Ellen Gabriel

It was March 1990, in Kanehsatà:ke, Quebec.

In Oka, there were plans to expand a golf course. The project threatened the Pines.

People from Kanehsatà:ke decided to protect the Pines. An artist joined them. Her name: Ellen Gabriel. Her Kanien'kéha name is Katsi'tsakwas.

She was born in 1959, in Kanehsatà:ke. She belonged to the Turtle Clan.

She taught art at the Kanehsatake Language and Cultural Center. And she was finishing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She received it in May 1990.

It was the people of the Longhouse, and her community, who chose her as their spokesperson.

Summer came. The crisis broke out.

For seventy-eight days, the community and the police forces stood face to face. During that summer of 1990, Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawà:ke lived through a siege.

Through those weeks, it was her voice that carried the words of her people.

In 1993, she appeared in a documentary: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance.

After 1990, she did not leave the struggle.

From 2001 to 2004, she coordinated McGill University's First Peoples' House.

In March 2004, she became president of Quebec Native Women. She held the post until December 2010.

There she defended the rights of Indigenous women. She spoke in particular about Bill C-31 and the Indian Act. She testified before parliamentary committees.

In 2005, the Native Women's Association of Canada gave her the Golden Eagle Award. In 2008, she received an award for women peacemakers, the Jigonsaseh Women of Peace Award.

Then she returned to the language.

Starting in November 2011, she worked at the language centre in Kanehsatà:ke, helping to restore Kanien'kéha.

She also joined the steering committee of Indigenous Climate Action.

At last she returned to images.

In 2021, she completed a documentary program at the New York Film Academy. Her film, Kanàtenhs – When the Pine Needles Fall, won several awards. In April 2025, the Conseil des arts de Montréal gave her its Grand Prix for the film.

In June 2024, the Université du Québec à Montréal awarded her an honorary doctorate.

With historian Sean Carleton, she also wrote a book, When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance. It was the first book about the siege told from her point of view. It was longlisted for Canada Reads 2025.

In 1990, she did not speak for herself alone: the people of the Longhouse had chosen her. This Kanien'kehá:ka way of standing together echoes Ubuntu, without merging with it.

In 1990, a golf course threatened the Pines. More than thirty years later, a woman of the Turtle Clan was still telling the story of those trees, needle by needle.