Skawénnati Montour, an elder from Kanehsatake Montour

• General Notes
  • http://www.easterndoor.com/archives/VOL.13/13-4.htm
    
    Alienated Grand Chief James Gabriel was served court papers this week as he attempted to stage a Mohawk Council of Kanesatake band meeting at a hotel in Laval. Skawénnati Montour, an elder from Kanehsatake, delivered the papers behind closed doors at Gabriel's insistence. Only Montour and two other elders of a community entourage were allowed into the room by Gabriel's handlers and security force to deliver the papers.
    
    The group had come to the Sheraton Laval in response to a summons Gabriel issued last week, calling the whole of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake to a special meeting to discuss policing. It was the first time in many months that Gabriel had bothered to inform or invite more than the three Chiefs who support him to conduct business at a meeting of the council.
    
    Gabriel had not invited Chiefs John Harding, Pearl Bonspille or Steve Bonspille to take part in negotiating a new policing agreement with Canada and Quebec. Neither did he invite them to take part in brokering a $900,000 policing deal with the Solicitor General of Canada, nor to pass the January 2 band council resolution that allowed a 60-man police force led by Terry Isaac and Larry Ross to enter Kanehsatake. That resolution sparked the latest crisis in the beleaguered community.
    
    Gabriel was confronted over these actions at a press conference held later at his