No, I didn’t make an error writing that title. It seems that there are two Canadas in this country; One where most of us live where we tolerate even the most intolerable conduct and another where certain social/political/ethnic groups don’t believe that the rules the rest of us live by apply to them. I am sick and tired of hearing how we have to be tolerant of racism and the most vile of ethnic/religious hatred because of political correctness. Well no more, this from Katherine Wilton at the National Post.
The Kahnawake reserve on Montreal’s South Shore has issued eviction notices to 25 residents, saying they are not native enough to remain there.
About 25 non-natives — mostly white people involved in relationships with Mohawks — are being asked to leave the reserve within 10 days because Mohawk law does not allow them to live in the community, said Joe Delaronde, spokesman for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake.
“They are people with no native ancestry at all,” Mr. Delaronde said in an interview yesterday. According to Mohawk law, non-aboriginals have no residency rights.
About 7,500 Mohawks live on the reserve.
Band council chiefs began hand-delivering the strongly worded letter on Monday and continued yesterday.
“There have been numerous complaints regarding individuals contravening Mohawk law by residing in the Mohawk territory of Kahnawake without a right to do so. You were identified in these complaints,” the letter says.
The eviction letter tells non-natives they have 10 days to leave the reserve: “We trust that you understand the seriousness of this letter and that you will govern yourselves accordingly.”
If the non-natives can’t move by the deadline, they must contact the band council to make further arrangements, Mr. Delaronde said.
“We are not heartless,” he added. “We know that not everyone has a brother or a parent in [nearby] Chateauguay they can stay with.”
In a news release on the band council’s website, Grand Chief Michael Delisle said: “Every single Kahnawake Mohawk knows the law. It is unfortunate that some people have chosen to disregard the community’s wishes.”
In 1981, the community announced a moratorium on mixed marriages, which meant that non-natives who married Mohawks after that year would no longer have the right to live on the reserve. Any non-native who had married a Mohawk before the moratorium is still permitted to live on the reserve.
In the 1980s, some Mohawks contested the policy before the human rights tribunal, but lost. The courts have ruled that Mohawks can make any membership policy they deem necessary for their survival as a people.
“We are very concerned about protecting our identity because at a certain point, the Canadian government will look at us and say: ‘You are not even Indians,’” Mr. Delaronde said. “We are very proud of our heritage and protective about it. We don’t have a whole hell of a lot of it left. This is part of revitalizing the community.”
The band council decided to act after receiving complaints from natives who feel that too many non-natives are living on the reserve.
“We are responding to what the community wants,” Mr. Delaronde said.
Although Mohawk law says that non-natives can’t live on the reserve, they are allowed to visit and stay overnight, he explained.
“Sleeping over or staying for a week is a whole different situation,” he said.
Mr. Delaronde said he hopes that the non-natives accept the wishes of the community and leave peacefully. If they refuse to move, their names will be “published locally,” he said.
“I know that’s not a nice thing, but if people refuse, names will be published and then it becomes a peer pressure thing.”
It appears the Mohawk council of Kahnawake doesn’t seem to understand that they live in Canada on Canadian tax dollars. Joe Delaronde and Grand Chief Michael Delisle need to understand that there is only so much of this nonsense we are willing to tolerate, and this letter demanding that non-native spouses leave the reservation to preserve “racial purity” has more than crossed the line. How is it that a human rights tribunal could not identify and overturn this decision in thirty years when such policy is immoral and outright racist? The Canadian government has always been lenient when it comes to offering Indian Status to those seeking it, so I highly doubt that the Mohawk council would really worry about having their rights revoked. The only reason such a policy would exist would be to not only keep non-natives off the reserve, but to dissuade Mohawks from marrying them. This reeks of the worst kind of racism, something many in Canada would like to believe we have moved past, but obviously we have not…
It would be nice if the Provincial government in Quebec stepped in here and solved this problem, but I doubt they will. I also doubt the Supreme Court of Canada would actually want to protect the rights of Canadians (instead of terrorists) for once by allowing this case to be heard. What has Canada come to when homoseuxal couples have more rights and protection for those rights then heterosexual couples of mixed race? Downright disturbing…
[...] nonsense about the First Nations being “true Canadians”, let’s not forget that too many of them refuse to call themselves such while demanding we subsidize their way of life. Is that what Canuck1979 and others think we should do? Section off our country for ethnic/religious [...]
[...] are afforded this right. Considering the treatment of non-natives on reserves, as demonstrated by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake’s attempt to expel non-natives from the Kahnawake reserve last… I doubt an aboriginal-controlled Turtle Island would be as accepting of immigration as Canada has [...]