Kanehsatake, 270 years of resistance

On a hot July day in 1990, an historic confrontation propelled Native issues in Kanehsatake and the village of Oka, Quebec in to the international spotlight and into the Canadian conscience. Behind Mohawk lines that grueling summer, producer and director Alanis Obomsawin, herself an Abenaki Indian endured 78 nerve-wracking days and nights filming and armed standoff between the Kanehsatake Mohawk people of First Nations, the Quebec police and the Canadian army. A powerful feature-documentary emerges that takes you right into the action of an age-old aboriginal struggle. The result is a portrait of the people behind the barricade, providing insight into the Mohawk’s spiritual beliefs and fierce pride in their ancestry that governs their unyielding determination to protect their land.