Publisher’s Description:
This visionary manifesto, first published in 1999, has significantly improved our understanding of First Nations’ issues. Taiaiake Alfred calls for the indigenous peoples of North America to move beyond their 500-year history of pain, loss, and colonization, and move forward to the reality of self-determination. A leading Kanien’kehaka scholar and activist with intimate knowledge of both Native and Western traditions of thought, Alfred is uniquely placed to write this inspiring book. His account of the history and future of the indigenous peoples of North America is at once a bold and forceful critique of Indigenous leaders and politics, and a sensitive reflection on the traumas of colonization that shape our existence.
This new edition of Alfred’s important manifesto is thoroughly updated in the context of current issues related to government policy and First Nations politics today. In addition to new examples of indigenous-state relations, it includes the latest court cases and updated evaluations of key negotiations over land and self-government. A new preface incorporates an original, previously unpublished dialogue with the influential Dakota author, historian, and activist Vine Deloria Jr, recorded shortly before his death in 2005.
The book can be previewed and purchased at:
http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195430516.html
This essay is part of a series titled, “My Future Vision of Kahnawake,” for publication in The Eastern Door newspaper. The series was commissioned by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, and asked notable Kahnawake Mohawks to share their thoughts on the future direction of the community.
I asked my son what he thinks needs to be done to make Kahnawá:ke a better place. His answer was straightforward, “I don’t know, Kahnawá:ke’s pretty good the way it is.” He’s right, of course. By all measures, and considering the way things are in the world these days, especially among our Native brothers and sisters across Turtle Island, Kahnawá:ke is a proud and solid community.
We complain and criticize a lot, and for us Mohawks, politics is a contact sport sometimes, but we have to admit that in spite of the problems we face, compared to elsewhere, our leaders are relatively sincere, honest and competent. Kahnawá:ke is safe, our standard of living is pretty good, we have strong families, and we stick together and help each other when times are tough. Most important, we’ve held on to our pride in being Onkwehonwe and are still committed to being independent and self-sufficient, knowing that this is what gives us freedom. We don’t always get it right, and we don’t win every battle we get into. But we never give up, we fight smart and hard, we never sell ourselves short and our spirit is unconquerable.
Making Kahnawá:ke stronger means challenging ourselves to live up to an even higher standard of thought and action than the ones we have set for ourselves and which have taken us this far. There are some things about our community today that are offences against a true Mohawk way of life. They are mostly related to the culture of money and hard-core capitalist mentalities that have taken the place of the spiritual worldview and a culture rooted in the natural world that defined and sustained our ancestors, both traditional and Christian. And beyond the obvious, too many of us have forgotten, or have never taught ourselves, the crucial connections and responsibilities we have as people living in our natural environment. This is truly a disconnection that we have to repair if we are to recover our full strength and potential as a community.
There is something missing in the life of our community, however. Kahnawá:ke, “in the rapids”… the very name of our community invokes a relationship to the river. Four generations of Kahnawakero:non are living dispossessed and disconnected from the “majestic and magnificent river”, Kaniatarowanenneh, that defines our people’s existence. The construction of the Seaway in the 1950s was a major blow to our people, and though some, like my own family, suffered the physical destruction of their homes, every family has been affected in many different ways by the forced separation of our community from the river.
There are very few people who use the land and river in traditional ways today. We drive over it on the Mercier Bridge almost every day, but how many of us can say that we know that river? The Seaway, and of course the pollution of the water that followed the industrialization of areas upstream towards the Great Lakes, eroded the collective connection between our people and the natural environment, and effectively put an end to the land and river based culture our people had enjoyed for thousands of years. Aside from the injustice of the process by which the land was stolen and the Seaway built through the heart of our community, our people endured other losses. The disruption of our social and physical space, and the tragic decline in language and cultural knowledge that resulted from the rapid and forced assimilation to other forms of work once Kahnawá:ke’s riverfront was cut off and prime agricultural lands seized, were devastating blows to our people.
In my mind the most serious and lasting effect of our disconnection from the river has been on our physical health. We as a community no longer rely on or even know how to provide healthy foods for ourselves from our own natural environment. It used to be, in the time of our grandparents, that Kahnawakero:non used all kinds of river fish, animals from trapping, vegetables from gardens, and wild fruits to feed their families. They had to work physically for their food, they had to have a great degree of knowledge of the natural environment in order to get it, and they had to live in a very close and cooperative social system in order to prepare the food for their families to eat. By all accounts, living this close to nature was a hard life, but one which we now recognize as having the benefit of making people strong and healthy. We are a resilient people, and we’ve adapted to change in many ways. But we have not been able to resist being assimilated and becoming dependent on the market system when it comes to the foods we put into our mouths and which we depend on for our survival. In a sense, we are ingesting capitalism and it is doing great harm to our bodies and psyches, its excessive calories and harmful chemicals making too many of us fat, weak, and sick.
This is the problem I see that affects me with sadness when I cast an honest eye over our community. So, what’s my future vision to make Kahnawá:ke a better place? With all this in mind, the answer is clear: we need to learn to appreciate our place in the natural world, to restore our traditional land and river-based culture, and to decolonize our diet so that our community has food security in the future.
The only obstacles to realizing this vision are psychological. Our separation from the natural environment and traditional foods has changed our tastes and our attitudes. How does eating a boiled eel for supper sound to you? People in Kahnawake used to eat that all the time! I guess even more than re-adapting our tastes, fear is an issue. We’ve all been told for so long that the river and the land are polluted and that eating fish and things grown in the soil in this area are not good for you. Yet we trust and eat just about everything that’s on the supermarket shelves or on the menu in restaurants. Do we really believe that eating a meal of sturgeon from the river is worse for our long term well-being than a plate of deep fried hormone laced chicken wings doused in salt and chemical flavourers?
I would risk taking this beyond a “vision” into dream land if I were to say that I want the Seaway to be filled in with earth and the land and the waters around Kahnawá:ke to be made as clean as they were in 1950. Even so, I do believe that we owe it to the future generations to do all we can to restore our natural environment; even if it may not happen for a long, long time. In the meantime, I don’t think it’s too much to hope for that our future generations will restore themselves as Onkwehonwe by resurrecting our ancestors’ land and river-based culture. I can see them strong and healthy, working hard and eating natural foods that were grown or caught locally by people in their own families. It’s not too much to envision our great-grandchildren enjoying a respectful relationship to the land and the river, reconnecting to the true sources of our Mohawk identity and the strength of our nation.
Taneh toh. Niawenkowa.
