“Don’t vote, it’s not your government” - Many Mohawks in Kahnawà:ke won’t vote in the federal election

To escape the federal election in Montreal, all you have to do is cross the Mercier Bridge. In Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) reserve along the St. Lawrence River, there is a notable absence of candidate posters and electoral events. 

Most people in Kahnawà:ke choose not to vote in Canadian elections. 

That doesn’t mean that no one cares about politics in Kahnawà:ke. On the contrary - Kahnawà:ke is home to two distinct forms of government: the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) band office, whose leaders are elected by voting, and traditional Longhouse governance, whose leaders are chosen by Clan Mothers and community consensus. Mohawk people are part of the Haudenosaunee confederacy comprising six nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. 

‍“No one in this room votes”

Right now, Taiaiake Alfred, a specialist in Kanien'kehá:ka politics and history, is leading the Kahnawà:ke Governance Project (Kgov), bringing community members together to discuss how to restore traditional government in the community. On April 9, after a Kgov meeting, Taiaiake told attendees they could share their thoughts with La Converse about voting in the federal election.

“No one in this room votes,” said a woman in the group of around 20 people to knowing laughter. 

As people got up to leave after three hours of discussing how they wanted leadership to work in their community, a few stuck around to speak with La Converse. 

Winona Polson-Lahache, longtime political advisor to the MCK, had a brief message for fellow Kahnawà:ke residents: “Don’t vote, it’s not your government.”

Conservatives and Liberals: “They're all wings of the same bird”‍

Elder Ka’nahsohon Kevin Deer explains that many people in Kahnawà:ke respect the Two-Row Wampum way, a Haudenosaunee living treaty that states that First Nations and the Canadian government are supposed to exist parallel in harmony, neither interfering with the other, prompting many members of those nations to refuse to vote. 

“Essentially we have our own political ways, the settlers and the people that immigrated have their own government and how they run things, so that's their internal business. Just like we have our own government and whatever we do, that's our own internal business,” says Ka’nahsohon.

It’s not just Haudenosaunee people in Kahanwà:ke who refuse to vote in Canadian elections. During the 2021 electoral campaign, traditional leadership of the Six Nations of Grand River forced an Elections Canada polling station off its territory, stating that its presence violated treaty rights. 

Ka’nahsohon feels that expecting Onkwehón:we (First Peoples) to vote is ongoing colonialism.

“It's all about, you know, ‘We're going to subjugate you, we're the ruling power here, we're going to legislate you from the womb to the tomb,’” says Ka’nahsohon.

He says no party will truly address the climate crisis or respect Indigenous sovereignty by giving land back.

“The way politics works, it's all about power, money, and this whole economic engine, so a lot of times the animals, the earth are expendable because it's always profits over the people. And that's the problem… They're all wings of the same bird, so to speak,” says Ka’nahsohon.

Deer doesn’t plan on voting - he feels it won’t make a difference, “because the province is still going to determine if they want to put these battery plants up or whatever they want to do.”

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“We're Canadian citizens by force, by coercion”

An editorial in The Eastern Door, Kahnawà:ke’s newspaper, stated “In the spirit of the Two Row Wampum, the vast majority of community members will boycott the federal vote.” For Taiaiake Alfred, it’s less of a boycott, more about the fact that he does not consider voting in Canadian elections his “civic responsibility.”

“My nation is the Mohawk nation, and we're in relations with another nation. So I don't have any hostility in it per se. It's just the fact that my political community is not Canada,” says Taiaiake.

“We're Canadian citizens by force, by coercion. Not by choice. And so it's colonial for us to be considered Canadian.”

Taiaiake also feels that the Kanien'kehá:ka vote doesn’t make much of a difference. Around 10,000 people live in Kahnawà:ke, making up around nine per cent of the total population of their riding, La Prairie—Atateken. 

“We're such a small number of people in a big riding that it doesn't matter. So the only implications are negative for us. It’s like a surrender of our nationhood for no gain politically at all,” says Taiaiake. 

“I mean, the one thing in my mind that could possibly override it at some point would be, like, say there was a far-right candidate, and we were so numerous where our vote could influence that. Then I could see some arguments for strategically, you guys should all go vote as an act of resistance against that. But we're nowhere near in that situation,” says Taiaiake. 

The Eastern Door’s March 28 editorial stated “There’s bad and there’s worse, and then there’s the Conservatives,” citing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s track record of criticizing compensating residential school survivors and pushing for the development of the Ring of Fire, and stated the Trudeau administration made some minor advancements in Indigenous rights - and some violations, like the continued presence of RCMP in Wet’suwet’en territory. But Taiaiake said that neither Poilievre and Carney will truly advance Mohawk interests. 

“For me, there's no real meaningful difference [between the Liberals and Conservatives] as it pertains to Indigenous issues,” says Taiaiake. 

“Where has the demonstrable benefit come from Indigenous participation in the electoral system? Here and there maybe, but there's been no meaningful huge gain for indigenous people. But there's been a great loss in terms of the surrender of our independent nationhood as a concept in Canadian political discourse,” he concludes. 

Sha’tekarón:iase Cross, a 24-year-old Mohawk man, said voting in the Canadian election would be tantamount to voting for your warden as a prison inmate. 

“My rights are continuously always being infringed on. So whether I get a better sentence or a worse sentence, it's still a sentence. I should be out of this prison. I shouldn't be in it in the first place,” he says. 

“My voice isn't being heard”

Sha’tekarón:iase says he prefers consensus-based community decision-making, in line with  Kanien'kehá:ka traditional governance. 

“I never really wanted to vote in a way. I always thought that was kind of like a weird process in terms of our culture,” says Sha’tekarón:iase, who has never voted in a band council election either.

“In traditional governance, you put people who are supposed to be there in the leadership roles… not just kind of being like, I like this guy because, you know, he swindled a few people with his words and now he's there [as a leader], even though I didn't vote. The democratic view of how people get elected into positions can also be not in favour for everyone. The person who's not better, in my opinion, [can] get elected. Then it's like, now my voice isn't being heard in that aspect,” he says. 

“No matter who we choose, we're going to just continue to deal with the same B.S.”

In a phone call with La Converse, Steve Bonspiel, editor of The Eastern Door, also cited the Two Row Wampum - “we’re not supposed to meddle in their affairs, and they’re not supposed to meddle in ours.”

“There are some [Indigenous communities] that vote and they partake in that system and say ‘we want to help to kind of choose the leader for our future.’ But in Mohawk communities, we know that no matter who we choose, we're going to just continue to deal with the same B.S. So obviously, a Liberal government, maybe an NDP government would be easier to deal with than Conservatives, but it's all the same beast, right?” he explains. 

Bonspiel says that no party is willing to move ahead on active Kanien'kehá:ka land claims. Originally, Kahnawà:ke territory spanned about 30,000 acres. Now, the community only controls 13,000. Without promises to return ancestral land into the hands of Kanien'kehá:ka sovereignty, Bonspiel says Mohawks don’t see much of a point in voting.

“I think that that's something that [the government] is always trying to stall because they don't want to give the land back. So they can continue to build, they continue to develop on it. So there's no land left, you know? I think that's the biggest thing. If [land back] can't be on the party's platform, any party, then you're not really being serious about Indigenous relations,” says Bonspiel.

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