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Abstract
This thesis studies the history behind and the representations of the Oka crisis involving the Mohawk nation and various agencies of government in Canada. The thesis proposes the crisis is best understood in terms of the government of Canada acting to suppress the nationalist expression of the Mohawk people. During the past twenty years, a series of histories written from a Mohawk perspective have become available. A historical study derived from Mohawk and other sources details a relationship of continual conflict between Natives and Euro-Canadian authorities in which Native nationalist expression has been consistently suppressed. Journal articles written between 1990 and 1995 and the hearings before the House Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs have used as a guide to the representations of the Oka crisis. The government attempted to locate its representations of the crisis around the issue of supposed Mohawk criminality. In doing so, it disguised the part that the social structuring of Native-non-Native relations played in the conflict.