Trouble is brewing over the Kahnawake First Nations reserve's membership laws.
The reserve requires anybody who marries outside the reserve (specifically to a non first nations person) to move away.
Five Mohawks from Kahnawake who are in relationships with such outsiders filed a complaint with Canada's Human Rights Commission, and have been given the go-ahead to take their complaint higher up, to Canada's Human Rights Tribunal.
If the tribunal finds that Kahnawake has acted against the Canada Human Rights Act, Kahnawake's band council could be fined.
Fo Niemi from Montreal's Centre for Research Action on Race Relations is helping the complainants, and said such rules have caused problems for the Kahnawake community before.
"The membership law has been a bone of contention for years and has been very divisive."
Niemi says that the problems go beyond the membership law, and that Mohawks in relationships with outsiders have faced other discrimination.
"These individuals have been over the years denied fundamental rights, services, and programs. For example, they can't vote, they can't apply for land, they can't be entitled to certain welfare."
But spokesperson for Kahnawake's band council Joe Delaronde said that the rules have been clear for decades, and that those who marry outside the reserve are not excluded for the most part.
"The laws are very clear in Kahanawake, that if someone marries a non indigenous person they are expected to go live with the non indigenous person. It doesn't say they can't participate in life over here, can't work, can't visit, can't stay for a vacation, whatever, just that you can't live here."
Delaronde denounced possible intervention by the federal government, saying that it would interfere with the reserve's jurisdiction and right to self-determination.
"Our decisions on how we want to proceed in terms of who should be allowed to live here are very important. We're talking about our right to maintain our own laws, adjudicate our own laws, and to have things forced down our throat is problematic."
"It's about just trying to preserve what little we have left in terms of identity, language, culture, because the more we're just mixed in with everybody, the more we just become like everybody else and that's a disservice to our ancestors."
However, Niemi pointed out that certain federal laws do apply to reserves like Kahnawake.
"The Canadian Human Rights Act now applies to First Nations governments and communities."
The case is set to go to mediation or the tribunal in 2017.