A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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By Doug George-Kanentiio Among our Mohawk people the President of the United States has a title name, one carried across the generations and applied to whomever holds office. It is Ranatakaiius (la-nah-dah-gai-yus) meaning "town destroyer". It came from John Washington, the great-grandfather of the first president who would attack and burn Native communities then declare the land vacant, terra nullius under English law, before applying to the Crown for title. He would then ignore the Indigenous practice of crops diversity and rotation by...
By Doug George-Kanentiio The Native North American Travelling College is celebrating its 50th year as a formal entity. It has long served the Akwesasne community by sponsoring many artists and teachers over the past five decades while giving visitors and students from the northeast insights into the culture and history of Indigenous peoples. In the spring of 1974, the founder of what was then the North American Indian Travelling College, the late Ernie Benedict, passed on the duties of directing the College to his daughter Salli Benedict, a stu...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. Akwesasne has a long history of inclusion from the relocation of the Massachusetts born Tarbell brothers in the 1750's to the current population which includes Natives from many nations: Navajo, Onondaga, Anishinaabe, and many others. The area has long sustained a Native presence for many thousands of years. The Mohawks took advantage of the natural beauty and its wealth of natural resources from the vast forests of pine, oak and maple to the best fishing grounds in the northeast part of the continent. Given its...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. The two community meetings held this past December about the impending land claims settlement revealed not only wide dissatisfaction with the proposal but also the need for the Mohawk Nation to transform back into an actual functioning government. As it now stands the Nation Council conducts the cycle of ceremonies which are done with enthusiasm and skill; they are well organized and have become central to the preservation of a distinct Indigenous identity drawing people from across Akwesasne and far beyond. But, as I...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. On October 27 CBC’s investigative show “The Fifth Estate” exposed the performer Buffy Ste. Marie as an imposter. Her 60-year career as an indigenous singer was contrary to the actual truth of her birth. Ms. Ste. Marie was born Beverly Santamaria to non-Native parents in Stoneham, Massachusetts. She is not Cree, not Native and not Canadian. The responses to this was initially disbelief followed by statements of either condemnation or support. I read many comments and sought to express my sympathy to the singer while...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. The color orange represents the ongoing struggle by indigenous residential school survivors to identify the missing children, locate their burial sites, determine how they died and reunite them with their respective families. Only when we have precise facts can we move ahead to bringing criminal charges against the institutions which administered the 150 schools and failed to prevent the blatant and ongoing abuse of the children under their care. To date very few of the abusers have been brought to justice. There can b...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. The Six Nations Survivors Secretariat sponsored their annual residential school conference June 27-29 on the Ohsweken Territory with delegates coming from across Canada. The three days had presenters from Parks Canada, Know History, the Woodlands Cultural Centre, and the Secretariat, Laura Arndt. The intent was to share information and create standards for the location of the burial grounds on residential school grounds, to identify the children who died in those schools, to arrange for their return home and to hold th...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. The people of Akwesasne will be deeply affected by the current, secret negotiations regarding New York State’s theft of Mohawk territory. But just as with the Dundee deal, the plan is to present to the community a settlement proposal after a compromise has been reached and it will then become an “all or nothing” feared based cession. This is coercion, a trap set by the US and New York State to compel the three councils to concede on the most vital elements of our ancestral land rights-specifically jurisdiction, land...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. A seven-member team of Akwesasronon attended the fourth National Gathering on Unmarked Burials in Toronto March 27-29 in Toronto. The event was coordinated by Kim Murray of Kanesatake, Canada’s Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with residential schools. Over 500 people travelled to the city from across the country to give testimony, exchange ideas and develop a collective movement to locate the residential school graves, identify the buried children an...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. On February 10 the US news station WWNY reported that Canada has agreed to pay $2,000,000,000 (billion) to settle a case involving the kidnapping and placing of Native children in residences off Indigenous Territory. Also noted in the report was this amount, to be paid across Canada, also involves those who were placed in the notorious residential schools. At Akwesasne, this involves an untold number of children whose lives were forever altered by the removals with subsequent loss of familial relations, culture, and...
By Doug Kanentiio George. Delegates from the Akwesasronon Shonatater:ron (Residential School Survivors organization) took part in the "National Gathering on Unmarked Burials" conference in Vancouver, BC from January 16-18. The group monitored sessions as follows: Importance of Data Sovereignty and Access to Records in the Search and Recovery of Missing Children Indigenous Archives How to Access Records National Archives Research Youth Voices of Survivors Families The Power of Data Indigenous...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. To Joanne and me it was always “Jake and Judy” Swamp - a couple who not only lived through historic times but took an active part in defining life at Akwesasne and the Mohawk Nation. They were trusted friends who made the longhouse a place to enjoy the traditional rituals. Joanne was a wolf clan Oneida, but she came to Akwesasne for the ceremonies knowing she would be greeted by Judy and Jake’s “hello there!”. They had a keen interest in our travels which complemented their own expeditions across the planet. They carr...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. On September 20, 1972, Richard Tharihwasátste Oakes was shot and killed by Michael Morgan in Sonoma County, California, the homeland of the Pomo Nation. Tharihwasátste was born at Akwesasne in May of 1942, the son of Irene and Arthur Oakes, the grandson of Thomas Foote. Foote was one of the most skilled lacrosse players of the 20th century. As a young boy Thariwasate followed his parents as they moved from Akwesasne to Syracuse. As a teenager he became an ironworker and followed jobs in many cities from the east c...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. John Fadden Kahionhes was a legend in the most profound sense of the word. Over the past seven decades he, more than any other person, gave a visual sense to the resurgence of Mohawk culture. His thousands of etchings, illustrations and paintings marked our emergence from decades of oppression and humiliation to a greater understanding of our identity as complex, creative and highly intellectual human beings whose scientific, technological, political and ecological wisdom has affected the world. Working with his...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Our group, the Akwesasronon Shonataten:ron, were not involved in the planning of the visit by Pope Francis. I was concerned that our concerns would be ignored or filtered through others, so I raised this issue to the organizers at the Assembly of First Nations. We did not want a repeat of the April 1 session with the Pope in Rome, Italy since we wanted direct access to the Papacy but were excluded by design. When it was announced the Pope would come to Canada to specifically address the residential school issue we...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Akwesasne is a community which, for decades, was policed by external agencies. On the Canadian side there was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with assistance from the Ontario Provincial Police and the then Quebec Police Force (now the Surete du Quebec. On the American sector were the New York State Troopers, Border Patrol and, in the instance of serious crimes, the FBI. These police groups were not on the territory to secure the peace, prevent violence or investigate crimes but were used by Canada and the US to...
By Doug George-Kanentiio On the evening of September 3, 1968 Joey Commanda, a 13-year-old Algonquin boy, was struck and killed by a commuter train in the west end of Toronto as he was making his way home to the Pikwakanagan Territory (Golden Lake) 300 km away. Joey was fleeing the Mohawk Institute in Brantford where he was confined with his brother Rocky. The brothers were friends of the Akwesasne Mohawk boys but when our group was expelled, they decided that the best way to be safe was back at home. They made it 50 km reaching Hamilton before...
By Doug George-Kanentiio People ask why the residential school survivors, their respective families and supporters wear orange. Mohawk Nation faith keeper Kevin Deer Kanahsohon told me why. Orange is the color of fire; it is the source of heat during the cold season and light in the dark of night. It is what cooks our food, provides us with comfort and in its ashes and flames are the stories of the trees which are its fuel. In former times, when we lived in longhouses there were communal fires...
By Doug George-Kanentiio. On July 1 the Akwesasne community demonstrated in the most powerful way its desire to address the terrible effects residential schools have had on the people and to support those who survived the trauma of being ripped from their homes and placed in institutions designed to beat the Native out of them. Equally compelling to the 1,000 people who marched was the finding of mass graves of Native children, buried on the grounds of the schools. Over a thousand have been located to date with many more to be found. Canada...
By Doug George-Kanentiio When I was interred at the Mohawk Institute (the mush hole) we lived in a state of constant hunger. It was difficult to sleep at times with an empty stomach which could only be filled with water from one of the school’s washrooms. Lying awake in the middle storm one told, and listened to, stories about that place. It was common knowledge about the children who were buried on site, but nothing could be done to uncover those graves and return the remains to their families. There were 139 residential schools across C...
By Doug George-Kanentiio On May 28 the New York Times reported the possible location of the graves of 215 Native children at the former Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia. The investigation into the fate of those victims of the former Catholic institution was compelled not by the Canadian federal government or the province but by those who had survived the harsh, at times fatal, treatment by those who were entrusted with the care of the boys and girls, most of whom were forcibly removed from their respective homes. As a survivor...
By Doug George-Kanentiio I, along with millions of others, watched the trial of Derek Chauvin, 45, charged in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the killing of George Floyd, 46, on May 25, 2020 before numerous witnesses including Darnella Fraser, then 17, whose steady hand on her cell phone recorder provided the jury and the world with the visual information necessary to convict Chauvin on April 23 of all three counts involving Floyd’s death. Chauvin was found to be a murderer who, despite pleas from the many witnesses present on the scene, refused to...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Akwesasronon are aware of the strict limitations as to the powers and authority of the St. Regis Tribal Council and the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. As entities created by New York State and Canada they are agencies responsive to the rules and regulations of any other such subsidiary such as the Department of Corrections, Education and Environment or the various ministries in Ottawa. All of these entities have specific rules which give them limited enforcement powers. They may not assume to act beyond their mandates....
By Doug George-Kanentiio. Exactly what is a nation? According to international law a nation is a group of people with a common culture, history, language and identity who inhabit a defined land area and have a distinct, independent government. A nation is able to govern its external and internal affairs, may engage in formal relations with other entities, has the capacity to enter into treaties and other compacts and has the means to provide for the needs of its people. A nation must have an administrative element to carry out its policies....
By Doug George-Kanentiio In Germany they called the push for more territory “lebensraum” or “living space”, a drive to expand that nation as a natural consequence. It was first used by Oscar Peschel from his summation of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and later promoted by Friedrich Ratzel in which geography was tied to physical, cultural and national identity. They believed that certain ethnic and racial groups were inclined by nature to dominate others and exercise dominion over the resources of the earth. It was the basis for imperiali...
