The Warriors of the 1990 Oka Crisis were armed through organized crime and smuggling operations. The history of the Warrior’s movement since the mid-1980s has been inextricably linked to that of the casino owners and tobacco dealers on the Iroquois Reserves.
Rumours of weapons abound; a police officer spoke of hand grenades cached on the Hiawatha Reserve near Peterborough, two different natives tell of the Oneida Peacekeepers and their stockpile of hundreds of assault rifles, body armour and night vision equipment. Elsewhere, rumour has it that machine guns and anti-tank rockets are stashed in almost every major Canadian Iroquois Reserve and at Tuscarora. Rumour gains substance when everyone can hear automatic weapons fire near Cornwall or sometimes around Six Nations. A Six Nations Band Police officer who chased Trevor van Evory (wanted for a hit-and-run incident) was confronted by several Warriors, when van Evory ducked into a smoke-shop and reported it was being raided. Understandably nervous, a Band officer reported that he saw a grenade launcher in the hands of one of the Warriors. Later he decided that in the heat of the moment he had erred and the Warrior only had a shotgun. But others have reported that grenade launchers have been acquired.
The rumours can be credible. In Canada, a US military 40mm grenade launcher can be purchased without a Firearms Acquisition Certificate because its low muzzle velocity means that it is technically not a firearm. Getting ammunition for one is another matter entirely — grenades are certainly not available in gun shops in the US or Canada. Before the new Canadian gun-control laws came into effect in August 1993, large capacity magazines could be readily purchased. Body armour and night-vision equipment are easy to buy but are not cheap. The heavy .50 calibre Barnett sniping rifle can be legally purchased in the US and Machine guns can be sold legally in many States with a Federal Firearms License and a $250 registration fee to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). Hand grenades and anti-tank rockets can be found for those with the money. A December 1992 raid on an Alberta bike gang, the Grim Reapers, turned up a .50 calibre machine gun. The February 1992 arrest of a non-native smuggler in Abbotsford, B.C. turned up a Soviet bloc machine gun, fully automatic rifles and hand grenades. A private arsenal with a machine gun, grenade launcher and several assault rifles was found by police in January 1994 in Toronto.
On Six Nations, rumours are one thing, witnesses are another. A boy playing in a barn near Ohsweken found crates of ammunition. Another boy accurately described an Argentine 40mm grenade launcher to his parents. Someone else exposed a researcher for this paper to considerable risk and showed him nine crates of ammunition for military rifles and a crate of ammunition holding 2,000 rounds for a .50 calibre machine gun on the private property of one of the Six Nation’s Silks in the south-east of the Reserve. This will have been cached long since. Another Six Nation member tells of seeing what he believes to be the pistol grip/magazine housing of an Uzi submachine gun protruding from behind the counter at Reg Hill’s Smoke Shop.
Solid facts are fewer, but many arise out of the 1990 Oka Crisis. The Armed Forces, using 10 years of accumulated reports from local media sources in Upstate New York, announced that the Warriors had medium machine guns, M-72 anti-tank rockets, and some heavy machine guns. The Warriors were coy about displaying these weapons and sarcastically stuck pipes in bunkers and described them as "Mohawk Machine guns". The Army found 14.5mm cartridge casings after the stand off at the Treatment Centre (which suggests something to fire the huge 14.5mm Soviet machine gun cartridge was nearby). Search teams pulled in a .50 calibre Barnett sniping rifle and assault rifles, along with a number of shotguns and hunting rifles in Kahnawake. A medium machine gun was seen in Warrior Hands at the 1979-80 Racquette Point Siege in Akwesasne. Assault rifles were abundant at Oka, these included AK-47s, M-16s and Mini-14s (the weapon used at the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre). Pistols were common and some Warriors carried RPK light machine guns. Military radio intercepts of Mohawk communications during the crisis turned up references to heavy weapons: Particularly to M-60 machine guns, a Browning machine gun, M-72 anti-tank rockets and a .50 calibre machine gun.
Even before the Oka Crisis, Tony laughing showed reporters 14 markedly identifiable SKS assault rifles and bayonets stacked in his Akwesasne Casino. One this became an issue, the cache was replaced with sporting rifles and shotguns. The Band Police in Six Nations seized several AK-47s and an Uzi submachine gun from Warrior Society members. A 1988 internal directive to members of the Warrior’s Society instructed them to acquire weapons and stocks of ammunition. Specified weapons include AK-47s, RPK machine guns or SKS carbines which fire the 7.62mm Russian cartridge, M-16s or Mini-14s which use the 5.56mm NATO Cartridge, or FN or M-14 rifles which chamber the 7.62mm NATO cartridge. Shotguns must fire 12 Gauge ammunition. These cartridges are common military/police munitions. The researcher who was shown the ammunition stockpile in Six Nations in April 1993, reports that three crates each of the above rifle cartridges were present. Crates hold 1,600 to 4,000 rounds, depending on the cartridge.
Some of the exiles from Akwesasne report that there is a brisk trade in Glock 9 mm pistols (famed for high standard of workmanship in their manufacture and their large magazine capacity) and high-tech .50 calibre sniping rifles from gun shops in Upstate New York. A Store called Carney’s in Massena is reputedly a favourite source. The .50 calibre cartridge can penetrate most armoured vehicles at 600 metres and can badly damage helicopters. The round is accurate to 2,000 metres and snipers armed with the weapon have killed and injured dozens of soldiers in body-armour in Ulster and among French and Ukrainian UN contingents in Bosnia. The Akwesasne exiles also believe that ex-Soviet Bloc firearms are being smuggled into Warrior hands.
According to Noble Villeneuve, the Ontario MPP for the riding of Stormont-Dundas — Glengarry and East Grenville, many citizens report seeing cigarette boats mounted with belt-fed machine guns. When docked at the riverside in daytime, some of the cigarette boats the St. Regis river sport heavy pintle mounts that could support a machine gun — but these are often dismissed as supports for fishing equipment. One former Warrior-leader indicated that the Society had six M-60 machine guns in Akwesasne before the Oka Crisis. Some Canada Customs officers say they have seen natives (presumably Oneida Peacekeepers) wearing body armour and carrying assault rifles at the Walpole Island Reserve near Windsor.
At Six Nations and some other Reserves, many houses now sport antennas for VHF band radios (normally used for police and military short-range networks) and HF band radios for long-range communications. In 1991, the American Band Council at Akwesasne made some substantial purchases of US military surplus — an ex-US Navy lighter (a large work-boat), two small landing craft, a variety of cross-country vehicles, military pattern earth-moving equipment and a stockpile of between 100,00 and 500,000 military ration packs. These can be put to perfectly legitimate uses, but one of the landing craft was observed tied up on the banks of the St. Regis River near a number of cigarette boats. Some of the vehicles could be seen in Akwesasne as late as December 1993 and appeared to be in good condition.
Improvements in communications can be gauged by the Canadian government’s purchase of new radio equipment. The new intercept and location sets can handle modern burst transmitting and frequency hopping radios. The equipment can continually scan all manner of frequencies and instantly zero in on new transmissions; they also allow the operator to fix the location of hostile radio transmitters. As the Canadian Forces’ Communications Regiment in Kingston already has these capabilities, the new equipment is probably bound for the hands of the RCMP or Canada Customs.
Goods from former Soviet arms stocks have appeared in the hands of the Warrior’s Society. The RCMP has displayed an RPK light machine gun it seized in Cornwall to the Canada media, and footage from the Fifth Estate show in September 1993 showed a box of 89mm Makarov pistols that had been seized by police. These are of Soviet-military origin. Reg Hill has gone to Russia several times to negotiate the purchase of Russian commodities. The Russian Black Market is the world’s premiere supplier of discount high-tech weaponry and anything is for sale. One Toronto store-owner was offered the guidance packages from AS-15 air-launched cruise missiles as "conversation pieces" in February 1993. Two years earlier these were vital technical secrets that would have been defended to the death by Soviet security organs. Polish authorities report that a third of their inventory of man portable weapons and small arms are missing — gone to unknown parties. One cargo that Hill has brought to Canada from the former Soviet Bloc was a shipment of bales of stuffing for upholstery — these were seen by several Six Nations residents. There are no furniture factories on Six Nations or other Iroquois Reserves.