[LINK] "A warrior, a soldier and a photographer — remembering the Oka Crisis"

[rfmcdonald]

Jennifer Wells of the Toronto Star has a nice feature looking at the Oka Crisis of 1990 and the photo of confrontation that defines that.

"Are you nervous perhaps? Do you think? Are you nervous? You should be."

The words are uttered sotto voce. They crawl across the skin, like menacing earwigs, issued threats of bullet hitting bone.

The face of the Ojibwa warrior moves in close — sunglasses, bandana, anonymity. The youthful private — field helmet, bare face — shifts. Looks over the shoulder of the warrior, to the left, to the right. Then locks: nose to nose; toe to toe. A straight-ahead, dead-eye stare.

The shutter clicks. An inextinguishable instant.

Twenty-five years ago Shaney Komulainen was working freelance for The Canadian Press, covering the Oka Crisis. Young, eager, a little bit goofy, the 27-year-old photojournalist can be seen fleetingly in video clips as the army advanced on the Kanesatake barricades toward the ancestral Mohawk lands targeted for golf course expansion.

On Sept. 1, 1990, Komulainen wasn’t supposed to be in the area known as the Pines. She had been assigned to the South Shore where the Mohawks had blockaded access to the Mercier Bridge. It was day 52 of a long, hot summer siege when she heard the news on the radio that the army was on the move and her first thought was “Oh, s---. Here I am (away from the action), and something’s finally happening at Oka.”