Sûreté du Québec: Non-local activists: Local activists: The Oka Crisis (French: Crise d'Oka),[8][9][10] also known as the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance (French: Résistance de Kanehsatà:ke),[1][11][12] or Mohawk Crisis, was a land dispute between a group of Mohawk people and the town of Oka, Quebec, Canada, over plans to build a golf course on land known as "The Pines" which included an indigenous burial ground.

[13] Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people, mainly members of the Mohawk nation (Kanien’kehà:ka), first established themselves in the Montreal area before moving north to their homeland in the Hudson River valley.

[17][18][19][20] In 1676, the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice (Sulpician Fathers), a Roman Catholic order, then based in Paris, France, founded Montreal Island's first mission at the foot of Mount Royal to minister to the Iroquois / Mohawk, Algonquin and Huron neophytes and to distance them from French settlers in Ville Marie.

Protests by Mohawks and others, as well as concern from the Quebec Minister of the Environment, led to negotiations and a postponement of the project by the municipality in August pending a court ruling on the development's legality.

[37] On June 30, 1990,[38] the court found in favour of the developers, and the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, announced that the remainder of the Pines would be cleared to expand the golf course to eighteen holes and to construct 60 condominiums.

[39] On March 11, as a protest against the court decision to allow the golf course expansion to proceed, some members of the Mohawk community erected a barricade blocking access to the dirt side-road between Route 344 and "The Pines".

"[42] The next day, the Quebec Human Rights Commission alerted John Ciaccia and Tom Siddon, respectively the provincial and federal native affairs ministers, of the rapidly increasing threat of conflict near Oka and the need to establish an independent committee to review the historical Mohawk land claim.

[30] Ciaccia wrote a letter of support for the Mohawk, saying that "these people have seen their lands disappear without having been consulted or compensated, and that, in my opinion, is unfair and unjust, especially over a golf course."

[30] The previous day[38] the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, had asked the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) to intervene with the Mohawk protest, citing alleged criminal activity at the barricade.

[30] The SQ deployed their Emergency Response Team (ERT), a police tactical unit, threw tear gas canisters and concussion grenades[44][25] at the protesters in an attempt to force them to disperse.

Although an initial account reported that 31-year-old SQ Corporal Marcel Lemay had been shot in the face during the firefight,[45] a later inquest determined that the bullet which killed him struck his "left side below the armpit, an area not covered by [his] bullet-proof vest".

[46] On July 12, at the request of the Quebec minister of Public Security, the Canadian Armed Forces began sending plain clothes military officers, C7 rifles, night-vision equipment, bulletproof vests and armoured vehicles.

Additionally, over a hundred Oneida people from New York, Wisconsin, and southern Ontario, as well as a Quebec Algonquin man, and several women from western Canada and Mexico all came to help.

Corporal Marcel Lemay's funeral was held on July 16, and was attended by around 2000 people, including police officers from across Canada and the SQ director.

On July 17, the Red Cross was granted entrance by police to provide food relief, but this access was rescinded quickly, forcing residents to smuggle provisions in.

The Mohawk coalition, speaking on behalf of the resistance, agreed on preconditions for negotiations: free access to food and advisors and the presence of independent international observers, which both the provincial and federal governments firmly opposed.

[48] Residents of Châteauguay assaulted a Mohawk woman trying to buy groceries and tried to prevent her from leaving the store, from which she had to be escorted by police, and threw tomatoes at her and her children.

[5] The heated context of the "failed" Meech Lake Accord earlier that summer, as well as the tensions between French and English speakers in the province complicated public sentiment vis-a-vis the Kanehsatàːke resistance.

[46] These remarks inflamed tempers that had been running especially high from comments preceding this crisis, including those by Ricardo Lopez, the federal Member of Parliament for Châteauguay, who denigrated the Mohawk.

Lieutenant-General Kent Foster announced the upcoming use of three Leopard tanks and that Brigadier-General Armand Roy was given full autonomy to attack at will with the objective of obtaining "unconditional surrender" from the Warriors.

On August 20, a company of the Royal 22e Régiment, known colloquially in English as the "Van Doos", led by Major Alain Tremblay, took over three barricades and arrived at the final blockade leading to the disputed area.

Additional troops and mechanized equipment mobilized at staging areas around Montreal, while reconnaissance aircraft flew air photo missions over Mohawk territory to gather intelligence.

On August 29, the Mohawks at the Mercier Bridge negotiated an end to their protest blockade with Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Gagnon, the "Van Doos" commander who had been responsible for the south shore of the St. Lawrence River during the crisis.

The next day, only 24[50] Warriors were left defending a territory of only a few hundred meters and were surrounded by ravines, the lake, over 400 soldiers with machine guns, armoured vehicles and helicopters.

Casalpro was beaten by Sûreté du Québec officers after his arrest, and while three were suspended without pay, the case took so long to process that they had already left the force.

[54] Casalpro's brother, Tracy Cross, later served as the best man at the wedding of slain SQ Corporal Lemay's sister, Francine, who had reconciled with the community after reading At the Woods' Edge, a history of Kanehsatà:ke.

Canadian filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has made documentaries about the Oka Crisis, including Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) and Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000).

[39] Montreal Gazette journalist Albert Nerenberg switched careers after smuggling a video camera behind the barricades and making his first documentary, called Okanada.

[59] Robin Philpot wrote a book about Canadian English language media's use of the crisis as a political tool following the failed Meech Lake Accord: Oka: dernier alibi du Canada anglais.

[60] The 2020 film Beans, which won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, portrays the incident through the eyes of a young Mohawk girl.