By Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter The Eastern Door
Attending his hearing without a lawyer on Friday, Timmy Etienne, one of 13 defendants facing charges under the federal Fisheries Act for work carried out on the shoreline of the Lake of Two Mountains, entered a plea of not guilty.
"I'm not guilty. I almost said I'm just going to plead guilty, but I'm not. It's just a fact," he told The Eastern Door. "If I plead guilty, they get their way. They could use that in the future against our future generations."
The government alleges defendants have carried out illegal work that harmed the fish habitat.
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For Etienne, Quebec's interventions on the shoreline in Kanesatake represent an affront to the community's sovereignty. He wants to sound the alarm, he said, in hopes of convincing Kanehsata'kehró:non and members of other Indigenous communities to view the province's actions as a push to assert dominion over First Nations shorelines.
"I don't believe that we're affecting the natural habitat. I think they're trying to push their jurisdiction," Etienne said.
According to Quebec's website, the government's reach on non-tidal bodies of water extends to the high-water line of a property.
"I'm thinking if they do own the shorelines, it's elsewhere. Not on the territories. I would like to see more bands step forward and say we're waking up now, should we let Quebec set precedent here?" said Etienne.
While Etienne repeatedly invoked jursidictional concerns in an interview with The Eastern Door, he and his wife, Elaine Daye, were also emphatic about their belief that they were swept up in an investigation that had nothing to do with them.
The property where they are accused of illegal work - and where contaminated soils were allegedly found by investigators who descended on the Lake of Two Mountains shorelines in August 2023 - is where they plan to retire, the couple said.
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"I feel we were just the extra head of corn thrown into a dozen," said Etienne. "I think it was just bad timing."
In addition to the charges Etienne is now facing under the Fisheries Act, both Etienne and Daye are named in an ongoing civil action launched by Quebec in a bid to halt what it characterizes as illegal work on the shoreline. That case represented the government's first substantive action to tackle a wave of dumping that often saw hundreds of trucks a day carrying dubious soil into Kanesatake.
At the time of that investigation, Etienne had been digging a leach field, he said, meaning he had a huge pile of gravel and sand on his lot, leaving investigators with the wrong idea amid a flurry of backfill work happening nearby.
"If we built before COVID, we would have been sitting here watching the whole show from our front door, but it was just the fact that I was digging just at that time," said Etienne.
Instead, he said, armed officers - mostly unable to speak English - showed up to his doorstep, one even dirtying his floor when he invited them in.
"I said 'wait a minute," Etienne remembered. "'Isn't this a federal body? What's Quebec doing here?'
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"We didn't even know at the time that we were being implicated," he added. "We just, hey there's something going on." But soon they were handed papers.
In the time since, Etienne has been incensed thinking about how many docks have been built into the water outside the territory, even poured concrete walls and swimming pools, he said.
"I said it as a joke when the two game wardens were sitting here," Etienne told The Eastern Door. "I said 'I'd like to build a pool out there too.'"
Etienne and Daye estimate they brought in about 60 truckloads of landfill to supplement what they had excavated from the septic field to carry out the work squaring off the land, all of which they say they paid for. "I was shocked," said Daye about learning that soil samples taken by investigators had detected contamination. The couple speculated contamination may have come from upstream and that they don't know where on their lot the samples were even taken from.
"I want them to drop the charges against us. We didn't do anything wrong," said Daye. "We didn't accept illegal dumping. We paid for everything we got. The only thing is we put rocks, but I mean, everybody else put rocks too, and they're not being charged. It doesn't make sense. We didn't go overboard and extravagant with thousands of loads. We put what we needed."
Daye said there are women in their 70s and 80s who are unjustly being accused of illegal dumping they had nothing to do with just because their names are on the lots.
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"We got put into the same bucket as everybody that was doing illegal dumping," Daye said of her and her husband. "Somebody was getting money for that illegal dumping - whoever orchestrated it. Somebody was making money. Not us. We paid for everything we got."
She said the couple has been as bothered as anyone about illegal dumping practices, which they acknowledge has been a major problem in the community for well over a decade.
"Never would I have ever imagined that we would have gotten accused of dumping, ever," said Daye.
Etienne remembers one day years ago when the couple's home was blown with so much illegally dumped debris - pulverized old buildings from the city - that their house was coated in dust. And he said he was irritated with the wave of endless dump trucks, too.
"I was to the point where I wanted to park my tractor across the road and block them. I was fed up. Everyone was sick of it. It was non-stop," said Etienne.
"It'll probably never be resolved," he said. "The people who profited off it are off scot-free, but it just seems like now we're going to have to pay one way or the other, just being in the wrong place at the right time."
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Despite feeling unfairly targeted, Etienne continued to bring the conversation back to what he sees as an important jurisdictional issue.
"Our land is our land. For them to come in, they're only going to put their foot right in the door. Every other Native in Quebec is going to pay for it," he said.
He's not the only one who feels this way. Normand Theoret, also charged under the Fisheries Act, expressed his anger at the same hearing over the government's actions.
"Not guilty. Not at all. That's my land. Mohawk land," he told the judge.
Theoret has previously told The Eastern Door that he had as many as 300 truckloads in a single day, at times, deliver landfill he received for free to his property. He did it to make his land buildable, he said, noting he has three children and there's a shortage of land in the community. Quebec's investigation alleged that samples taken from his property showed the presence of contaminated soil.
"We should be charging Quebec, not you guys charging us," Theoret said.
When he threatened not to attend his hearing in December, the judge told him he would be found guilty in his absence.
"I'm not guilty. It's Mohawk land," he repeated.
Serge Otsi Simon, who was environment portfolio chief in the outgoing Council, which was recently designated as a caretaker council with only limited administrative powers, agreed that some people swept up in the Lake of Two Mountains investigation are wrongly accused.
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"There's some, definitely, I know that," said Simon, naming a few but declining to comment on specific cases.
"The others, they deserve everything the law can bring down on them because we don't have the resources to deal with it. It's not a Native right to pollute the land or pollute the water or the people," he said.
"Some of them truly deserve to see some kind of punishment for what they did. The others, I'm sorry, but they shouldn't be on that list. They didn't do anything wrong."
While he understands arguments about the community's sovereignty when it comes to the government's enforcement of environmental laws on the shoreline, he said that has to be balanced with the consideration that the community doesn't currently have the resources to address the problem on its own.
"I've eaten the fish since I was a kid in this lake. In certain areas, I can't fish anymore because of this," he said. "You want to talk about jurisdiction of Native rights? What about the rest of us who want to fish and supplement our food supplies with some of the fish in the lake?
"I have to weigh which one's worse, having the government jurisdiction or the poisoning the land and the lake. Which one's worse? I wish I had the resources. I tell you, we would have put a stop to it a long time ago. There wouldn't be any argument about jurisdiction."
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The defendants being charged under the Fisheries Act must appear at the St. Jerome courthouse on December 19. Meanwhile, 10 parties have received statements of offence under Quebec's Environmental Quality Act.
The province's civil action, seeking a permanent injunction on unsanctioned work on the shoreline against around 20 defendants, continues. A safeguard order remains in effect until March 16, 2026.
Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
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