alcohol was a continuing problem. In 1828, the village expelled white traders who were "poisoning" the Iroquois "with rum and spirituous liquors". Tensions rose at the time of the 1837 38 Lower Canada Rebellion. The Mohawk had suffered incursions on their land, including non Natives' taking valuable firewood. The Kahnawake cooperated with the British Crown against the Patriotes, largely over the issue of preserving their land and expressing their collective identity. Before and after the Rebellions, the community was fiercely divided regarding the rights of mixed race residents, such as Antoine George de Lorimier (the son of Claude Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier), and whether he should be evicted. Although his mother was Mohawk and native to Kahnawake, because of his father's and his own connections to the European community, George de Lorimier became a controversial figure in Kahnawake, even after his death in 1863. The inequalities in landownership among Kahnawake residents led to resentment of the wealthy. For instance, in 1884, the multiracial sons of the late George de Lorimier were the largest and wealthiest landowners in the community. Some Kahnawake residents questioned whether people who were not full blood Mohawk should be allowed to own so much land. The Mohawk Council asked members of the Giasson, Deblois, Meloche, Lafleur, Plante and de Lorimier families to leave, as all were of partial European ancestry. Some, like the de Lorimier brothers, gradually sold their properties and pursued their lives elsewhere. Others, such as Charles Gédéon Giasson, were finally given permanent status at the reserve. Because the Indian Department did not provide adequate support to the reserve, the community continued to struggle financially. At one point, the Kahnawake chiefs suggested selling the reserve to raise money for annuities for the tribe. Social unrest increased, with young men attacking houses, barns and farm animals of people they resented. In May 1878 an arson fire killed Osias Meloche, the husband of Charlotte Louise Giasson (daughter of Charles Gédéon Giasson, noted above), and their home and barn were destroyed. Under the Walbank Survey, the national government surveyed and subdivided the land of the reserve, allotting some plots individually to each head of household eligible to live in Kahnawake. The violence stopped as the new form of privatisation of land was instituted, but antagonism toward some community members did not. The small community was devastated by the loss of so many men. They erected crosses of steel girders at both ends of the reserve to honour them. Many Kahnawake ironworkers went to New York City to work during the first half of the 20th century. Its building boom stimulated construction of notable skyscrapers and bridges. For more than a generation, many Kahnawake men participated in building the Empire State Building, and other major skyscrapers in New York City, as well as many bridges. They brought their families with them, and most Mohawk from Kahnawake lived in Brooklyn. They called their neighbourhood "Little Caughnawaga" after their homeland. While the men worked on skyscrapers, the women created a strong community for their families. Many also worked outside the home. In the summers, the families would return to Kahnawake to stay with relatives and renew connections. Some of the people who grew up in Brooklyn as children still have the local New York accent, although they have long lived in Kahnawake.

Before European contact, the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) had a long tradition of justice administered within the clan and council system. The clan would govern the behaviour of clan members, and conflict between members of clans would be settled by consensus of the council. Clan mothers as well as chiefs had roles in this system. The goal was to quickly restore peace to the community and control behaviour that threatened it. The system was based on the four principles of reason, persuasion, satisfaction and compensation, with both wrongdoer and victim as part of the process. It was intended to achieve "[d]ue compensation and condolence, and a promise of agreement" between the parties. The initiative has challenges, for instance, gaining the support of Peacekeepers and community members who may not be familiar with these traditional cultural principles. But, it is an important means of re education into principles that offer an alternative to the current Canadian system, and helps build a future especially for the young people of the community.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission offers gambling licenses to Internet based poker, casino, and sportsbook sites. It has established Kahnawake as a substantial player in that business. Mohawk Internet Technologies (MIT), a local data centre located within the territory, hosts and manages many Internet gambling websites, and provides high tech employment to its people. MIT is the closest and fastest source for "legally hosted" gambling websites for North American players. Established in 1998, MIT by 2006 had become a "remarkably profitable" enterprise.

Fifty men from Kahnawake volunteered to fight with the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. While working to strengthen their culture and language, the people of Kahnawake have generally not had the political turmoil of the nearby, smaller Kanesatake reserve. In support of Kanesatake during its Oka Crisis in 1990, people from Kahnawake blocked the Honoré Mercier Bridge to Montreal, which had an access road through their reserve. The Kanesatake reserve had been blockaded and isolated by the Sûreté du Québec in a conflict over use of lands the Mohawk considered sacred. The bridge blockade affected the commute of many locals throughout the summer, leading to rioting and the burning of effigies, and to the "Whiskey Trench" episode. On August 28, 1990 a convoy of 50 to 75 cars, bearing mostly women, children and elders, left Kahnawake in fear of a possible advance by the Canadian Army. While the Mohawks' cars were being searched by the provincial police force, a crowd of hundreds gathered on the Montreal side of the highway; many in the crowd threw rocks and chairs at the cars and yelled ethnic slurs. Many windows were broken and some Mohawk were hit by rocks and cut by glass. Thirteen people were arrested. Blame has fallen on the provincial government for letting the convoy pass; on the Sûreté du Québec for holding the cars for so long, and for mostly not stopping people from throwing rocks; on the lack of police or army or riot squad; and on local radio stations that broadcast the location of the convoy. After some time, Kahnawake negotiated separately with the armed forces to remove the blockade to the bridge.

In 2007, two vessels operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society flew the Kahnawake Mohawk flag. The Kahnawake Mohawk nation is the only indigenous American sovereign nation to have deep sea foreign going vessels flying its flag. Since December 2007, the Sea Shepherd vessels have been registered in the Netherlands.

Kahnawake contains three National Historic Sites of Canada: Fort St Louis, the Jesuit Mission of St François Xavier, and the Caughnawaga Presbytery.

Reaghan Tarbell, a native of Kahnawake, wrote and directed a one hour documentary, Little Caughnawaga: To Brooklyn and Back (2008), about the families from Kahnawake who migrated to work in New York. It focused on the early 20th century community created by the women where they settled in Brooklyn, while the men worked on steel skyscrapers and bridges. It was later released in the US as A Mohawk Journey: To Brooklyn and Back (2010). In Tracey Deer’s drama film Beans, the 1990 Oka Crisis at Kanesatake is explored. Deer lived the crisis as a child and show it through the eyes of a preteen girl named Tekehentahkhwa (nicknamed "Beans"). Beans’ perspective on life is radically changed by these events.

The pow wow is held every summer on the second weekend of July at the Kateri Tekakwitha Island. It is a social event open to everyone to share the Native American culture such as traditional foods, hand made crafts, singing and traditional dancing.