KAHNAWAKE, QUEBEC — Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer is proud to be able to speak the same language her ancestors spoke.
In the 1980s, Sky-Deer enrolled in one of the first schools in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake that immersed children in the Kanien’kéha language.
“It was everything,” said Sky-Deer, in an interview. “It gave me a foundation of being proud of who I was.”
At the time, many in the First Nation on the South Shore of Montreal were still attending church-run Indian Day Schools, where the language wasn’t taught, she said.
Her former school still operates today, and the churches are no longer running schools in Kahnawake.
The former grand chief of the community says she is optimistic about her community’s next generation, especially now that a new cultural arts centre is opening there in March of 2026.
Sky-Deer is one of the many women who spearheaded the project. Once it opens, she says she hopes to see the youth get a chance to be as immersed in the language as she was growing up.
The cultural arts centre will be located on a three-acre site along Route 132, right next door to a local high school.
Sky-Deer is hoping the space will inspire youth to use their language outside of the classroom.
“The last thing that we want also is for our young people to perceive the Mohawk language as a subject matter,” she said. “We have to change their mindset.“
The centre will house the community’s Mohawk language immersion program, its theatre, as well as its museum, which are all being expanded through the project.
Traditional ceremonies and workshops revolving around cooking and crafts like basket weaving will also be hosted there.
Construction for the roughly $56 million project has been underway since the fall of 2023. The federal and provincial government, as well as Hydro-Québec, have collectively pledged about $37 million toward it.
Speaking to The Canadian Press ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Sky-Deer said she hopes the new gathering place will promote healing in the community, one she says is still reeling from “Canada’s dark colonial history.”
There isn’t an equivalent for the word “reconciliation” in the Mohawk language, she said. One way of translating it is “to make things the way they were,” she explained, noting that this wording has resonated with many.
“There was a time where most people spoke Kanien’kéha, our language,” she said.
That changed after the introduction of the Indian Act, she said. The legislation, adopted late in the 19th century, laid the groundwork for Canada’s residential school system, and the Indian Day School system that came afterwards, where English and French were imposed on Indigenous communities across the country.
Three Indian Day Schools operated in the community until 1988, when Kahnawake’s education centre gained jurisdiction over schools on the reserve.
“Those impacts still persist in our community,” said Sky-Deer.
The federal government has since acknowledged the harm these schools had on Indigenous youth, compensating those that attended residential schools and Indian Day Schools through settlement agreements.
In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded the residential school system had been created in an attempt to destroy and assimilate Indigenous people, an effort it characterized as “cultural genocide.”
Five years later, Canada opened up its settlement claims process for those that went through Indian Day Schools, acknowledging many students experienced trauma and physical and sexual abuse.
“We have to find a way to get back… to that good road, and I think what this cultural centre does is provide that,” Sky-Deer said. “Not only for this generation, but for a lot of people in our community.”
The new cultural centre is nine years in the making, but dreams for the larger gathering space goes back decades.
Lisa Phillips is the executive director of Kahnawake’s language and cultural centre, which will relocate to the new facility.
She said she remembers her colleagues talking about creating a new gathering space when she first began working there 26 years ago.
“I think it was only about two weeks ago, driving home, that I realized the importance and the magnitude of this project,” she told journalists on a tour of the site.
In the early ’80s, she said staff at the language and culture centre had laid the foundation of a longhouse in the exact same location, but the project was stalled.
She said she felt emotional, being able to sit at the site today, to see how far those dreams have come.
“I thought about it, and it kind of overwhelmed me,” she said. “This has been the dream of so many people within our community.”
The new centre makes way for a major expansion of a local theatre program in Kahnawake, said Kimberly Cross, who works for the community’s tourism office.
Currently, the program is operating out of a small hall, but the new facility is expected to have a nearly 200 seat space to showcase the next generation of talent, she said.
She grew up in a family of performers and said it’s something she wishes she could have had access to as a young girl.
“I’m hopeful for our current performers, our little actors and actresses,” Cross said.
“Just being able to come out of that comfort zone, to get out of your shell and to perform on a large stage like that makes a huge difference.”
The community’s band council says it’s still in the midst of raising an additional $4.4 million needed to make the project a reality.
Trina C. Diabo, who works with the band council, said she has no doubt they will raise the money to open on time.
A fundraising campaign aimed at the public has since been launched.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2025.
Miriam Lafontaine, The Canadian Press
