Negotiations began Tuesday to try to end a standoff in the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, in which protesters are preventing the reserve's police officers from leaving their barracks.

Former reserve police chief Tracy Cross and current police chief Terry Isaac are meeting to try to end the tense situation at the reserve near Oka.

On Tuesday morning, roads in the area remain blocked, with the barricades being guarded by masked men with baseball bats. The local police barracks are surrounded by native protesters.

Mohawk warriors outside the police station at Kanesatake, Que. (CP photo)

The standoff followed the firing of Cross by Grand Chief James Gabriel, who accused Cross of being too soft on crime. Gabriel's house and car was torched Monday night. No one was injured.

Isaac, who replaced Cross as the reserve's police chief, spent Monday night with 60 officers from 18 aboriginal communities huddled in police barracks as a mob milled around outside.

Residents are also angered by the takeover of the local police force by aboriginal police officers who were brought in from elsewhere in the province to curtail the sale of contraband cigarettes.

Protesters are demanding the outside force leave Kanesatake and the local police chief be reinstated.

Gabriel said last week the number of Mohawk-owned cigarette shops in the community is "getting out of hand."

Members of the community-appointed police commission say they recently learned that Gabriel reached an agreement with the federal government to bring in police from other communities to deal with the cigarette shops.

Kanesatake was involved in the 1990 Oka crisis, in which one police officer was killed when police stormed barricades erected to prevent expansion of a nearby golf course onto land the Mohawks considered sacred.