The Rights of the Land

The Onondaga Nation of central New York proposes a radical new vision of property rights

BY ROBIN KIMMERER

BEFORE FIRST LIGHT we board a bus and at last light we return, just as the October hills of central New York shade to burgundy and the lights come on in dairy barns for evening chores. Teachers, students, clan mothers, chiefs, journalists, scientists, activists, and neighbors like me—I see all our faces reflected in the bus windows. For the Onondaga, this trip to federal court in Albany to defend their right to care for their land has been a long time coming, a journey of generations.

The highway rises out of the enfolding hills to a ridge, where the land suddenly spreads out below. I see forests, farms, orchards, and, in the distance, the lights of downtown Syracuse. Plumes from smokestacks catch the rosy light above Onondaga Lake, a pewter oval reflecting the sky.

The first part of this tale is familiar, which makes it no less shameful. The ancestral territory of the Onondaga stretches from the Pennsylvania border north to Canada. Historically, it was a mosaic of rich woodlands, expansive cornfields, lakes, and rivers. Rights to these lands were guaranteed by treaties between two sovereign nations, Onondaga and the United States. But over the years, illegal takings of land by the state of New York diminished the aboriginal Onondaga territories from 2.6 million acres to a tiny reservation of just 7,300 acres.

The Nation’s current territory does not even include the heart of their ancestral home, Onondaga Lake, one of Native America’s most sacred sites. In the seminal Onondaga story of the Peacemaker, a figure appeared across the water of Onondaga Lake during a time of war, a beautiful youth in a white stone canoe. The stone canoe signifies the weight of the message with which he was entrusted, the Great Law of Peace. Most people of the warring nations turned him away; few would listen. But as the Peacemaker grew to old age, one by one the leaders finally heard the message of peace and set aside their war clubs. On the shore of Onondaga Lake, the Peacemaker gathered together all fifty of the reconciled chiefs. To signify the peace, they cast their weapons into a great hole, on top of which the Peacemaker planted an enormous white pine.

The five bundled needles of the white pine represent the union of five tribes: the Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Mohawk. Its roots, spread out to the four directions, represent the invitation to all to live by the Great Law, which sets forth a vision of right relationships between people and the Earth. Thus was born what the European settlers understood as the Great League of the Iroquois, what the people themselves call the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the oldest continuous democracy on Earth.

Chief Irving Powless Jr., an Onondaga elder, likes to remind listeners that walking beside the Peacemaker was Hiawatha—not Longfellow’s invention, but the real one. It was Hiawatha, standing by this very lake, who bound together the five arrows. One arrow alone, he said, can be broken, but the bundle of five is too strong. The structure of the Iroquois Confederacy became the model for the colonist’s new union, and the symbolism stands today: the eagle in the great seal of the United States holds those five arrows in its talons. It was beneath that very seal that the Onondaga pled their case in federal court.

Chief Powless also likes to say that when the colonists adapted Haudenosaunee ideas for their government, they took only the parts that they liked. “If it were up to us, we wouldn’t have written the Bill of Rights without a Bill of Responsibilities,“ he told me.

Despite its status as the birthplace of American democracy, there is no monument on the shores of Onondaga Lake. Today, the soil where the Peacemaker walked is a Superfund site. In fact, it’s not soil at all, but a slippery white mass of industrial waste, thirty feet deep, left over from soda ash production by Allied Chemical. More than 144 million tons of mercury-laden waste were spewed onto the lake bottom. The water is a stew of sewage and assorted toxic wastes. If you walk on the waste beds, you can see rusting barrels, oozing leachate. The sacred and the Superfund share this shore.

ON A FIELD TRIP to the lake with school kids from the Onondaga Nation, Audrey Shenandoah shares her memories, recalling the lake as a place “where the willows touch the water”—a beautiful place, a place for fishing, for gathering plants, for family picnics, for ceremonies. Audrey is a clan mother, writer, and teacher. As an advisor to the United Nations, she has been a voice on behalf of indigenous peoples and the environment all over the world. The teaching of “think not of yourself, but of the seventh generation” is not an abstraction for her. “We were told to hold tight to our way of life,“ she says, “to honor our ancient teachings, not just for ourselves but for everyone.“ Just as water and birds and fish were given certain responsibilities in the world, so too were the people. They are called upon to give thanks and to take care of all the other gifts.

For these school kids, the day begins and ends not with the Pledge of Allegiance, but with the Thanksgiving Address, known also as the “words that come before all else.“ This river of words calls out to every element of the living world. Water, trees, fish, birds, and berries are thanked for the gifts that they provide, for meeting their responsibilities and sustaining life. Clan mother Freida Jacques explains it this way: “We have a culture of gratitude. These words are used to open and close all gatherings in our daily lives, bringing the listeners’ minds together in offering thanksgiving, love, and respect to the natural world.“

Audrey gazes out over the lake, her snowy hair swept to a graceful knot at the nape of her neck. “When I was a little girl,“ she says, “I always heard talk about a land settlement. This was the dream I’ve heard all of my life.“ That dream is finally inching closer to reality, and with it, quite unexpectedly, comes a process of healing and transformation for an entire region.

ON MARCH 11, 2005, the Onondaga Nation filed a complaint in a federal court in Syracuse seeking title to their lost homelands. Their claim is made under United States law, but its moral power lies in the directives of the Great Law: to act on behalf of peace, the natural world, and the future generations. The motion begins with this statement:

The Onondaga people wish to bring about a healing between themselves and all others who live in this region that has been the homeland of the Onondaga Nation since the dawn of time. The Nation and its people have a unique spiritual, cultural, and historic relationship with the land, which is embodied in Gayanashagowa, the Great Law of Peace. This relationship goes far beyond federal and state legal concerns of ownership, possession, or other legal rights. The people are one with the land and consider themselves stewards of it. It is the duty of the Nation’s leaders to work for a healing of this land, to protect it, and to pass it on to future generations. The Onondaga Nation brings this action on behalf of its people on the hope that it may hasten the process of reconciliation and bring lasting justice, peace, and respect among all who inhabit this area.

The lawsuit is not a land “claim,“ because to the Onondaga land has far greater significance than the notion of property. Sid Hill, theTadodaho, or spiritual leader, of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, has said that the Onondaga Nation will never seek to evict people from their homes. The Onondaga people know the pain of displacement too well to inflict it on their neighbors. Instead the suit is termed a “land rights action.“ When they finally got their day in court last October, members of the Onondaga Nation argued that the land title they’re seeking is not for possession, not to exclude, but for the right to participate in the well-being of the land. Against the backdrop of Euro-American thinking, which treats land as a bundle of property rights, the Onondaga are asking for freedom to exercise their responsibility to the land. This is unheard of in American property law.

In other land claims around the country, some tribes have negotiated for cash, land, and casino deals, reaching for relief from grinding poverty on the last shreds of their territories. But the Onondaga envision a radically different solution that honors their ancestral land and their spiritual responsibilities to it. Above all, the land rights action seeks title for the purpose of ecological restoration. Only with title can they ensure that mines are reclaimed, toxic waste removed, and Onondaga Lake cleaned up. The action strengthens the ability of the Onondaga to exercise their traditional role as stewards of their homelands. Tadodaho Sid Hill says, “We had to stand by and watch what happens to Mother Earth, but nobody listens to what we think. The land rights action will give us a voice.“

The legal action concerns not only rights to the land, but also the rights of the land, its right to be whole and healthy. Audrey Shenandoah makes the goal clear. “In this land rights action,“ she says, “we seek justice. Justice for the waters. Justice for the four-legged and the winged, whose habitats have been taken. We seek justice, not just for ourselves, but justice for the whole of Creation.“

The land rights action could have incited a backlash. In other parts of New York State, citizens opposed to land rights cases have mounted responses as ugly as they are ill-informed, including handmade roadside signs decrying native land rights and inflammatory letters to the editor. But in Onondaga territory, the response has been different, marked by thoughtful conversation, by respect, and, in some places, singing.

AS THE ONONDAGA NATION stands up for justice, it is not standing alone. At the forefront of this community support is a grassroots organization of central New Yorkers called Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, or NOON. It is an outgrowth of the Syracuse Peace Council, the oldest continuing peace and justice organization in the country. Andy Mager, a young father and skillful community organizer, had pulled many of us together for the bus trip to Albany, but the work of the Neighbors goes far beyond that.

As a bulwark against intolerance, NOON has made pathways between the Onondaga Nation and the wider community. Andy knew that the process of healing needed to begin with truth-telling, and with listening. The average person in Syracuse knows almost nothing about the sovereign nation that sits just six miles south of their city, and some folks were wary that the Onondaga action would somehow jeopardize the surrounding community.

Because opportunities for misconception abound, bringing unheard stories to a wider audience has been a focus for NOON. Every few weeks for over a year, NOON has orchestrated a community program entitled “The Onondaga Land Rights Action and Our Common Future.“ On warm summer evenings and dark snowy nights, people have come to a local theater to hear about the history and culture of the Onondaga, stories that escaped the history books: of the origin of consensus-based democracy, of a society based on a balance between male and female leadership, of a culture of gratitude and the Great Law of Peace. Most evenings, there were two spotlit chairs on the dark stage, chairs filled by some combination of indigenous scholars, university professors, clan mothers, grassroots leaders, politicians, scientists, lawyers, all come to think collectively about what the land rights action could mean.

One night, Chief Powless addressed the crowd, framing the land rights action in a historical context. “Sharing our ancient teachings is not just for understanding the past, but for a vision of what the future can hold,“ he said. Fumbling with something in his lap for a moment, he drew from its deerskin wrap a wide belt intricately woven of shell beads: the historic Two Row Wampum. He held it between his outstretched hands and explained that the two paths of purple wampum that travel the length of the white-shell belt represent the treaty between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee more than four hundred years ago. The white ground of the belt represents the river of life down which we all travel. One purple band stands for the indigenous people, traveling in their canoe. The other represents the newcomers, in their ship. The belt documents the agreement that the two lines do not intersect, the colonists carry their ways with them on the ship, the Haudenosaunee hold theirs in their canoes, and neither will try to steer the other’s vessel. “Two boats on the same river,“ he said, is “an agreement to live side by side. But we’re both on the same river. We need the same water. We’re going to the same place.“

“This belt,“ he continued, gently putting it back into its wrapping, “reminds us that our futures are linked. The only way we have is forward, into the future, together.“ Holding the audience in the spell of his gentle voice, he explained that if the land is not healed, if the waters are not clean, then neither of us has a future. The land rights action is for us all.

Because of the bold action of NOON, people whose paths had never before crossed find themselves on common ground. Teachers are inspired to tell new stories in their classrooms, and citizens are organizing public meetings on the future of the lake. Neighborly relations have begun to blossom from casual conversations into work parties on the reservation, shared dinners, and other community gatherings. The past few years have brought the Nation and the city together at a concert by a community-wide choir singing to the lake, candlelight vigils in the city square, shared ceremonies on the shore, and a community celebration with Onondaga members teaching the Friendship Dance. The Onondaga have also formed an alliance with minority neighborhoods in the city, calling for environmental justice and stringent lake cleanup.

Out of this climate of community building, the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment has taken root at a local university, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. One of its first programs was to hold a teach-in on the land rights action that reached thousands of students and community members. The curriculum now includes “Onondaga Land Rights and our Common Future,“ a class co-taught by faculty from SUNY-ESF and the Onondaga Nation, in which students envision alternative environmental futures growing from the philosophy of the Thanksgiving Address. What would it be like, they ask, to care for and be cared for by the land? Their proposals imagine a future where the interests of great blue herons have equal standing with those of property owners, where urban developments are modeled after the lifestyles of maple trees, powered by solar energy and carbon-neutral. Wounded landscapes would not be abandoned so that new ones could be plundered, but nurtured back to health with the tools of restoration ecology. Communities would cement their relationship to the places that sustain them with ceremony and celebration.

The state of New York has argued that the land rights action will be disruptive, but so far it has been profoundly creative of community—a whole community, a democracy of species, both human and nonhuman. “The beauty of this action breaks my heart,“ one woman said. “But it makes me want to be brave, too. If the Onondaga can stand up for this place, then why can’t I?“

The Onondaga now wait for a ruling on the land rights action. They may have to wait a long time. But then again, they’ve waited before.

HISTORICALLY central New York has been known as a birthplace of democracy, a birthplace of abolition and of women’s rights. Through the leadership of the Onondaga and the hunger for wholeness among the rest of the people who live here, this landscape could be a birthplace again—a birthplace of the rights of the land itself and of a community’s willing responsibility to care for it.

In time, the land rights action could also lead to the rebirth of Onondaga Lake. In the last few years, the lake has given signs of hope, with marked improvements in water quality. The shifts have come as the factories have closed and sewage discharge has been reduced. The water, too, has done its part. With lessened inputs, the lakes and streams seem to be cleaning themselves as the water moves through. In some places, plants are starting to inhabit the bottom. Just this spring, trout were found once again in the lake. It seems to me that the waters are reminding the people: if you will use your healing gifts, we will use ours.

And now, Allied Chemical, which eventually merged with Honeywell, Inc., is finally being held accountable for the condition of the lake. After decades of foot-dragging, the company and the state and federal governments have offered a cleanup plan that calls for dredging the most contaminated sediments and covering the rest with a few inches of sand. Unfortunately, this leaves the bulk of the contaminants spread over the entire lake bottom, where they can easily enter the food chain. Chief Powless characterizes the solution as “prescribing a Band-Aid for cancer.“

The Onondaga Nation has called for a thorough cleanup of their sacred lake, but, without title, their voice has not been heard. The U.S. legal system has not been friendly toward indigenous land rights. Too often, when the well-being of its lands are being discussed, the Nation has had to litigate its way to the table instead of being invited as a sovereign entity.

Joe Heath is the attorney and tireless advocate for the Onondaga Nation. Lately, Joe’s phone rings with requests from towns throughout the aboriginal territory for inclusion in the dreamed-of restoration. These communities too have been damaged. They too have been marginalized by corporate interests. Joe carefully tracks the reports of environmental injury, creating a growing list of work to be done. The Onondaga, once made voiceless by the law, are gaining respect as a voice for the land.

And while the Onondaga didn’t take this action with the intent of acquiring other people’s lands, lands are coming to them nonetheless. A local businessman is calling upon the county legislature to return lakeshore lands to the Nation. Others are willingly selling lands adjacent to the reserve to protect them from suburban development. Another extraordinary example, miles from the reservation, is a beautiful old dairy farm of green meadows and maple woods. It has been in one family for generations, bestowed by New York State for services rendered in the Revolutionary War. Those well-loved acres have been passed down again and again. But the deed carries a clause written by that long-ago forebear that one day the land must be returned to “the Indians from whom it was taken.“ A few years ago, the last heir, now elderly, contacted the Nation to give back what was rightfully theirs.

A neighbor of mine wonders, “Should I give back my land, too?“ But that’s not what the Onondaga are teaching. They don’t ask that we give the land back, but that we give back to the land, to care for it as if it were our home, too.

I think that the land rights action is an invitation for the people of this watershed to engage in becoming indigenous to place. No newcomer can ever match the Onondaga’s identity with these hills, but what does it mean for an immigrant culture to start thinking like a native one? Not to appropriate the culture of indigenous people, not to take what is theirs, but to throw off the mindset of the frontier, the mindset that allows people to bury sacred sites under industrial waste, to fill a lake with mercury. Being indigenous to place means to live as if we’ll be here for the long haul, to take care of the land as if our lives, both spiritual and material, depended on it. Because they do.

The Earth is generous with us—and forgiving. We can be the same with each other. Becoming indigenous to place also means embracing its story, because the restoration of the land and the healing of our relationship mirror one another. Coming to terms with injustice is an act of liberation. By making the past visible, we can then see our way forward. I suppose that’s why some of us rode the bus to court with our Onondaga neighbors—to bear witness to the telling of truth and to accept the hand offered in healing.

Even after everything, that the people who suffered so greatly can now turn to their neighbors with such a gift seems an act of immense generosity. The Onondaga people are offering us a gift of vision. Out of their endless thanksgiving for the land, they are inviting us to dream of a time when the land might also give thanks for the people.

My love-hate relationship with Turkey Day

 

As a person descended from slaves, who still has family in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the place where my family was held in bondage, I was taught that Thanksgiving was a time to celebrate our freedom and the strength of family and community that got us through and brought us over. Thanksgiving is the celebration of our metaphorical crossing of the River Jordan or, perhaps, the Ohio River.

The truth is that Thanksgiving should be a time where we honor the spirits of those living and dead that fought, bled, and died so that our communities could survive. It is a time to gather around our friends and family and to show them through words, food, and laughter that we appreciate their presence and their love. But it is also a time of obligation.

No two peoples living on this land known as the United States of America have such a tragic and intertwined history as African-Americans and Native Americans. Throughout our shared history of enslavement and genocide, forced labor and forceable removal from our homelands, our fates have touched one another: sometimes in acts of solidarity such as the taking in of runaway slaves by the Cherokee and Seminole and other native nations, and sometimes in acts of violence where slaves served with continental armies participating in the massacre of indigenous communities and indigenous communities that served whites as slave catchers.

Since the end of slavery, the relationship between African-Americans and Native Americans has, again, sometimes been one of solidarity such as the brown/black power movements of the 1960s and sometimes one of  betrayal, such as the stripping of citizenship from black members of the western Cherokee Nation earlier this year.

Yet the truth remains that at this time of profound social change and opportunity, leaders of the African-American community and leaders of both urban Indian and Indian nations should be working together on common goals related to sovereignty, reparations, and reclamation. At times the survival of entire segments of the black community have depended on our native brothers and sisters. That history was, intentionally, kept quiet by mainstream authorities. Divide and conquer has always been their primary tactic.

This Thanksgiving, I challenge our communities to commit to not only celebrating our freedom and our family but also developing strategies to build deep relationships with our native kin. In Humboldt County, California, a small grassroots collective called Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC) has partnered with the Seventh Generation Fund on a relatively new project called the Honor Tax. The two organizations are working closely with small businesses, non-profit organizations, and individual citizens encouraging them to make a yearly tax payment to the Wiyot Nation. The nation on whose lands Humboldt County sits. This is not a charitable contribution but a tax payment acknowledging that the land itself is not owned by those who sit on it but by the peoples that historically belong to it.

These are the types of endeavours that should be championed by people of African descent. If we, the grandchildren of those held in bondage, are to righteously, and justly, demand reparations in recognition of the trillions of dollars of wealth created from our unpaid labor, then it is our moral and civil obligation to advocate for at least as much  for the indigenous peoples of the United States. In the end, it is my hope that one day all of this land will be restored to those from whom it was taken, but until that day comes, it is our duty to work hand in hand to hold up and restore each as we collectively move towards a just and liberated future.  Let’s transform Thanksgiving into a holiday of thanks for each other and an opportunity to create new river crossings on black and red bridges.

Original posted: Wednesday November 26, 2008 12:30 P.M.

 

John Ridley

Posted November 28, 2008 | 07:59 PM (EST)

It was just this past summer that RC Journal called. Someone has suggested a native blog and that certain someone further suggested that I could do it. Given my busy-ness and travel, I wasn’t too warm to the idea, but when Dacotah’s name was brought up, I felt like a deer caught in headlights, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was just one of those challenges that, by the Lakota codes of conduct, you just can’t refuse.

This is one of those times that seem to stand still while spiritual energy floats around and touches everyone in profound ways.

Dacotah was a young man that came to teach us what it really means to be Lakota. A few short, yet long days ago, he returned to the spiritual world; wanagiyata. He left us to reflect his existence and his passing and to further ponder our shortcomings and our challenges as Lakota people and as human beings.

It is young people like him that make us, the elders feel hopeful that everything is going to be alright. There are young people that can grasp the influences and the teachings and live them. Dacotah taught those good ways, without making much noise. I heard something that immediately brought him to mind, “Passing wisdom from the previous generation to the next generation is this generation’s responsibility and if you need to use words sometimes, do so”.

There is much to be said yet, but not just by me alone. There are many perspectives, many ways he touched people’s lives. That needs to be shared. He influenced this blog and to remember him here is the honorable thing to do. He was extraordinary for these times. For us to get a true glimpse of Lakota culture, we need to define for ourselves what it was that he embodied. He lived wacintangya. He was a good relative. 

I know that there are many people that feel a great need to honor his presence and grieve his absence. Please feel welcome here.

 

 

http://lohud.com/article/20081011/OPINION/810110310/1076/OPINION01

 

Rethinking Columbus : great explorer or a greedy conqueror?

by Richard Kavesh – October 11, 2008

As a Social Studies teacher at an “A-graded” public high school in the Bronx, I’m stupefied that so many Americans still believe our most popular myth - that Christopher Columbus discovered America . The claim that Columbus discovered America is just as preposterous as the claim of the Native American who landed in Rome on Sept. 25, 1973 and declared that he discovered Italy .

” Italy , cradle of Western civilization, woke up today to the fact that it has never actually been discovered,” the New York Times reported at the time. “The situation, however, was remedied at 11:00 in the morning when the chief of the Indian Chippewa tribe, Adam Nordwall, stepped off an Alitalia jumbo jet and claimed it for the Indian people. The intrepid explorer, in full Indian dress, stood on the tarmac of Fiumicino Airport and took possession of Italy ‘by right of discovery.’”

Blithely ignoring the fact that Italy is and has been inhabited by highly cultured and accomplished people who rightly consider themselves the legitimate rulers of the glorious land they have lived in for millennia, Mr. Nordwall then asked: “What right had Columbus to ‘discover’ America when it was already inhabited for thousands of years? The same right that I have to come to Italy and claim to have discovered your country.”

Let’s get a few things straight. As bold and visionary an explorer as Columbus was, he never landed in America and he didn’t discover any new lands at all; the Caribbean island where Columbus landed had been inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years before his arrival. Columbus was a brutal conquistador: he claimed the Caribbean and Central American regions for the Spanish crown and his henchmen killed, tortured, exploited, raped, and enslaved thousands of Taino Indians.

Columbus and his backers in Spain were motivated by what historians refer to as “God, gold, and glory.” The book “Rethinking Columbus,” edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson, quotes author Hans Koning’s description of how Columbus ‘ crew extracted gold from the Tainos: “Every man and woman, every boy or girl of fourteen or older had to collect gold for the Spaniards. As their measure, the Spaniards used hawks’ bells. Every three months, every Indian had to bring to one of the forts a hawk’s bell filled with gold dust. Copper tokens were manufactured, and when an Indian brought his or her tribute of gold to an armed post, he or she received such a token, stamped with the month, to be hung around the neck. With that they were safe for another three months while collecting more gold. Whoever was caught without a token was killed by having his or her hands cut off. Indians who tried to flee into the mountains were hunted down with dogs and killed, to set an example for the others.”

To make matters even worse, the Tainos that Columbus’ crew didn’t maim or murder later succumbed to diseases that Columbus and his fellow conquistadores transported from Europe . And when all this “cheap labor” died, African slaves were shipped over to replace them. Columbus was therefore directly responsible for introducing both imperialism and slavery to the Americas .

Why, then, do so many Americans still believe that Columbus discovered America ? Because most history is written from the perspective of the winners and because history books often ignore the perspectives of minorities, poor people, or otherwise exploited peoples. “The word ‘discover’ represents the point of view of the supposed discoverers,” Bigelow writes in “Rethinking Columbus.” “It’s the invaders masking their theft. And when the word gets repeated in textbooks, those textbooks become the propaganda of the winners.”

Although textbooks used in New York public schools point out both the positive and negative effects of the “Columbian exchange” (defined as “the global transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases that occurred during the European colonization of the Americas ” ), they invariably describe the arrival of Columbus and his crew from the Spaniards’ point of view. There’s hope: recent Regents test questions have asked students to discuss varying views of the Columbus story.

As for me, I begin my first class on the Age of Encounter between the peoples of Europe, Africa, and the Americas by walking up to a (previously alerted) student, taking his or her backpack, and then announcing to the class: “I discovered this backpack. I own it, it’s mine.” When students object, I then go inside the backpack, take something out of it, claim it, and let the students yell in outrage for a while before filling them in on the prank and then asking them: “so how can people say that Columbus discovered America ?”

These days, Columbus Day doesn’t mean much to most Americans except a day off from work or school and another reason to go shopping. As we throng the Mall, yak on our cell phones, and bargain-hunt for clothes stitched perhaps by the very descendants of Columbus’ original slave laborers, let us take at least a few moments to reflect and to ask ourselves if Columbus was more of a great explorer or a greedy conqueror, more of an intrepid voyager or an exploitative imperialist, and if Columbus Day is more of an occasion for celebration or commiseration.

The writer, a Nyack village trustee, teaches social studies at the Bronx School of Law and Finance, a public high school.

Dogs being beaten to death by housing workers? Yikes! It’s a rather bizarre solution to a huge problem.

On my reservation, there has been a growing population of unwanted, uncared for pets. Again, poverty is a strong factor in our relationship with our four-legged relatives. When people don’t feel good about themselves, it’s not likely that they will extend the necessary caring. 

I’ve heard this old story about humans’ relationship with the dog. In a time of famine, the dog came forward to the starving humans and offered itself for their survival. The dog asked the humans to care for them from that time forward. So the dog is very loyal to the human, even when abused. The dogs linger in human habitats, even when it could roam free and probably survive better in the wild.

And likewise, with any other being, we have a comprehensible story about the evolution of our relationships and responsibilities.

The abandoned pet population is so huge, maybe our tribal colleges should think about partnerships with Humane Society and develop courses for animal management? Maybe the tribal administration might think about establishing shelters and spaying/neutering programs. It isn’t going to go away if you ignore it. They’ll multiply. It’ll cost money to do these things, but when you do good things, help will happen.

If I had another lifetime, I would be a vet and establish an animal shelter!

What is important to remember is that when children see this negligence and cruelty, it’ll imprint values and will certainly deteriorate the integrity of the community and the culture.

Thank you for the question, my friend.

Thank you, Merman and Nancy for your insights. This issue is particularly troublesome for me as my family has a strong military involvement and we have felt the effects, both good and not so good.

I remember my grandfather squatting on the ground without a shirt, washing potatoes from the field. He had jagged scars across his back; shrapnel wounds from World War I. I remember the photographs of my father and uncles taken during the Korean War. I remember best my brother as he was before he went to Vietnam and as he was when he came back. None have talked about what happened there. 

The warrior spirit says to protect your family and the territory you need to survive and it is that warrior spirit that nudges our young to step up when this country seems to be threatened. It is that, but it is also the deep poverty that hunkers down over inner cities, the rural areas, and reservations that compels our precious young to step into the military ranks.

Historically, our leaders were out front, but it isn’t the leaders of this country that must suffer the effects of their decisions.

The holocaust in Iraq goes on, taking along with it the bodies and minds of our young men and women. “Ha ecela glipi” I’ve heard elders say. They’ve come back hollow, just a shell and this country is not prepared for the numbers.

I’ve heard that the Dineh people (Navajo) still actively practice their cleansing and healing practices for those returning from war. Here and there in Lakota country there are ceremonies to help veterans. I’m sure the VA is doing the best that it can to bring healing, but the numbers will become even more overwhelming.

I worry for my nieces and nephews that are now on their way to war. They were just babies! They don’t want to kill, but the military is practically the only way out of the intense poverty. If there was a real threat to this country, I would be singing encouragement songs for them. We all know that is not so. If I sound unpatriotic, it’s only because someone defined patriotism in an odd way. We are still patriots to the land, to the humble and honest people, but how can we be patriots to pathology on a grand scale?

 

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska

By Evon Peter

evonpeter@mac.com

9/8/2008

My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic

Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My

organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska

and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for

the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as

well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from

the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.

I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of

human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of

unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the

Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of

Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our

path to justice.

Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States

through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native

peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human

“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our

lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was

called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the

Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the

years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become

entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct

violation of our human rights.

What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive

in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:

1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live

in the garage or backyard)

2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and

be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save

the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt

in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)

3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with

poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince

you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil

and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise

4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except

under strict oversight and through extensive regulation

5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did

not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled

your life (voting or otherwise)

How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that

you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you

to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that

justice could one day prevail for your descendents? And most importantly to our

conversation, how American does this sound to you?

To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was

born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my

grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house

and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress

unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my

grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and

the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for

our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the

building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if

leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice

of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.

United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major

platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,

lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its

corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return

African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the

opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations

dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations

are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources

differently than African, Asian, and European nations?

Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the

Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native

peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose

Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and

yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no

roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to

varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has

become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.

As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski

in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their

traditional way of life through subsistence.

The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims

Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also

extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In

the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination

legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in

the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and

resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led forprofit

corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the

government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits

made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in

partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of

legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the

guise of progress.

Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have

maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in

Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out

upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of

due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the

same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally

recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized

but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to

sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes

rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t

make decisions concerning their own land and people?

The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for

profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this

attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within

Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United

States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular

area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to

offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the

Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil

development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,

forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of

millions.

Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For

example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the

coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any

disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people

to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.

This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable

alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options

that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact

ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off

shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would

have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which

would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer

term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National

Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and

perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.

While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation

about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering

with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have

an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth

about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.

Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of

our future generations,

*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization

I do a lot of talking and then listen later. I have some thoughts on Lakota people and other people of color joining the military at disproportionate rates, but I invite you to offer your opinions and we can have a discussion. Thanks!