James Gabriel (Mohawk) is a politician, a former chief of Kanesatake, a First Nations settlement within the boundaries of the city of Oka, Quebec.
His tenure in office was controversial, marked by bitter divisions between his supporters and opponents that resulted in violence in January 2004.
[1] (In a 2004 article, Benoit Aubin suggested that such differences between maternal ancestries was part of the divide in the Nation between modernists like Gabriel and traditionalists like Steven Bonspille, John Harding (Sha ko hen the tha), and Pearl Bonspille, his opponents on the chiefs' council in the early 2000s, after he was re-elected as Grand Chief.
)[1] In 1991, following the lengthy Oka Crisis, which brought federal troops to the community, the 1700 members of Kanesatake changed their means of selecting leaders.
Until then the people had continued their traditional selection of chiefs by clan mothers, from those persons with hereditary rights to the position.
[1] Gabriel was concerned that increases in the sales of contraband cigarettes, were becoming an avenue of the drug trade and organized crime in Kanesatake.
In an interview he said, "When tax rollbacks killed the cigarette trade, they recycled into booze, drugs, weapons, illegal immigrants, anything with a cash value.
In 2002, Gabriel allowed the federal government to hire the private firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers to audit and assume control over the band's finances.
In late 2003, Gabriel arranged with Canada's Indian Affairs Department for an emergency loan of $900,000 to the community's police force.
Many local residents resisted this effort, and a standoff resulted, with 200 people surrounding the station and hired forces inside.
In 1990 the provincial police had been involved in the prolonged 78-day Oka standoff and were not eager to return to this First Nation's internal politics.
Some aboriginal groups in Canada, including the powerful Assembly of First Nations, have openly sided with Gabriel in this dispute, as has the Parti Québécois.
Gabriel's supporters believe that the provincial government capitulated to organized crime at Kanesatake in early 2004 by allowing him to be driven from the community.