Land Claims and the Politics of Fear

One of the most profound teachings of the Mohawk people is that we exist in a place and time within a universe which is responsive to who we are as human beings. We have been given the gift of life to know the world and the intelligence to understand why we live. We are essentially a happy people with enhanced abilities to create societies in which the expression of joy is pervasive. Only by adhering to the individual and collective rituals of thanksgiving are we liberated to realize the true potential of the human mind.

There is no fear in the celebratory customs of the Mohawk people. We dance and sing because we know that we have meaning within the universe, we have a place and a time. Unlike the Europeans we do not have heaven nor hell. There is no eternal damnation, an invention coming from the darkness of the Middle Ages when human existence for most people was defined by pain, hunger, violence and deprivation. Against the grimness of that time comes faith and the expectation that the unrelenting suffering in this world can only be relieved by something better in a mythical alternative. The political and religious institutions of that era exploited and profited from the fears and doubts of the people, promising some vague reward if they complied with the dictates of their earthly masters.

How anti-Mohawk can this be? Yet the use of fear to compel people to set aside their standing as free thinking Onkwehonwe has not faded away despite our increasing technical knowledge about the universe. We see national policies based on fear, we witness as citizens who should know better surrender their freedoms to governments who have a vested interest in marketing fear.

We see it at Akwesasne where our current leadership has been seduced by our enemies in Albany and elsewhere into believing that unless we sign a land claims “agreement” we will be left with nothing. They are offering things we don’t now have yet somehow managed to exist without these highly conditional “benefits”. In return for a pittance we will have agreed to abide by the current limits of the current territory, surrender any claims to that which was stolen, continue to exist in a state of conflicting jurisdictions, allow the State to extract great wealth by exploiting our natural resources and permanently entrench the colonial systems imposed by the US and Canada to do exactly what they now propose-selling all of our collective rights as aboriginal people for a few kilowatts of electricity, reduced tuition at a New York State controlled school and a few million dollars to be controlled by the St. Regis Tribal Council.

Is this what our thousands of years of history has amounted to? Is this how we make the final break between ourselves and the natural world? It this when we abandon our duties to our animal and plant relatives? Is this when we admit that the Seven Nations Treaty binds us for all time? Is this when we concede to sending our best minds to schools which will impose their values on our children and have them deliver the death blow to what is left of our heritage? Is this when we react to that fear now being pushed by the negotiators that if we reject this “deal” we lose everything? Can this be the best thing possible for those yet unborn? Do we presume to have the authority or the permission to sell off our heritage for chump change? To give up our aboriginal rights? To accept with a mere whimper the authority of alien states? To send our people to rot in foreign jails?

Whenever a politician uses fear it is time to question their motives and how they are profiting from this most powerful of emotions, one which all too often eclipses rationality. We need to act with compassion, knowledge and the assurance that we have a deep, abiding and unwavering duty towards the universe. It is time to act on those principles which have sustained us since we were first given the sweet breath of life and the knowledge of who we are as a distinct people. Or do nothing and watch as the earth cleanses itself without regard to a vague Mohawk heritage, something which has become a mere commodity, to be bartered and sold at a bargain basement price.