This lecture is presented by Audra Simpson, assistant professor, anthropology, Columbia University.

The so-called “Oka Crisis of 1990” was a 78-day armed standoff between Mohawk nationals and the Surete du Quebec, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and finally, the Canadian Army. An Indigenous and militarized defense of territory and recalled as an “incident,” the “Crisis” received massive media coverage, rendering it a matter of epic proportions. During this resistance to the expropriation, Mohawk women served as negotiators, spokespeople and held great, unarmed influence. Simpson starts this paper with the Crisis and its management by women because it manifests so clearly the historical structure of settler colonialism. As such, this event was something far from momentary, it was systemically related to the ongoing process of Indigenous dispossession, the life of inherent and unceded Indigenous sovereignty in the face of settler appropriation and the centrality of women to processes of dispossession and sovereignty. But the interlocking of legal, rather than military lethality such as the historical and legal process of disenfranchising Native women from their legal recognition as Indians upon out marriage, does not get folded into analyses of the broader significance of this event. As such, the paper considers the relationship between this event and the failure of the settler state to eliminate Native women or their responsibilities to territory through either law or military force.

This lecture is part of IRWG's Transitions and Ruptures series and is cosponsored by Native American Studies.