TYENDINAGA MOHAWK TERRITORY— Shawn Brant and Mario Baptiste have built a reputation for blocking roads, rail lines and bridges. They know how to get your attention. It’s put them behind bars. They have been arrested dozens of times over decades in the fight for various Indigenous causes.

The Mohawk activists’ penchant for protest is a microcosm of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory’s history of civil unrest. It’s aimed at drawing attention to a myriad of issues: poor ground water conditions on the territory, Mohawk land claim disputes and the government’s handling of the probe into the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

“For Mario and me, some issues are very important,” Brant said.

“It has been a long struggle — over 30 years, which is most of my adult life.”

The continuing Tyendinaga rail blockades in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline, is the most recent example of the Eastern Ontario community as a flashpoint in nationwide civil action.

“Those are issues you shouldn’t have to shutdown the rail lines to address,” said Brant, 55, a Tyendinaga pot shop owner.

He hasn’t been leading the Wet’suwet’en protest, but has visited the camp in a show of solidarity.

“It is the history of Canada, that people have to stand up and be heard, and make those injustices known.”

He said, while the rest of the country might balk at the tactic of blocking rail and road arteries, “this is the only thing making the government back down.

“It’s saying to the government that there’s always going to be consequences for the decisions they make.”

Both men have made many personal sacrifices, including risking their freedom and safety during clashes with police.

“I’ve been arrested about 30 times,” Brant said of jail stints for standing on the train tracks. “I bore the consequences, but I always brought my men (protesters) home.”

Baptiste, 63, chuckles when asked to estimate how many times he has been locked up for mischief and unlawful assembly.

“It’s hard to say,” he said.

The seed of rebelliousness was planted in Baptiste at a young age.

“I was probably five when my mother took me to my very first (demonstration),” Baptiste said.

Brant said he and other Mohawk activists, including Baptiste, battled in the early 1990s to reclaim their Indigenous right to fish along local waterways.

“Hundreds of men stood and fought on the riverbanks to reinstate that right,” Brant said.

“The generation today doesn’t know that struggle, they just go and fish.”

Brant said it was all worth it, as his efforts bore fruit not only in getting results, but spawning the next generation of activists.

“For the price I paid and the price my family paid, it was absolutely worth it,” said the tall, lanky Brant, who has a head of long peppery grey hair.

“It’s good to see that people listened to the things that Mario and others have said about how to fight back.”

Baptiste said the crop of young protesters is akin to garden in bloom.

“Imagine how the garden grew!” he said, standing outside the Mohawk encampment on the Territory. “It just needed little bit of water.”

Both men are the product of the long history of civil unrest of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Nation.

News stories, dating back to 2004, catalogue Brant and Baptiste’s efforts to buck the rule of law to advance their agenda:

In June 1994, Baptiste and several other Mohawk protesters threatened to shut down the “whole damn territory” over what they alleged was band-council mismanagement.

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The protesters, including Baptiste, were charged with mischief and released.

In Sept. 2000, Mohawk protesters blocked a commuter bridge in the community in support of New Brunswick Indigenous people involved in a fisheries dispute with Ottawa.

Six years later, a group of Mohawk protesters shut down the railroad corridor, to show support for Aboriginals in Caledonia, Ont., who were disputing a land claim with the government.

In April 2007, Brant led a protest that blocked rail lines, over land claim disputes in Tyendinaga.

Later that summer, Brant lead another rail blockade as part of a national day of action called for by the Assembly of First Nations.

In 2009, protesters blocked the Skyway Bridge, which connects Tyendinaga Territory to Prince Edward County, in support of Akwesasne Mohawk demonstrations that closed a border crossing in Cornwall, Ont., where demonstrators were opposing the arming of border guards.

In 2013, protesters blocked rail traffic, in support of the Idle No More movement, aimed at forcing the government to call a federal inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls. The protests continued into 2014, as Brant led the blocking of Shannonville Road.

“We can all make money when this is done. These dead and missing girls have to take priority to the financial interest of a few people from our community,” Brant told the Belleville Intelligencer in March 2014.

Both Baptiste and Brant, are now watching from the sidelines as a new generation of protesters pick up the mantle.

“We’ve fought harder governments,” he said of an era when the Harper-led Conservatives were in power.

The focus has once again shifted west, where Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs are now in talks with government officials. The chiefs have said the Coastal GasLink pipeline cannot proceed through their territory without their consent.

The Mohawk activists have stuck to their position that they would only leave the rail lines when Wet’suwe’ten hereditary chiefs reached a resolution, which would include a full withdrawal of the RCMP from their territory.

Ten Mohawk activists were arrested and released Monday, after Ontario Provincial Police decided to enforce a court injunction against the protest camp. It had blocked transport along one of Canada’s key rail lines since Feb. 6, prompting Canadian National and Via Rail to lay off 1,500 workers temporarily.

Brant visited the Mohawk camp when police made their first attempt to enforce the court injunction.

“We went up with a crew and backed up the lines,” Brant said.

Baptiste talked to the Star as he was leaving the Wyman Road encampment on Monday. During the interview, the activist, was greeted by a number of people, in a show of his popularity in the community.

“It’s been passed on to the youth now,” he said. “I came out to show my support.”

The motive for staging a protest can sometimes be poignant. Brant recalls Dec. 1994, when he and Mario occupied a Revenue Canada building in Toronto, to raise awareness about youth suicides in First Nations communities.

“We wanted to be a distraction, during that period of time, so kids wouldn’t commit suicide,” he said.

He said people in Indigenous communities, “who are still drinking sh- tty water and having daughters go missing,” are emboldened by the blockades happening in Tyendinaga and elsewhere.

“I know that every minute that the train lines and blockades happen, it’s just like 1994,” he said.

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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