Lasagna: The Man Behind the Mask

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

On September 1, 1990, when Oka faced the spotlight on the world stage,
we saw a picture of two people face-to-face—a fresh-faced soldier and
a defiant Mohawk (identified by the media as “Lasagna”) glaring
through a bandit’s kerchief. The name of the soldier has since faded
from memory; the Warrior’s name and image has not. This book reveals
that the man behind the mask was not Lasagna, either literally (another
Mohawk Warrior was the one photographed) or figuratively (the figure the
media portrayed did not exist).

This book successfully debunks the myths of Ronald Cross and the other
Mohawk Warriors at Oka as being Mafia-connected, or battle-hardened
Vietnam veterans, or American criminals with long rap sheets, or other
such characters. It also reveals the anti-Mohawk phobia of the Quebec
media—especially in the mindlessly chauvinistic remarks “prostitute
to the Warriors” and “traitor to your race”—that greeted the
French edition of this work.

Though the book contains a well-developed sense of irony, it suffers
from three fundamental problems. The first is that because Cross is
under a court order not to speak directly about the events at Oka, much
is alluded to but not made clear (for example, we are not told why,
after months of not participating, Cross finally joined his people
behind the barricade). The second problem is that the narrative does not
flow smoothly; extended quotes are often repetitive and rambling, and
events are presented out of sequence without explanatory context. The
third problem is that after successfully stripping Cross of the mask of
Lasagna, Sévigny attempts to fit him with a new mask—that of the
noble savage—by trying to make a hero out of an ordinary man who seems
to want just to heal himself of the wounds of Oka.