The Eastern Door's Response to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake's Recent PR

Where is the real transparency?

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake is playing a dangerous game using community members as pawns, and in this response from us, The Eastern Door, we will outline why you should be concerned about that.

To put it frankly, the recent press release from the MCK is what you call gaslighting. They needed a scapegoat, so they chose us. They might not have a strong case against Chateauguay regarding the oil spill, and they aren’t confident in it, so they made us the targets for reporting on the content of last week’s meeting – which attracted all of 12 people or so.

According to the MCK’s press release on Friday, introductory statements specified the meeting was a closed space. However, by the end of the meeting, due to a disappointing turnout, one MCK chief urged attendees to tell two community members about the next meeting, who could then tell two more, who would tell two more, about the news.

Mohawk Council of Kahnawake grand chief Cody Diabo said at the end, just before that, “spread the word.”

This leaves room for confusion. Exactly what were people allowed to speak about from this supposed “closed” space?

Yet, somehow, this game of telephone was supposed to never reach Chateauguay. But nothing can be confidential and public at the same time.

Now take a look at the terse press release announcing the meeting. Nowhere does it say the matter is confidential or that the meeting is closed to media. It seems that would have been important to mention.

Nobody reached out to us to ask us to keep the contents of this meeting a secret – contents, we might add, that are hardly earth-shattering: MCK wants to pursue an out-of-court settlement against the ones they deem responsible? Who doesn’t?

We are not a branch of the MCK, and while we are open to appeals to the public interest, we never received one.

So, what do we do? We do our job - and that’s not, as some seem to think, some crass, unyielding drive to sell newspapers at two bucks a pop.

No, it is to inform and empower a community that has the right to know what’s going on, even those who might be too busy with their jobs and families to sit through a Wednesday night meeting.

So, let’s be clear: the MCK wants you to believe this information is out there because The Eastern Door broke the trust of the community. This is not true.

We never broke any trust and there was never any breach, it was just the new Council’s plan, relayed to a handful of people, that backfired. And now they are trying to make an example of us. Don’t fall for it.

We want those responsible for the oil spill to be accountable, too. It’s what we do – hold those in power accountable.

We can only speculate on the MCK’s motives in accusing us – perhaps some in Council are feeling embarrassed – but what we do know is soliciting the opinions of an audience hardly the size of the Council table and asking them to tell their friends to come to the next meeting is not what community members mean when they demand greater transparency.

An oil spill. Land claims. A housing crisis. With all these important issues going on, the MCK makes the effort to attack us for doing our job. It’s not a good look, chiefs old and new.

Here’s part of what the MCK put out, publicly:

“…the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke will not be conducting any business with The Eastern Door until engagement on the breach of trust issue has taken place with the community at the Summer Community meeting on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, and next steps are then identified.”

We’re a media outlet. Who do you think you’re hurting? People who get their information from us, community members, including elders, that’s who.

We dig for information that the community has a right to know and, let’s be honest, the MCK doesn’t like that.

Expecting a public meeting to be secret just doesn’t make sense. Speak behind closed doors instead of trying to disguise a public meeting as secret, or don’t invite the public. You can’t have both. And you can’t throw a tantrum when information comes out from it.

What happens if community members put details on social media, which is well within their rights? Are they hung out to dry in the same way as The Eastern Door?

No, because it’s impossible. Control comes in many forms and trying to control what the media reports is a risky move on the Council’s part, but they can’t control us, and they can’t control the people.

Reporting

The Eastern Door shouldn’t have to hide in the community meeting, we should be part of every one of them, regardless of who our reporters are. We serve the people, and continuing to shut us out of meetings, not to mention refusing to talk to us at all, means they are disrespecting your right to know.

Our reporting reaches a much larger number of people and informs the community of the plan, instead of continuing the trend of bending to outside governments and trying to keep important issues hush-hush.

Talking about strategy at a public meeting to see what the people think means maybe your initial strategy was weak, at best. Stand behind it or do what the MCK often does, consult the legal team to formulate a plan, instead of trying to use the minimal amount of people in the room as your backing and trying to make The Eastern Door the bad guys.

Trying to reveal to the people what the Council’s plan is while at the same time trying to control what is spread to Chateauguay? That will never work.

Did the grand chief think things through when he released his response on his personal Facebook page Thursday night? No, he jumped the gun with his knee-jerk reaction while sending a letter to The Eastern Door that only he signed, which means he let his emotions get the better of him.

That sounds familiar, and it is not what leaders are supposed to do.

The dog-whistle post late last week to try to rally people against us, along with bringing this to this Wednesday’s community meeting to see what the few in attendance think, is not the kind of government plan anyone should settle for.

We report for the people, and we dig for the truth, and any government hates that. But even if you don’t like us or don’t support us, we will still fight for the community’s right to know, for YOUR right to know. It’s what ethical and good media do; sacrifice likability while putting aside personal aspirations and digging hard to uncover the truth.

We are the eyes and ears of the community. We serve everybody, whether they like us or read us.

We must be able to do our jobs and report back to the people at large. Besides, what nuclear codes were revealed during the meeting, aside from the question posed: should the MCK put a six-month hiatus on the lawsuit? That message was sent to a handful of people. How is the message or the Council’s musings supposed to get out there to a larger audience? Did they even want it to? Or was the meeting just a ruse as well?

The Council’s reaction is overkill and it reeks of fear, not strength, by asking the community for direction in its dealings with a small local business, one that happens to be tasked with being an MCK watchdog.

This is about control, make no mistake. It’s not about some strategy that Chateauguay really doesn’t care about. Sue them or not, how does that affect what they will do? If things are paused in court, or if they continue, the same lawyers will answer the same questions, file the same paperwork, and use the article as ammo for what, exactly? Because nothing was in it.

Our role as media

The MCK sued Dean Montour (who had sued them in March). He was countersued recently because he spoke to us about the demise of Mohawk Online, which he has firsthand knowledge of after being CEO for many years.

We broke both stories because the people deserved to know. That’s what this is about.

The MCK doesn’t want to tell you about Mohawk Online coming to an end due to the ineptitude of letting it die out, but we dug and uncovered more of the story. They still won’t answer questions directly about it, so they’re again, shutting the community out.

They never revealed either of the Dean Montour lawsuits publicly. They never came forward and told you they were being sued by Magic Palace; that story was broken by The Eastern Door.

The MCK won’t admit suspensions to their chiefs (for breaking confidentiality, ironically) because they don’t want you to know. If it weren’t for The Eastern Door, you wouldn’t.

Another example: We saw JFK Quarry as an item in a Council communique and asked about it for four consecutive weeks before we finally got a simple answer; the JFK’s asphalt operations are still not allowed to go ahead.

This is something people should know about, so why was that not announced?

Is that transparency? Isn’t that breaching YOUR trust as a community? Don’t you have a right to know how they are spending community money, whether they are on legal offense or defense?

Of course, you do. And you deserve to know much more of what Council is doing, that’s where we come in.

The Eastern Door, and every other local media outlet, are not bound by the MCK’s rules. We aren’t forced to listen to their internal policies for chiefs and employees, and we never signed an agreement with them to say so, so to assume we are going to fall in line, and then try to call us on something that doesn’t exist, doesn’t make sense.

We are a free and independent press, and we report to the people. The MCK is now asking you to take that tool you all have away from you. Why? What else do they have to hide?

A simple phone call from the GC could have resulted in us potentially holding onto the article until things were fleshed out more, but that courtesy never came. The lines of communication are not open like they should be, with MCK Media as the gatekeepers of how the information flows to you, the community.

Putting this “to the people” when the MCK knows no one shows up to the meetings is another way for them to control what happens and what information gets out.

To attempt to silence the media is an attempt to silence the people.

Steve Bonspiel

The Eastern Door