New Approaches to Representing Culture

SAMANTHA DOXTATOR (Oneida, Wolf Clan): In our creation story, we come from Sky World.

When Creator, when he first made people, he took that stardust, all those elements that are in the stars, and he put it into the humans that he was creating.

And then he blew the three breaths of life into us.

LOUISE HERNE (Mohawk, Bear Clan Mother): The Haudenosaunee people–the word meaning [Mohawk word]–means “people of the longhouse.” We’re not just a spiritual people, we’re a political people. We’re athletes, we’re artists, you know we’re a full-spectrum kind of people.

SCOTT MANNING STEVENS (Mohawk, Bear Clan): The Haudenosaunee are a confederacy of six different native nations. We have similar and interrelated languages, cultural traditions, spiritual traditions, and a common history bound together.

At the same time, of the six who go by their English names, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Tuscarora, of each of the six has its own linguistic identity, its own cultural autonomy and political autonomy.

We are next to each other geographically, spanning from the east, around the Albany area, going west past Rochester towards Buffalo.

We don't experience large-scale territorial loss until after the American Revolution.

Our communities, though, retain small land bases that are throughout our traditional homelands.

G. PETER JEMISON (Seneca, Heron Clan): We were united by a message of peace, power, and righteousness roughly over a thousand years ago by a man we referred to as the Peacemaker, working in concert with a woman, Jigonhsasee, the Mother of Nations, and Hayenwatha, or Hiawatha they say in English, working to get the Five Nations to replace killing with thinking and to use the power of the Good Mind to resolve our differences.

It’s generally referred to as the Hayenwatha Belt or Hiawatha Belt. This is a facsimile of it. Each of these represents one of the five nations.

Later, when the Tuscarora come under us, the wing of us, then they become the sixth Nation.

We created what anthropologists refer to as a mnemonic device. That's our visual record of agreements. 

Sometimes invitation, a declaration of war, even, back in the day, and other times treaties. 

NEIL PATTERSON, JR. (Tuscarora, White Bean Clan): For the Haudenosaunee, it always goes back to that Two Row Wampum Treaty.

It says, as settlers, you have the right to live your way. But so do we.

We're not selling land. We're not leasing land. We're just here under that Two Row model. The original basis for all treaties that come after 1613.

ANGELA FERGUSON (Onondaga, Eel Clan): It is a birthright that when you are born to a Haudenosaunee mother, that automatically upon your birth makes you a member of that clan. And so not only do you belong to your mother, but you belong to all the members and your leadership of that clan, including your chief, clan mother, and faith keepers.

HERNE: So the responsibility of a clan mother is not only to, nominate our chiefs. She names the babies. She calls for war, calls for peace. She arranges marriages.

Her responsibility is to ensure that the culture, the language, the ceremonies, moves forward. And, probably her biggest responsibility is to ensure the continuation of the democratic principles of the Great Law of Peace.

JAMIE JACOBS (Seneca, Turtle Clan): A lot of our elders had attended boarding schools, and they left those boarding schools with the intention of not handing off the language because they didn't want their descendants to suffer at the hands of boarding schools.

So, my parents didn’t grow up speaking, and my grandparents didn’t grow up speaking. But all my great-grandparents grew up speaking Seneca as their first language. 

So that means you have two generations where the language was not really nurtured or handed off. So today, I’m very proud to say that our young people are stepping up to the plate and taking on the responsibility of learning language.

JESSICA MARTIN (Cayuga, Wolf Clan): It’s like the key to unlocking the door to our culture.

Without that key, you kind of only understand some parts of the culture in English. And so it's bringing all of that together to understand all of the things that our ancestors and our speakers and our families have dedicated their lives to, to bringing forward and carrying that through. It's really a worldview.

And the way that our elders talk about it is they want us to understand who we are. These are the things that were gifted to us.

MANNING STEVENS: Well, lacrosse is a game, but it's also, a practice that was given to us. It was gifted to us by the Creator.

There is the medicine game, which is part of the ceremonial world of it; but then there's the simple joy of competition.

If you don't play it, you go to it. It is so Haudenosaunee. I can't think of anything, maybe other than our corn soup or something that, that my mind thinks of immediately as Haudenosaunee.

JACOBS: The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Nationals is the national team of the Haudenosaunee. Players are selected from all six Nations, and they compete in world championships. They travel all over the world, they represent sovereignty because the Haudenosaunee Nationals travel on a Haudenosaunee passport. 

And they exercise this right. And sometimes they're denied, but they stand their ground, and they maintain that we are a sovereign group of people. We're from sovereign nations. And that's what they also represent to us. We are the originators of the modern game of lacrosse.

HERNE: The saying in Haudenosaunee country is we always got to think seven generations ahead in the decisions that we make today.

BRENNEN FERGUSON (Tuscarora, Turtle Clan Chief): We're always supposed to be thinking about the coming generations. 

You're cautious to make sure that what we're doing isn't depleting anything for the future. That plays a huge role in ecological responsibility in our decisions that way.

We want to make sure that whatever we do, we're not compromising their existence or what they're going to experience here on Earth.

PATTERSON, JR.: We are covered in intergenerational scars that get passed on. But we're healing. We're making the conscious choice to keep that Good Mind and to replace negative emotions with good thinking.

There's a revival happening in our communities which I’m very proud of.

DOXTATOR: We have so much wealth in our knowledge. And Ongweh'onweh wealth has nothing to do with money. That's just a tool, money’s just a tool. Ongweh'onweh wealth is in our understandings, in our language, in our gardens. We have so much.

FERGUSON: We are reclaiming who we are as Haudenosaunee people.

I'm doing my part for my ancestors who fought for all these things, who survived all these things, who maintained traditional knowledge through all that turmoil. And now it's our responsibility to do that for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.