The Canadian Forces is preparing an official apology for listing the Mohawk Warrior Society as a potentially violent insurgent group in a draft manual in 2006.
Military officials are still finalizing the wording of the apology to the society, which was included in the draft counter-insurgency manual.
The apology is expected in January or February.
A spokesman for the Canadian Forces has called the apology important, and said it will be heartfelt.
"We want to make sure that it's [the apology] delivered in a proper format with a proper amount of respect and from the proper level," Maj. Martell Thompson told CBC News.
The draft document singled out the aboriginal militant group as an example of "radical native American organizations" that can be "viewed as insurgencies with specific and limited aims."
The mention angered many Mohawks who claimed they were being compared to international terror groups such as Hezbollah and the Taliban.
'We're being labelled again'
Cheryl Jacobs, former district chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, called the mention "a slap in the face."
She told CBC News earlier this month that it "brought up old feelings" related to the Oka crisis in 1990, in which Mohawks, Quebec provincial police (Sûreté du Québec) and the Canadian military clashed violently over native land rights west of Montreal.
"When news came out [in 2007], I think a lot of people were upset because of the feeling of a flashback, so to speak, of 'Here we go again, we're being labelled again,'" Jacobs said.
The Mohawk Warrior Society, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and fundamentalist Islamist Taliban are all mentioned once in the 169-page draft manual, a copy of which is available online.
In particular, groups like the Mohawk Warriors "seek particular political concessions in their relationship with national governments, and control (either overt or covert) of political affairs at a local/reserve ('First Nation') level," the draft manual says.
Mohawks were reportedly not mentioned in a final draft of the manual, which has not been made public.
Jacobs wrote two strongly worded letters to National Defence Minister Peter MacKay in 2009 in which she described feeling "very insulted" about how Mohawks were portrayed and demanded an apology.
She said she's "very pleased" that the apology is coming and hopes it will mend old wounds.
"If I hear what I want to hear in there, then that's probably when I'll be excited enough," Jacobs said. "I may even give them a good clap that it didn't take 200 years to get an apology."
Deadly 1990 standoff
Even critics of the society, such as Stuart Myiow, believe the draft manual went too far in its assessment of its members and claim the apology is justified.
Mohawk Warriors trashed police cars during the 78-day standoff with Canadian Forces in Oka, Que., that centred on the proposed expansion of a local golf course onto land the Mohawks considered sacred. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)
"Native people being labelled terrorists is a very bad reflection upon all society because what we are labelled as terrorists for is the defence of our Mother Earth," said Myiow, who represents the Mohawk Traditional Council in Kahnawake, Que.
Mohawk Warriors in camouflage bandanas and armed with rifles or standing nose-to-nose with Canadian soldiers have remained a lasting image of the Oka crisis.
The 78-day dispute began after Oka's town council approved plans to bulldoze forestland — which the Mohawks claimed was sacred ground — to expand the local golf course.
The standoff turned deadly on July 11, 1990, after 31-year-old Quebec police Cpl. Marcel Lemay was shot and killed in a gun battle between police and Mohawk rebels.
It ended on Sept. 26 that year, when the masked Mohawk warriors put down their weapons and sprung out of the woods in surrender.
Mohawk journalist Kenneth Deer said the Warrior Society is "like a militia" and never intended to overthrow the Canadian government.
"There's no membership to the Warrior Society," said Deer, editor of the Eastern Door newspaper who has worked with the United Nations on indigenous affairs. "It's just a name. It's just a way to organize men when there's something to be done."
The word warrior doesn't even exist in Mohawk, he said, but translated loosely, it means "the duties of the men to carry the peace."
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