An Irishwoman's Diary

A WARM WIND blows off the St Lawrence Seaway as we approach Kahnawake, a First Nations reserve about an hour away from Montreal’s bustling downtown. One of about 600 reserves across Canada, it has a sleepy, rural feel: dusty roads lead past modest bungalows where around 7,500 Mohawks live on land that they govern themselves, many exempt from paying taxes to both federal and provincial governments.

If it makes headlines, it’s often for contentious issues like who has the right to live here, or about the production and sale of tax-free cigarettes – as you enter the reserve, signs point the way down several tobacco roads. But this month it will be in the spotlight when its most famous resident – a Mohawk woman who died more than 300 years ago – is canonised by the Catholic church as North America’s first aboriginal saint.

Kateri Tekakwitha, who died in 1680 at the age of 24, lived in Kahnawake – or Caughnawaga as it was once called – for the last few years of her life. Born around 1656 in what is now the village of Auriesville, about 40km west of Albany, New York, she survived smallpox as a child, but was scarred badly. She became interested in the Christianity being preached by Jesuit missionaries, but after being baptised, and taking vows as a virgin, was shunned by her people; she left and went to Caughnawaga, a Jesuit mission village “erected by the French for the protection of the Christian Iroquois” as a sign in present-day Kahnawake says today. (Mohawks are one of six Iroquois tribes.)

Devotion to her began soon after her death, with healing qualities being attributed to her from the 18th century onwards and there are shrines to her today in both Kahnawake and Auriesville.

Kateri will be the church’s first aboriginal saint, and First Nations Catholics across Canada and the US are proud and excited, with hundreds planning to go to Rome for the ceremony. In the souvenir shop of Kahnawake’s Kateri Centre, Beverly Delormier says she is looking forward to her third visit to Rome for the canonisation. The Kateri centre and church where Kateri is buried, solid stone structures built in traditional Quebecois style, attract many visiting religious groups, from elsewhere in Canada, the US and Europe as does the Kateri shrine in New York state, more than 300km south across the Canada/US border.

But joy over her canonisation is likely to be mixed with painful memories: the history of European conquest, colonial exploitation and the role played by Christian conversions is intertwined with the story of Kateri.

Much has changed in Kahnawake since my first visit to the reserve when I was a child and recent immigrant to Canada. We brought away small beaded purses and religious pamphlets about Kateri, who was more exotic than any saint we’d learnt about at school in Manchester. (She also got quite exotic treatment in Leonard Cohen’s 1968 novel Beautiful Losers, where she features as part of a mystifying love triangle).

Our visit was in 1954, around the same time the Canadian government was expropriating over 1,000 acres of the reserve’s land to build the St Lawrence Seaway, cutting off residents’ direct access to the St Lawrence River. (Its governing council is still pursuing a claim lodged years ago to land – or compensation for its loss – in a nearby Montreal suburb.) It was not long past the era of residential schools, where Indian – as they were still called then – children were removed from their families and punished if they spoke Mohawk. It was before the 1990 Oka Crisis, when another small Mohawk reserve, Kanesatake, about 30km west of Montreal, forcibly stopped land they claimed as theirs being developed as a golf course.

In the past half century, First Nations people (called Native Americans in the US) have asserted their rights across North America. However, many communities still suffer from problems – alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide – common to dispossessed marginalised indigenous people around the world. Kahnawake is one of the better-off reserves, and a good number of its young people go to third-level studies in Montreal; a lot of residents have good jobs, on and off the reserve.

And although many people there were brought up Catholic, some are trying to reclaim their traditions – their language, religion and way of governing themselves. Fran Beauvais, a Mohawk who studied social work from an aboriginal perspective at Montreal’s McGill University, is one of about 1,500 people living on the reserve who follow traditional First Nations’ Longhouse beliefs, which revolve around the concept of giving thanks to all aspects of the natural world. It is not a religion but a way of life, she says. “We’re all community people,” says Fran adding, “I was born Mohawk first and I’ll die Mohawk”.

The Catholic church is planning a two-day celebration for Kateri’s canonisation, starting on October 20th, with services mainly in English with parts in French and Mohawk. The event, say Canada’s Catholic bishops, will be a great honour to all of North America, but also to its aboriginal peoples.