Director/producer: Alanis Obomsawin

* Cinematographers: Roger Rochat, Rene Sioui Labelle, Philippe Amigut * Editor: Yurij Luhovy

* Diary by: Louise Leger

Rocks at Whiskey Trench looks back at the events leading up to and following the attack on Mohawk women, children and elders by a rock-throwing mob during the 1990 Oka crisis in Quebec. It also delves into the history of Kahnawake and how the community has been affected by appropriation of land over the last 300 years.

The National Film Board film features interviews with residents of Kahnawake, news footage, archival photos and illustrations to explore this complex subject.

Rocks at Whiskey Trench is the fourth installment in filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s series on the Oka crisis of 1990. It has an unconfirmed budget and no international distributor on board as yet, but will likely be distributed by the nfb in North America.

‘That’s the last one,’ says Obomsawin from her Montreal office at the nfb. ‘Now I feel free, I feel that I have done a good amount of work on the subject – so it is there, it is documented.

‘I am going to take some time for myself and then decide what to do next.’

Early summer 1990: The municipality of Oka, Que. decides to expand a nine-hole golf course onto land held sacred by the Mohawk community of Kanehsatake. The residents of Kanehsatake resist and put up barricades.

July 11, 1990: The Quebec Provincial Police attack Mohawk barricades. A police corporal is killed in the exchange of gunfire at Oka. In solidarity with the aboriginal peoples at Kanehsatake, Mohawks from Kahnawake seize the Mercier Bridge, cutting off one of Montreal’s main commuter arteries.

Angry mobs in the nearby Montreal suburb of Chateauguay riot nightly by the bridge, burning Mohawks in effigy.

Obomsawin and a small crew go to the Oka site to begin documenting the crisis. Eventually, because it is dangerous, she is left alone to gather footage and sound with a video camera and a Nagra recorder.

August 1990: Canadian troops are called in.

Aug. 28, 1990: Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa advises the army to take down the barricades on the bridge. Fearing a military confrontation, and on the advice of Mohawk leaders, Mohawk women, children and elders flee across the bridge. Here, they are confronted by a rock-throwing mob.

Obomsawin, still in Oka, sees the events unfold on television. ‘It was an awful day,’ she now says.

Sept. 26, 1990: The stand-off in Oka ends. Obamsawin stays several weeks longer. ‘I stayed around because people had been jailed and I wanted to interview them,’ she says.

January 1991 to 1997: Obomsawin and editors start going over all the footage. It takes three months just to sort through it. The first assembly is 12 hours. Eventually, over the next several years, much of the footage is used for Obomsawin’s first three films, which cover different aspects of the Oka crisis: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance in 1993, My Name is Kahentiiosta in 1995 and Spudwrench – Kahnawake Man in 1997.

While not working on films, Obomsawin is going to festivals teaching, doing speaking engagements, sitting on boards at Concordia University, the Aboriginal People’s Television Network and pbs, and supporting other aboriginal filmmakers.

February 1998: Obomsawin is still haunted by one event around the Oka crises. ‘The rock-throwing still really bothered me,’ she says. ‘I felt I wasn’t free until I did something on that.’

Obomsawin goes to Kahnawake with her tape recorder to talk to the people who had been the victims of the rock-throwing.

March 1998: Obomsawin, with the help of assistant Wilma Lahache, interviews 65 people, using the Nagra recorder for professional-quality sound.

‘A lot of the people would talk but didn’t want to be on film,’ she says. ‘Going along to these homes was very sad, and for the people it was like reliving it. It is difficult to live with how much people hate you.’

Obomsawin hires someone to transcribe the taped interviews.

July to August 1998: Obomsawin and crew shoot for 11 days in Kanahwake. All but one of 13 arrested rock-throwers refuses to talk. The one who does denies his involvement.

Sept 14, 1998: A second 12-day shoot begins, with more interviews with people of the town. Obomsawin hires a researcher to help chronicle the history of the region.

October, 1998: Obomsawin and assistants research archival photographs for 20 days, while artists are hired to depict historic scenes where no footage or photographs are available.

January 1999: Editor Yurij Luhovy is hired and editing begins. Some of the footage Obomsawin gathered back in 1990 is integrated into the film.

Summer 1999: A follow-up shoot takes place in Kanahwake.

February 2000: Musicians are hired to compose and record for the soundtrack. Obomsawin records her narration. Researchers begin the long process of getting rights for footage, photos, etc.

Film editing is complete and Don Ayer begins sound editing.

May 2000: Sound editing is complete and an interlog – a copy with no narration for international use – and the final mix are done.

June 2000: Rocks at Whiskey Trench premiers at the Reel Aboriginal Film Festival in Toronto.

‘I never thought, ‘I’m going to do this film and then that one and then that one,’ ‘ says Obomsawin. ‘What I was thinking was that I had to document what was happening. [The Oka crisis] was historical and a turning point for everybody. The stories needed to be told.’

September 2000: Rocks at Whiskey Trench gets a world audience at tiff. *