This weekend the Adventure Centre hosts the Reel Sunday (July 19) screening of NFB documentaries My Name is Kahentiiosta and Spudwrench - Kahnawake Man, which reveals details of the Oka Crisis from a Mohawk Nation perspective.
My Name is Kahentiiosta focuses on Kahentiiosta, a young Kahnawake Mohawk woman proud of her centuries-old heritage who is arrested after the 78-day armed standoff during the 1990 Oka crisis, and detained four days longer than the other women.
Her crime? The prosecutor representing the Quebec government will not accept her aboriginal name. From the perspective of Kahentiiosta, we witness the arrest and detention of those who withdrew to the Treatment Centre after the Canadian Army advanced, and we learn why Kahentiiosta was prepared to die to protect the land and trees sacred to the Mohawk people of Kanehsatake.
Spudwrench - Kahnawake Man looks at Randy Horne, high steel worker from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, near Montreal. As a defender of his people's culture and traditions, he was known as "Spudwrench" during the 1990 Oka crisis.
Horne was behind the barricades, resisting the efforts of the municipality of Oka to expand a golf course onto sacred Mohawk land. Horne is one of many Mohawk high steel workers who have travelled the continent, working on some of the world's tallest buildings - but have never lost touch with their roots.
Spudwrench - Kahnawake Man is both a portrait of Horne and the generations of daring Mohawk construction workers that have preceded him, and a unique look behind the barricades at one man's impassioned defence of sacred territory. It's the third film in Alanis Obomsawin's series on the events of 1990.
