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This is an excerpt from the new book, When the Pine Needles Fall, published September 24, 2024 by Between the Lines.

Sean Carleton: Many people will recognize you as the Kanien’kehá:ka spokesperson from the summer of 1990 during the Mohawk Crisis, the siege of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke by the Sureté du Quebec (or SQ, the provincial police) and the Canadian Army. The images of you from that summer are iconic, instantly recognizable by many who remember that conflict. But what was your life like before that summer?

In A Short History of the Blockade, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson states that being on her Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Homelands taught her about life as being “continual, reciprocal, and reflective.” How did you learn about your relationship to the land, as an Indigenous person, as a Kanien’kehá:ka from Kanehsatà:ke, and what made you want to put your body on the land and your life on the line to defend your Homeland?

Ellen Gabriel: Well, that’s an easy answer: the land is everything to me as a Kanien’kehá:ka person, as an Indigenous person. The land is a teacher. Land is life-giving and life-sustaining, and it’s a privilege to be able to use some of my life’s energy to help protect the earth and ensure it can support the next seven generations. That means everything to me, that is an important part of my life’s purpose.

Growing up on a farm I learned how to love the land, Mother Earth, and appreciate all she has to provide us. I was out on the land daily, learning what is safe to touch and what we should stay away from. As children we’re fearless and love to explore. Laughing and playing on the land, I was always outside enjoying nature. My siblings and I worked on the ranch feeding horses, cleaning stalls, bailing hay, and doing other chores outside. There were no video games when I was growing up, and TV was kind of a special treat at that time. My mother Annie was a skilled gardener and could do anything she set her mind to. During summer vacation, she would send us outside to weed and tend to the garden, as she had learned to do growing up with seven siblings. There was a special connection for me right from the beginning. I would say it’s innate, and inherited somewhat from both sides of my family and Kanien’kehá:ka ancestors.

Land is everything for us as Indigenous Peoples. After my mother passed away, my aunties on my mother’s side became like our second mothers and kept us grounded in our identity. In fact in Kanien’kehá:ka culture, aunties are called “Ista” which means mother, followed by their names. So aunties are important in the raising of children and strengthening the family unit. I’m grateful for having them in my life as they also shaped who I am today.

When I learned that Québécois developers were planning to cut down the Pines — a most sacred part of our community and an integral part of our identity here in Kanehsatà:ke — that motivated me to pay greater attention to what was going on around me. I began to realize I had to join the Onkwehón:we (Indigenous) Peoples’ movement to protect the land, to stand up for the land, if I wanted to continue enjoying it and make sure future generations can too.

I started going to the Longhouse where I learned the songs, dances, ceremonies, and participated in the political discussions. Kanonhsésne (or the Longhouse under the Haudenosaunee) is a form of governance that existed before European Contact. In the 1980s, when I was in my twenties, I wanted to learn more about our history and our ways as Kanien’kehá:ka. Being a part of the Longhouse, and connect- ing with traditional people, became something I identified with and could feel an affiliation or belonging to.

The Longhouse was a very educational place for me and others. It was also where I learned more about how to protect our lands and was taught about what had been done for hundreds of years at that point. I learned more about our history, and about the Pines in particular, as a kind of last vestige of our common lands in the community, a symbol of our freedom. So, it was an easy decision to become part of the movement to protect the Pines and our land from more colonial development.

In terms of relationships to land, I can’t speak for anybody else except myself and my perspective, of course. The Pines remain a very magical and spiritual part of the environment that I live in and grew up in. That connection to land is just something that you feel inside. And to know that it’s being threatened because someone just wants to extend a golf course was frustrating—that’s what was proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you know? What was even more insulting is that the developers were going to dig up our family members, our ancestors in our cemetery, to do it! That was just too much. It was an affront to us as Kanien’kehá:ka. Our community of Kanehsatà:ke has been fighting these kinds of incursions on our lands for three hundred years now. That fight for our survival is in our blood. The land is really important. If you don’t have land, you don’t have anything. And that’s something I was taught early on by my parents and other community members.

My parents were both Kanien’kehá:ka and they spoke Kanien’kéha (the Mohawk language) and so it’s my first language. We spoke Kanien’kéha at home and I was surrounded by first language speakers growing up. I also experienced racism at a very young age, which made me fearful because as a child, racism is scary especially if it’s adults who are carrying it out. I became angry when I learned why it was happening and that certainly shaped my view of the wider world.

I understand the determination of Indigenous Peoples to protect all parts of our identity, and why we may be perceived as fierce. That fierceness to protect ourselves and land is misinterpreted, conveniently mind you, by government and society as being violent. It’s become a stereotype used to influence the public to oppose our human rights. But we’re strong and determined, like the many generations before us, and so the will to protect ourselves and our Homelands is something we have inherited. We know who we are and why protecting our land is so important to us, it’s for our survival’s sake.

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