As with anything related to aboriginals in Canada, it is disappointing. I am now expatriated to Brazil though and I can't say it's any less disappointing over here in Latin America.

Let's sum up the events quickly for the readers: in the 200 years or so before, the land of the Mohawks were considered disputed lands. For those not from Québec, Oka is close to Montréal. Overtime, the various political entities and the Church encroached on for the benefit of the local city (Oka) until the natives had less than 3% of their original land left. In the 30s, the Church sold their land to Oka and eventually a promoter wanted to build for a small golf course. This created tension as the federal government had refused the claims of the Mohawks and allowed the golf course to be built as authorised by the city of Oka. In the late 80s, the golf course wanted to expend and build condos. After many refusals to stop work by federal authorities as the land claim was not considered valid, the promoter was approved to expend the golf course. All appeals on historical or environmental grounds were also refused. The final verdict was given in 1990: the project was going ahead despite years of appeals to various entities to stop the work and claim the land back or at least stop land development.

In disagreement with the final court ruling, aboriginals started a barricade. The mayor of Oka requested provincial assistance and the whole thing escalated all the way to military intervention requested by the Québec government. Some people were wounded, two people died.

Right at the beginning of the Oka crisis, the minister of Aboriginal affairs expressed support towards the Mohawk protesting expressing that Aboriginals were getting the shit end of the deal, and that the fact it was over a golf course was adding insult to injury. Despite this, the provincial police (Sureté du Québec - SQ) intervened as the situaiton was getting out of control. Right there, problems started to be evident: police in Canada as well as in Québec did not deal with aboriginal communities with sensitivity and prejudice was rife within the ranks of the police. They tended to favour the use of force rather than dialogue and launched an assault on the natives barricaded inside a compound. This failed and the police retreated. Overtime, other aboriginals including some from the US joined them and helped them from the outside. SQ was relieved by the RCMP and not long after, the military.

When the crisis ended, the federal government decided to create a Royal Commission. This is basically a major commission in charge of making recommendations and doing research. Recommendations were done, but none were followed by the federal government. It amounted to a significant amount of research that brought more to social scientists working on those issues considering that basically nothing of importance was implemented. I wish I had something more to say in that regard but really, recommendations were not heeded by Parliament. That being side, Oka did have two effects (one positive and one negative):

1. Brought under the spotlight aboriginal issues. Since Oka, aboriginal issues have increasingly become more important nationally. I say more important but I wouldn't say it is a priority neither. But rather they make the news and people are aware of it. Oka had tremendous media coverage all over the world and still today, Oka is the landmark case to "avoid" politically speaking and means that aboriginals are taken more seriously.
2. The negative side of this is that the federal government instilled policies aimed at not hearing about the woes of aboriginals. This policy of appeasement is not "decreted" by any act of Parliament but has rather became a bureaucratic and society-wide culture. Evaluation reports from the federal government show this quite clearly: money is thrown at problems with little regard with how well they are implemented.

Also, the golf course was never built nor the condos. The federal government bought the land and that was it. See point 2.

On the Québec side, it led to the Paix des Braves (Peace of the Braves in French). Although the federal government failed to take seriously the problems posed by the royal commission, Québec decided to be more proactive. The matter of the fact is that Québec has had better experience dealing with aboriginals. Due to strong left-wing nationalism, Québec has tried to better bridge its relations with natives from "nation-to-nation" with some level of success (the aboriginals with the best standards of life in Canada are in Québec) and they handle a significant a mount of files rather than leave it to the federal government. Moreover, Québec, to ensure the legitimacy of its massive hydro-electric complexes up north, tried very hard to ensure it had all the legitimacy possible from aboriginal communities to avoid appeals that would involve the federal government. Funny enough, Québec took more interest into the recommendations of the Royal commission. I can't get into too much details (the Paix des Braves was signed in 2002; 20 years rule yadda yadda). It went back to previous failed commitments and offered to better implement them and fulfil its previous commitments where it had failed to do so. Québec sought to better keep its relations with aboriginals positive. Most notably, Québec had signed the James Bay Accords in 1975 to develop the hydro-electric potential in the North of Québec and although fulfilled many essential promises, overall it did so sloppily. IT sought to fix the wrongs.