A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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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...
By Doug George-Kanentiio It is well established, and universally acknowledged, that the Rotinonshonni (Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois) created a unique system of governance based upon natural law as codified by Skennenrahowi, the Peacemaker. He worked with the individual nations for many years before establishing the world’s first true alliance of free nations, now the oldest united nations. In doing so he replaced the rule of despots with leaders who were selected by the people with strict qualifications as to candidates and with the a...
©by Doug George-Kanentiio Over the course of our history, we have had many leaders during peace and war. Most of us know of Captain Joseph Brant, Cornplanter, Hendricks, Red Jacket, Handsome Lake, Leon Shenandoah, Mary Jemison, Clinton Rickard, Levi General-Deskahe, Audrey Shenandoah, Maisie Shenandoah, Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Arthur C. Parker and Ely Parker but there have been many others who have been eclipsed by the settler writers of Native history. Their version of our story would have us accept that we did not have people of great...
By Doug George-Kanentiio As we all know there is great power in what we name, in what we elect to use to identify who we are. We are taught by traditional custom that the natural world is attuned to the human voice and is aware of our presence as we walk upon Mother Earth. We are told that the food crops, the medicines, the animals, the winds, the plants respond to our aboriginal names and that healing is affected when we use those names to address the spiritual beings and within the circles of the various medicine societies. The use of Mohawk...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Perhaps it is not that the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hostile to Indigenous people but that in her legal career they had no presence, no bearing. They were, as she is cited in writing, advocates for a distinct status which was ‘rekindling the embers of sovereignty that long ago went cold”. Justice Ginsburg was a rightfully praised defender of human rights and specifically those of women. She wanted them to enjoy full equality under American law and to brush aside those elements of dis...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Recently I watched the film “Little Big Man” which remains one of my favorite movies given the outstanding performance by Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation north of Vancouver, BC. Although Dan George is not a relative he did meet my uncle Angus “Shine” George when he was playing professional lacrosse in the late 1930’s. My uncle said Chief George would perform songs and dances between periods of the games which my uncle would stand and watch. Decades later my brother Dan George, now a retired US Marine, w...
By Doug George-Kanentiio “I think no institutional achievement of mankind exceeds it (the Confederacy) in either wisdom or intelligence” John Collier, US Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1933-1945 One of the great things the Rotinonshonni Confederacy has done is to follow its lawful obligations to offer refuge, care and support for individuals, bands and nations in need of a safe place. It is central to the teachings of Skennenrahowi to insure the Great White Pine connects the sky ward and the earth that all may see and the Four White Roots sha...
By Doug George-Kanentiio There is appropriate anger in the US over the killing of George Floyd in May, caused by a chokehold and compression on his neck by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Despite many witnesses, some of whom recorded Floyd's dying, with Chauvin to release his knee which was forcing Floyd's face into the pavement, the officer refused and for over 8 minutes maintained the pressure until Floyd died. There are other instances when American police have used deadly choke holds including that of Eric Garner in 2014...
Source: By the Cleveland Historical Team Submitted by Doug George Oghema Niagara of the band Pishqua, tribe Osauckee of the Algonquin nation, was born amid the thunderous sound of the Niagara on September 10, 1865, in the Hut of Two Kettles on the Tuscarora Indian Village in Lewistown, New York. Cleveland became his home during the first decade of the 20th century. He came to be known among white men as Chief Thunderwater and built an impressive career as a business leader and civic booster...
By Doug George-Kanentiio That an American police force assaults and kills a member of an ethnic minority is not unusual for Native people who have endured murderous and deliberate violence applied upon them by those who are supposed to serve and protect. In Canada and the U.S., Native people have been attacked and have died at the hands of the police, at times in the most brutal of ways. In Saskatchewan a Cree man, Lawrence Wegner, dies after the Saskatoon cops take him on a “starlight tour” in January, 2000 and abandon him far from she...
By Doug George-Kanentiio A recent question came up in the Quora forum asking what life was like in North America in the year 1300. This is my response for Akwesasne specifically: Breathing clean air, drinking pure water, great fishing and hunting, plenty of food, no religion, lots of leisure time, wonderful camping and swimming, no jails, no schools, no starvation, no “lords”, no masters, no corrupt popes or predatory priests, no social or economic classes, no pollution, abundance of animals, plants and trees, no kings, no castles or chu...
By Doug George-Kanentiio That an American police force assaults and kills a member of an ethnic minority is not unusual for Native people who have endured murderous and deliberate violence applied upon them by those who are supposed to serve and protect. In Canada and the US Native people have been attacked and died at the hands of the police, at times in the most brutal of ways. In Saskatchewan a Cree man, Lawrence Wegner, dies after the Saskatoon cops take him on a “starlight tour” in January 2000 and abandon him far from shelter in sub...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Akwesasne Mohawk I was fortunate to work with a highly skilled, compassionate and effective group of first responders called the Akwesasne Emergency Team. A volunteer, mostly female, unit serving the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory; the Team saved hundreds of lives and was highly respected by the Mohawk people. We all had certain levels of training including instruction on something called “triage” in which the lead EMT had the authority to make critical decisions as to which patient in a multi victim incident received med...
By Doug George-Kanentiio, Akwesasne Mohawk When I was growing up on Akwesasne Mohawk Territory there were social habits which reflected an historical response to the devastating communicable diseases which came close to wiping out our ancestors. Beginning in the early 17th century illnesses such as smallpox and influenza struck the Iroquois hard. As with the Native nations along the Atlantic coast European borne viruses caused the death of millions of people. The European colonial powers had tried in vain throughout the 1500’s to establish s...
By Doug George-Kanentiio In Canadian lore, the raconteurs of old spoke of La Chasse Galerie (the flying canoe) and among the Mohawk the Raksothas (grandpas), told scary stories about the Flying Heads which roamed deep in the forests. But one of the most disturbing myths is the one in which Indian Act band councils are labeled as “First Nations”. They are not. Band councils were created from the 1876 Indian Act and designed to undermine and replace centuries of traditional governments across Canada. They were and are extremely limited in the...
By Doug George-Kanentiio One of the fundamental teachings of Skennenrahowi was that we have a duty to ensure our descendants unto the seventh generation have the things they need to live in peace and freedom on lands which are clean and fertile. This is a prime directive, a lawful obligation which compels us to think seriously about the effects our collective and individual actions have on the unborn, those who faces are yet in the earth. That phrase is a powerful one for who among us would scar the faces or our grandchildren or deny them...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Akwesasne Mohawk In 2016 I wrote a column about the situation at Standing Rock and the ecological harm coming about through the use of fossil fuels. I cited an Iroquois prophecy about the coming of a time when human beings would disturb the earth by extracting things deep within her. Long ago there were species of plants and animals of great size. The animals are described as lizard like brings and the plants similar to today’s tobacco and ferns. These species became extinct and were covered by the earth. There were spe...
By Doug George-Kanentiio (November 11, 2019) The music of America was rightfully indigenous for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the immigrants from the east. Not only drums and flutes but the power of the human voice drifted across the plains, through the forests, across the mountains and back into the thousands of communities emanating from the millions of Native people who defined pre-contact Anowara:kowa-the Great Turtle. The music produced by the first peoples could be as complex as a symphony or as simple as a personal chant...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Two weeks ago the students in the Akwesasne and Cornwall school acknowledged one of the most bitter episodes in Canada’s history by wearing orange to draw attention to the Residential School era. As is now known those Native children taken from their homes and placed in these institutions were subjected to great physical and psychological abuse which in turn has had a harmful effect on their respective families and within their communities. There were hundreds of Mohawks placed in schools located hundreds of k...
By Doug George-Kanentiio The Laws of Burgos were enacted by Spain on December 27/1512 in response to the massive slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Native people in the Caribbean by the Spanish invaders. The murders were so blatant as to compel the king to investigate and come up with a series of laws meant to curtail the killings. It led directly to the creation of the encomienda system in which Spanish “lords” were given Natives to control subject to the following rules. In effect, the encomienda established the federal “trust” and Ind...
By Doug George-Kanentiio I have been asked about my thoughts regarding the passing of Ray Cook, a man I had known for over 40 years. He was one of the most passionate of writers, a believer in the viability of his heritage as a Mohawk citizen and one committed to a long-standing tradition among the Rotinosionni (Haudenosaunee) in that we had a central role to play in the affairs of the world. He realized we needed alliances now just as we did in the past. During one of our episodic crisis-this one in 1979-Ray had the unique idea of promoting...
By Doug George-Kanentiio As we all know there is great power in what we name, in what we elect to use to identify who we are. We are taught by traditional custom that the natural world is attune to the human voice and is aware of our presence as we walk upon Mother Earth. We are told that the food crops, the medicines, the animals, the winds, the plants respond to our aboriginal names and that healing is affected when we use those names to address the spiritual beings and within the circles of the various medicine societies. The use of Mohawk...
By Doug George-Kanentiio, Akwesasne Mohawk Abortion in Native societies is a complex issue involving family, clan and community. There are very specific moral teachings which discourage this act which may involve the mother, her maternal kin and the female leadership of her extended family, the clan. Together, they would discuss the reasons for, and against, carrying an embryo to term but the final decision was left to the woman since it was her body and hers alone. Equally important was the practice of birth control by both men and women. The...
By Doug George-Kanentiio I attended the April 29 session at Kana:takon in which Jeremy Bouchard, an attorney with the Gowling law firm in Ottawa, made his pitch to have former students of the “Indian Day Schools” at Kana:takon, Kawehno:ke and Tsi Snaihne sign forms regarding their negative experiences at those places. As we know the teachers in those schools prior to the 1980’s committed acts of violence against the children without consequences and caused demonstrable harm by condemning Mohawk culture, stripping children of their langu...
By Doug George-Kanentiio Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that $60,000,000 effort designed to address the “cultural genocide” we, the former ‘inmates’ of the residential schools experienced is a failure. Since it began operations in 2008 the Commission has crossed Canada, heard the testimony of 6,500 people and published two volumes of its findings. It has made recommendations and is now an entrenched part of the federal bureaucracy. Its representatives continue to make appearances and have job security doing so. These individuals,...
