US embassy cable - 04MONTREAL874

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTREAL 000874 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/22/2009 
TAGS: ASEC, PREL, PGOV, SNAR, PHUM, CA 
SUBJECT: KANESATAKE GRAND CHIEF GABRIEL FRUSTRATED BY LAW 
ENFORCEMENT INACTION 
 
REF: A. A) MONTREAL 68 
 
     B. B) QUEBEC 80 
 
Classified By: Bernadette Allen, Consul General, Montreal, State.  Reas 
 
on: 1.5(B) 
 
1. (C) SUMMARY:  The Mohawk territory of Kanesatake has 
become a haven for marijuana cultivation, drug dealing, arms 
possession, and other organized criminal activity, ousted 
Grand Chief James Gabriel told Consulate representatives on 
June 17.  Gabriel, who has not been able to return to 
Kanesatake since his home was burned to the ground in 
January, said that the specter of the 1990 Oka crisis and 
fear of deadly violence, have prevented the Surete du Quebec 
and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from taking action. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
2. (C) Accompanied by aid Dean Dussault, Grand Chief James 
Gabriel spoke to Consulate officers for over an hour and a 
half about the trouble-plagued Kanesatake reserve, one of 
three Mohawk territories in the province of Quebec. 
Kanesatake (population 1,400) located on the North shore of 
the Saint Lawrence river some 50 kilometers from Montreal, 
was the sight of the 1990 Oka crisis, in which opposition to 
the expansion of a golf course on Mohawk burial grounds led 
to a summer-long stand-off between Mohawk warriors and SQ 
officers and Canadian Forces and resulted in the death of an 
SQ officer. 
 
3. (C) Chief Gabriel said that the narcotics trade in 
Kanesatake took off in the mid-1990s.  He noted that there 
had been an SQ intervention in 1995, led by then Quebec 
Public Security Minister Serge Menard, in which 20 to 30 
acres and 100,000 marijuana plants were destroyed, yet no 
arrests were made.  After the raids, marijuana cultivation 
moved inside, with as many as five underground bunkers 
constructed to house hydroponic grow-operations on the 
territory.  Gabriel estimated that between five and seven 
hundred pounds of marijuana is smuggled off the territory 
each week, for export to the United States.  Gabriel said 
that the drug traffic now also includes heroin and other hard 
drug sales.  Gabriel believes that an investigation of the 
money trail would show that the local bank in Oka sued by 
Kanesatake residents, the Caisse Populaire, is awash in large 
American dollar deposits. 
 
4. (C) Chief Gabriel identified the leaders of the narcotics 
trade as Robert and Gary Gabriel (both of whom are related to 
James Gabriel) and said they are affiliated with the Hells' 
Angels biker gang, and to a lesser extent, Chinese and 
Russian mafia groups.  According to James Gabriel, Robert 
Gabriel, has never had a full-time job -- and his wife 
recently applied for welfare -- yet Robert lives in a home 
worth several hundred thousand dollars and drives expensive 
cars. 
 
5. (C) Gabriel was first elected Kanesatake Grand Chief in 
2001, though in effect he led a minority government as four 
of the seven Band Council members were "less than 
enthusiastic about law enforcement."  However, in July 2003 
elections, Gabriel gained a majority; he and three other 
Council members took a decision to bring the territory's 
ineffective police force "back up to par" and Gabriel began 
talking to the SQ and RCMP about support for action against 
the criminal elements that had taken root on the reserve. 
Gabriel said that plans to replace the police chief and bring 
in an outside aboriginal police unit were leaked, however, 
and the new force got "boxed in" at police headquarters on 
January 12, leading to the 30-hour blockade by masked, armed 
men surrounding the station (see Ref. A). 
 
6. (C) Quebec Public Security Minister Jacques Chagnon's 
negotiation of a temporary fix -- which reinstated the old 
police chief and brought in Mohawk peacekeepers from the 
near-by Kahnawake reserve to serve as an interim police force 
-- was mainly "an image-boosting" exercise, according to 
Gabriel.  The peacekeepers did little to police the territory 
and ultimately left in March.  There has been no real 
policing in Kanesatake since January, Gabriel said. 
 
7. (C) The three chiefs on the Band Council who side with 
Gabriel, Chiefs Clarence Simon, Marie Chene and Doreen 
Canatonquin, remain in Kanesatake but are keeping low 
profiles because they face harassment by people loyal to the 
dissident chiefs and criminal gangs.  Gabriel said that the 
dissident chiefs, John Harding, and Pearl and Steven 
Bonspile, periodically make appearances in the media, 
"wrapping themselves in the cloak of Mohawk sovereignty." 
Gabriel said that the whole Band Council never meets; when 
decisions have to be taken regarding the administration of 
the territory, Gabriel meets with Chiefs Simon, Chene and 
Contonquin at the hotel in Laval (about two kilometers from 
Kanesatake) where Gabriel has lived since January.  The 
dissident chiefs have called for an election on July 14 to 
choose a new Grand Chief, claiming that James Gabriel has 
abandoned the territory.  But James Gabriel says that there 
is no way a fair election, supervised by an impartial, 
outside monitoring organization, can be held in July.  James 
Gabriel said that any election will have to be delayed; 
lawyers have advised him that the current Band Council could 
remain in power for a few months beyond their mandate if 
conditions do not permit an election. 
 
8. (C) Gabriel has been in continuous dialogue with the SQ 
and RCMP to reestablish a police force, but to date, police 
officers have only patrolled the highway surrounding 
Kanesatake, and not actually entered the territory.  The SQ 
has been working with a Mohawk police force in preparation to 
re-enter the territory, but so far has held back entering 
Kanesatake, leading to much frustration on the Mohawks' part. 
 Gabriel said that there has been friction recently between 
the Mohawk police and their SQ sponsors; cooperation has been 
threatened by a personnel dispute, and mistrust on both 
sides.  At bottom, the Mohawk force would like to enter the 
territory and begin enforcing the law; the SQ feels the time 
is not right, and that violence would ensue if either or both 
the SQ and the Mohawk force were to go into Kanesatake. 
 
9. (C) Though it is clear that Gabriel is in close contact 
with the Quebec government (which is putting him up in the 
Laval hotel), Gabriel expressed deep frustration over the 
unwillingness of either the Quebec or federal government to 
bring law and order to Kanesatake.  Though the Oka crisis has 
been repeatedly raised by the Quebec media and government 
officials, Gabriel said the current situation is very 
different from 1990, when the Kanesatake population and 
Mohawks from the other Quebec reserves supported the Mohawk 
warriors' stance.  He said that the traditional Mohawk 
Warrior Society, which stood up during the Oka crisis, and 
"the group of thugs" calling itself warriors in Kanesatake 
today are different.  Other First Nations tribes in Quebec 
have been supportive of Gabriel, citing their concern about 
the vulnerability of their own native communities to 
organized crime infiltration.  Gabriel said that the only 
support that the dissident Chiefs have been able to summon is 
from professional activists like Jaggi Singh and Sean Brandt. 
 And, contrary to claims made by SQ officials to the Quebec 
Consul General in May (see Ref B), Gabriel says there has 
been no influx of Mohawks from other reserves, in Canada or 
the Untied States. 
 
10. (C) Gabriel is disheartened by the Quebec Security 
Minister Jacques Chagnon's repeated characterizations of the 
problem as a dispute between Mohawk factions that an election 
could resolve.  He feels that Chagnon, supported by Quebec 
Premier Jean Charest, simply wants the Kanesatake situation 
to be "quiet," even if the drug trade and criminal activity 
flourish.  But Gabriel said that young people on the 
territory -- who have few employment opportunities -- are 
influenced by the apparent affluence and lifestyles of the 
drug dealers and criminals.  He believes the criminal 
activity problems will only grow worse, as more community 
members are drawn into it. 
 
11. (C) Gabriel also cited fears of people "taking the law 
into their own hands."  He said that people on both sides of 
the conflict have arms in Kanesatake.  According to (James) 
Gabriel, in addition to hunting weapons, Gary Gabriel has 
explosives, assault weapons and rocket launchers.  "Most of 
our community members can recognize the sound of an AK-47," 
Gabriel said.  Gabriel and his aid Dussault both emphasized 
the difficulty for the "silent majority" in Kanesatake to 
speak out in their small community against criminals that 
everyone knows and sees often.  But given the prevalence of 
weaponry on the territory, Gabriel said he is very afraid 
that "blood feuds" will surface." 
 
12.  (U) Grand Chief Gabriel gave an exclusive interview to 
the Journal de Montreal on the same day he visited the 
Consulate.  During the course of the interview, he revealed 
something he had mentioned briefly to us: the fact that for 
the past year Kanesatake has been under the administrative 
supervision of the Ministry of Indian Affairs, assigned to a 
PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant working full-time from an 
office in Oka (situated next to the Kanesatake territory). 
According to Gabriel, Kanesatake had racked up an accumulated 
deficit of C$4 million by 2003.  Ottawa had imposed financial 
supervision prior to Gabriel's attaining the majority on the 
Band Council that year, Gabriel emphasized. 
 
13.  (U) The tabloid Journal focused on the fact that part of 
the territory's deficit stemmed from mortgage payments made 
on individual Kanesatake homes -- including that of Robert 
Gabriel -- that the Ministry of Indian Affairs deducted from 
Kanesatake's budget.  Apparently, the Ministry customarily 
co-signs mortgage loans for native applicants.  According to 
what James Gabriel told Le Journal, when Robert Gabriel was 
unable to make payments on his $185,000 mortgage, the 
Ministry of Indian Affairs paid the debt in full, subtracted 
the sum from the Band Council's budget, and transferred the 
property -- a large mansion with a pool -- to the Council's 
ownership.  However, Robert Gabriel and his family continued 
to live there.  Robert Gabriel, who has been accused of 
participating in the January 12 riot and blockade at the 
police station, is under court order currently to stay away 
from Kanesatake. 
 
14.  (C) Gabriel's story conforms to information gathered 
from law enforcement contacts of the Consulate.  There is 
indeed great concern on the part of both the federal and 
provincial police about the arms on the territory, and the 
deadly confrontations that could result if a full-scale raid 
were to be mounted and a new police unit installed.  We 
understand that an RCMP force would be prepared to enter 
Kanesatake territory if "something blows" and violence 
occurs, but for now, both the SQ and the RCMP are holding 
back.  The fate of James Gabriel and his Mohawk police force 
remains to be seen.  He told us that he is concerned the 
Kanesatake situation will fade from he public eye if 
enforcement actions are not taken soon.  But he was equally 
certain that the territory is a tinderbox, ready to explode. 
 
ALLEN