I have it on good authority from the elders at Kanehsatà:ke that long before our Creator spoke King James English, our Creator Spoke Kanienké'ha (Mohawk)! On Monday morning this week, I woke up with a hymn on my mind. I sang the words over and over all through the day. Strangely, the song was not in English or in French. Instead, I heard beautiful Mohawk sounds, wonderful words I didn't know I could recite by heart. I guess the Creator was speaking in Kanienké'ha that day to me.
The hymn goes like this:
Ni io wa ka te ren na ien.
Ni io ro ni kon ri io.
Ni io wa ka te ren na ien.
Tas tion ne. Tas tion ne ioia ne re.
It is sung to a Voices United Hymn
Lord listen to your children praying. Lord send your Spirit in this place. Lord listen to your children praying. Send us love, send us power, send us grace.
Though I sang it all day and into the night, I knew not of the impending crisis at Kanehsatà :ke. Monday night protesters burned down the house of the grand chief, whose family narrowly escaped to safety. The great blaze inflamed some people's already raging anger, and a deep freeze set into the community, a fear which paralyzed many who might have had a voice. Just after midnight there was a call from a friend from the Pentecostal church with whom I work on a Bible Translation project, a person who is also the Mohawk police commission's chairperson. She was calling the United Church into the situation to offer a clergy's peacekeeping presence. I did not receive her message until early the next morning around the same time the radio news informed me of the fire.
I spent the day with the commissioners cloistered inside the police station, brokering seemingly insignificant things like small amounts of food, telephone connections, and "leaves of absence" so the police commissioners could go home to rest for an hour or so. All day, I prayed full out, without an audible word. Every step along the way in this crisis, through hundreds of decisions, there has always been an opportunity to choose which way one will go. I tried to discern for myself the path of peace, what Jesus would have done in the same situation, daring to cross the narrow threshold through which a better world is promised. Were people hungry? Let us feed them. Are people hurting? Get them their medication. Tired? Sleep! Are people angry? Don't fan the fire, hear them out. I saw the commissioners, the people outside and individual police officers make choices like this all through the day of the crisis.
I am clear it has not been my role to offer solutions or opinions, but to hold open a hope for the possibility of peace with the people who invited me on their path. Though the morning papers were splashed with pictures of fires and headlines like "TERROR IN KANEH- SATAKE", by and large and despite the events of the previous night, Peace was working among the people all through the day. I was never afraid, all were working together for good. True, it was not a placid peace, but the "highest degree of tension anyone could creatively bear" (Thomas Berry, "Dream of the Earth"). By midnight the day of the crisis, the press was reporting "a peaceable solution has been reached".
Many of you from the outside have asked me for an executive summary update on Kanehsatake. You can appreciate that my political views are not what I can report on. I supposed this is mainly because I haven't been able to form any opinions which, come to think of it, is probably to my advantage. I cherish the Church's neutrality and my overall ignorance in the larger issues of this community I have come to love.
I will say however that most people from the outside seem to see this as a black-white, right-wrong, bad guy good guy duality. Whereas, as one elder put it, the reality is that there are six sides to any box, and each side is part of this mix. The many sides of this conflict include: (1) the side of the council who has quorum - represented by Jimmy Gabriel who is supported by the federal courts; (2) the side of the council represented by the Bonspilles who follow the political way of their people; (3) the Mohawk police commission - an independent apolitical group of commissioners who were mandated by consensus of all the chiefs to run the police force, (4) the Mohawk police force, the "invading" or "invited" police force from 19 nations, (5) the group who call themselves "the people" who are also referred to as the "group outside" or "the mob"; (6) and the outside governments - the Federal and the Provincial Security ministries, and the "Indian Affairs" department none of whom agree with each other right now. Add to the mix the new provisional Mohawk police force who came from Kanawake, the Assembly of First Nations and we have a highly complicated situation, with deep historical roots, and no easy solutions. The greatest danger is to come down on only one side of the whole debate. All parties need to be heard, respected and worked with.
The media are portraying this issue as a duality between the two sides of the council, and seem to be painting everything with one broad brush. When I meet new people or old friends, they ask "who is the good guy?" as if this were a simple Hollywood script. The way I see it from inside, from talking to the elders, from speaking to close family relatives of both chiefs, and in some cases to the chiefs themselves is that nothing is as simple as "one side wants crime out, and the other side doesn't", as I've heard on national news.
True, there is a deep deep division between the leaders at Kanehsatake. I wonder if it makes sense any more to force all these people who disrespect each other to work in the same building as band chiefs under our cherished model of democratic majority vote. I wonder if it is wise to insist that the grand chief has the "right" to rule when his very presence will incite riot, put himself in danger's way, endanger his family and supporters too. I wonder how long the "violent" element can be allowed to continue to play havoc in the community, dictating their terms as if a few of them could represent the whole community. Who is going to stop them? Not the family man who worries about his family's safety, not the elder whose voice has been ignored too long, and not social worker or teacher whose job is on the line. And their own police force has been decimated to just a few individuals.
Rather than power politics led by "rights" and "quorum" which serve only to further divide the people, it seems likely that the only tool left to try is a much older form of decision making: namely consensus by all interested parties who want to work for peace. Along with consensus decision making (albeit a slow, laborious process) there also needs to be a means by which consensed agreements can be enforced. Not all elements of this equation want peace. Some individuals feel that violence or total anarchy is the only thing that will bring the attention the people need. But both are a cry for help and a plea for intervention. Things have to change. That is unanimous. Where must the intervention and attention come from? Ay, there's the question.
Contrary to reports, things have not returned to "normal" after the advent of the Kanawake Police Force- since norms were composted, previous agreements broken, words dishonoured, and respect annihilated long ago. Intervention is required. Yet if there were outside intervention from a white police force, everyone would be up in arms. If Canada or Quebec stepped in, there would be hell to pay for it, it seems.
This is chaos. This is the coldest dark night of this community's soul. This is a precarious, dangerous situation which the elders speak of as much more explosive and already more damaging than the crisis in 1990, when the people at least were united among themselves against the world "outside". Today every family is divided, sometimes husband against wife, mother against son, siblings each against the other. Still they hope for peace, they long for respect to take root again in their community. The people want peace but so many are afraid. Whoever speaks, because the "law" is so volatile at the moment, cannot be assured of any form of protection. So the deep freeze has everyone in its grip.
What will be "left" after all the "rights" and power positions have been clarified in court? Instead of "hateful and killfull" choices, what is left is to seed "heartful and willful" choices for peace and consensus whenever and wherever these seeds can be dropped on the frozen landscape of Kanehsatake. What is left is to trust that God is acting now to grow these seeds, though it may take time. This is not a solution that human minds or hearts can divine or accomplish. It is one that requires the intervention of our divine Creator, Niio Ronaier.
And so I continue to plead our God:
Creator, hear your children praying in their many voices: Traditional, United, Pentecostal, Catholic, it matters not how we pray, only that we turn to you. Creator, send your Spirit of peace to reign actively in this place. Creator, hear your children's cries, laments, fears, and anger.
Forgive us when we know not what we do.
Practice your presence among us. Unite us as one.
Teach us to respect our diversity. Hold us and the People of the Pines, in the palm of your hand.
Work powerfully through us
to make us channels of your peace. Accomplish this in us
as you have in Jesus Christ, by your amazing grace. Etonaiawen. Amen.
Rev. Suzanne Nadon, Kanehsatà:ke United Church
