Breakfast in bed.

"Le petit dejeuner au lit," La Presse, August 12, 1995; translated by John Richards.

He didn't want me to go to his place in Kanesatake...

"Are you crazy? They're going to kill me if they learn that I had a journalist over to my place."

"But I went to see some Indians this morning..."

"One more reason. The second your car comes into my yard, the neighbour is going to telephone the other neighbour who is going to call his sister on the band council..."

"I'm on a bike..."

"I'm saying no."

There it is. We met on the terrace of the Oka Marina. I came back to his paranoia: "I get the impression we're in Palermo, in Sicily, with the mafia on our butts..."

"Jerry Peltier and his friends, they are mafia. They control Kanesatake just as the mafia control Sicily. They rule by fear. The Warriors, who in principle should be defending the territory of the Mohawk people, are exclusively at the service of these people. I've no desire to get beat up..."

"Do the majority of those who live in Kanesatake think like you? Are people afraid?"

"Not that much. Those who talk are afraid. But people don't have that much desire to talk. They live their daily lives quietly. In relative security. Like all those with power, the mafia assure a semblance of order. They don't only take; they give, too. They give privileges and jobs; they share their power a bit, not much but enough to create an illusion. And above all, they have captured The Cause. Which means that an Indian who puts his nose into the criminal activities of the clique is a bad Indian because he is betraying the cause... But to come back to your question, no, what I'm telling you, it's not the opinion of the majority in Kanesatake. Apart from a few, including me, the Mohawks in Kanesatake adjust to mafia-like exercises of power, out of a sense of solidarity as much as indifference. They also think that, thanks to Peltier and his gang, they are stronger when it comes to dealing with the power of the whites..."

"This cause you talk about, that Jerry Peltier and his clique defend, is it the same as yours? The same as that of the majority of Indians in Kanesatake?"

"In its broad themes, yes."

"So, getting rid of Peltier and his friends would solve nothing?"

"The fact that the spokesmen for this cause are mafiosi, drug dealers, it's not nothing. It dishonours the cause and gives hostages to whites, to Europeans who refuse to hear us. Imagine that the Hells Angels declared themselves in favour of Quebec independence..."

"Why, when you speak of whites, do you say `Europeans' "?

"Because that's what they are, even if they've forgotten it. In labeling them like that, I remind them that they are strangers in this territory they stole from us..."

"There we are. In the beginning were the Indians. Don't you find that a bit inadequate as an argument? Besides, here in the Oka region, maybe the Sulpician priests got here before your Iroquois ancestors. Some say that the Iroquois settled in the Oka region precisely because the Sulpician priests provided them food (admittedly, they did so in the interest of evangelizing them, but ...)

"We were everywhere in America when you arrived. We don't occupy territory; we travel across it. We live from the land without asking more from it than it can give... The Europeans arrived on our lands, fenced them and pronounced `they are ours.' "

"They also cultivated the land, didn't they? We are into an old discussion: the Indian hunter, the white farmer. We are also faced with an old question: does the land belong to the first people who occupy it or to those who can increase its economic value? By all means take into account that `increasing its value' has meant not only economic wealth but also pollution, abuse, the injustice of violence. In sum, we are talking about civilization... But, however lousy this civilization may be, I don't see how 100,000 Indians who are profiting from it to the maximum (let's not say they are living as parasites on it) could change it. So, what do we do now? The Oka `Europeans,' as you call them, will not return to Europe. No more than the Spanish descendants in Mexico will return to Spain. No more than the Normans in Normandy (the Northmen) will return to Norway, where they originally came from. No more than the Arabs from Algeria and throughout the Mediterranean will return to Saudi Arabia. We cannot remake history. But let's agree we can improve it a bit. Let's discuss--you and me--a settling of accounts."

"We want Kanesatake. We want complete jurisdiction over the village."

"Agreed."

"As well, we want title to our traditional lands, roughly the old seigneurie, Deux-Montagnes..."

"Whoa! That includes Oka, Pointe-aux-Anglais, up to the village of Saint-Benoit, nearly to Mirabel. And what would happen to the whites who live there?"

"They would pay us rent..."

"Oh, I see. That's all?"

In addition to paying rent, perhaps they should serve breakfast in bed.