On this day in history 30 years ago, a violent standoff known as the Oka Crisis or the Mohawk Resistance took place. You probably don’t know this because Indigenous history has been more or less wiped clean from history books. So I’m going to tell you.

At dawn on July 11th, 1990, Quebec police opened fire on the men, women, and children of Kahnesatake--a Mohawk rez north of Montreal.

This was part of a land dispute the Mohawk Warriors had been protesting and it resulted in a standoff that lasted 78 days (July 11th-September 26th, 1990).

Since the 18th century the Mohawk people had been pressing the government to recognize their right to their own land. But these requests went mostly ignored.

Mohawk Warriors built a barricade around sacred land only to be met with tear gas and concussion grenades. Many families had to take refuge in the local rehab center on the reserve just to keep their loved ones safe.

This community spent their entire summer defending the barricade at the Mercier Bridge until the Canadian government finally called in the military.

But what was this land dispute about, you ask? What did the town of Oka want with Mohawk Territory? The answer is a golf course.

The town of Oka wanted to expand their golf course, but this would mean infringing on sacred burial sites that had been there for generations.

The golf course expansion was eventually halted, but the underlying issues around Indigenous land have never ever been resolved by the Canadian government. Those who were small children during the Resistance are in their 30s today. The trauma can certainly never be undone.

Many Canadian PMs, including Trudeau who is frequently praised for his progressive views, have so much to answer for when it comes to the erasure and genocide of Indigenous people. There is no such thing as a post-racial country.

Let this be a lesson that official history is never representative of the oppressed. And to those in the US who think Canada is some post-racial utopia, remember that colonialism changed the WORLD, not just the US. There is no government that doesn’t favor the colonizer mindset.

To be Indigenous on this land is to be gaslit every single day. And yet despite being told we were never really here, that this land was never really ours—here we are. Proud to be Mohawk today and every day

Please follow our fellow Mohawk @kaniehtiio for her personal eye witness account. In addition to being a talented actress, she hosts a podcast called Coffee with My Ma that covers the life of her mother, Mohawk activist Kahn-Tineta Horn. Please pass this thread on. Niawen.