BUSINESS
COVER:
Grassy
Narrows Fights for their Future
BIOGRAPHY
Eskasoni's Icon: Seymour
Doucette
Sophie
Pierre, Lifetime Achiever Seeks a Better Future for Children
BUSINESS
Tobacco
Road Revisited
Interior
First Nations Awarded Forest Licenses
BOOKS
Fatherhood,
History, and Art
CULTURE
A
Mother's Prayer for Son's Safe Return
EDUCATION
CHIP
Hospitality "Future Tourism Leaders" Scholarship
HUMOUR
Bee in the Bonnet:
Circle the Wagon
MODERN
TREATIES
Top Court
to Determine Scope of Metis Rights
Tobacco Road Revisited
By
Dr. John Bacher
Polluted environment leads to Society
The various forms of environmental disruption caused by the Seaway would
sow the seeds of the Warriors Society in complex ways. It both undermined
the traditional subsistence economy and faith in the integrity of the
Canadian justice system.
An image emerged of Iroquois people having to use violent methods to
escape their polluted environment, a belief that first emerged in Kahnawake.
The Mohawk community of Kahnawake, surrounded by the suburbs of Montreal,
was also devastated by the Seaway. Here 1,260 acres were lost through
the construction of a new canal channel, although for an expense of an
additional $2 million, these lands guaranteed by sacred treaties could
have been avoided through constructing a canal away from the shore.
One of the Kahnawake leaders, who worked the hardest to defeat the Seaway's
assault on Kahnawake, was artist and writer Louis Hall. He worked closely
in courtroom battles with an able Jewish lawyer, Omar Z. Ghobashy, a prominent
Egyptian civil servant before the Nasserist revolution.
Ghobashy persuaded Hall to adopt the fighting model of Israel, where a
relatively few well armed committed armed zealots could form an army that
successfully returned to the Jewish nation some of their ancestral lands
that had been seized in the past by Arabs (although they were heavily
outnumbered in the Middle East).
Hall dreamed of creating a native Warrior Society. He hoped it would use
armed might to return some of their land stolen by whites who built such
monstrous projects as the Seaway, to earth respecting native Americans.
Hall was like many in Kahnawake, disillusioned with the Canadian justice
system from its inability to protect their community from the destruction
of the Seaway. He mocked and ridiculed the peace orientated confederacy
elders who had been able to stop through nonviolent methods such assaults
on their lands as the Kinzua dam, which flooded away the Cold Spring Longhouse.
At the same time Hall was planning the formation of the Warriors Society,
in nearby Montreal, the FLQ was demonstrating the explosive impact of
terrorism to get publicity for various injustices faced by French Canadians.
On August 22, 1973 an FLQ bomb exploded near Kahanwake on a nearby CPR
railway bridge, closing Seaway traffic for several hours. A huge FLQ proclamation
was painted in red overlooking Kahanwake. Hall would mimic the Quebec
separatists in their fierce determination of those who disagreed with
his aims as "traitors."
Hall's determination to build an armed Warrior Society, which would wrest
territory for a homeland for native Americans like the exiled European
Jews carved Israel out of predominately Arab Palestine, was in keeping
with fashionable justifications for armed conflict in the 1960s and 1970s
among much of the political extreme left in North America and Europe.
Since the Seaway encouraged many to believe in such an armed struggle
to obtain land in a clean environment away from polluting industries,
many native Americans from around the continent flocked to his cause to
join the Warrior Society after it was formed in 1971.
Natives flock to Society
One important figure in the early Warrior Society was a Shawnee native
from Oklahoma named Richard "Cartoon" Alford, a veteran of the
occupation of Wounded Knee, as well as the co-founder of the Oklahoma
chapter of the American Indian Movement. AIM was founded in 1969 and was
an expression of the struggle for social justice manifested in the civil
rights movement.
Cartoon was a direct descendent of the famed Shawnee leader Tecumseh.
When he was asked to go to Kahnawake in the fall of 1973 to assist in
the training of the young men, he did so without hesitation. In time,
he would be asked to accept Mohawk citizenship while carrying the Turtle
Clan name Tronnekwe.
While other armed struggle movements for social justice in North America
such as the Black Panthers, the Weathermen and the FLQ made little headway,
for more than a decade Hall's Warriors were able to achieve some of their
goals.
A major victory took place on May 13, 1974, when the Warrior Society seized
at gunpoint a 612 acre site in Adirondack State Park in New York at Moss
Lake, at an old girl's scout camp on Moss Lake. The camp was renamed as
the Mohawk community of Ganiekeh or "place of the people of the flint."
Cartoon successfully organized Ganiehkeh's defense against New York state
police. More than 300 natives from across North America journeyed to the
camp, some well equipped with weapons. Such armed strength resulted in
a 1977 agreement between the Warriors and New York State (negotiated by
Mario Cuomo, then New York's Secretary of State) to move Gainekeh to the
more northerly Altona corner of the Adirondacks, a few miles south of
the Canadian border.
Community relations were smoothed by Christian ministers, who viewed the
Mohawks, similarly to the Jews, returning to their sacred ancestral lands.
Under an agreement with New York State, the community was given control
over a 698-acre settlement site, and the 5,000 acre Macomb Reforestation
area was dedicated to their use for subsistence use.
New community prospers
Under leaders such as Cartoon, Ganiehkeh was able to prosper. It was
able to come so close to Iroquoian ideals of being a drug and alcohol
free community that it became for several years a cherished place for
native Americans to undergo rehabilitation for substance abuse. The community
kept cattle and chickens, raised and sold rabbits and operated a small
sawmill.
In 1981 a craft store was opened. Under an agreement with the Miner Center
of New York State, a program of maple syrup production was developed.
Although such subsistence activities were commonly combined with ironwork
for employment, this pattern had been long been customary in Iroquois
communities.
Ganienkeh also provided an important point to many young Iroquois; that
the direct assertion of aboriginal land claims and treaty rights could
force New York to concede criminal, civil and administrative victory over
native people. This victory would have some unexpected consequences.
Originally conceived for the high ideals of living in a clean environment,
it would unexpectedly open the door to commercial gambling, cross border
smuggling, and the rise of an "entrepreneurial" class among
the Iroquois that would in time, seek to undermine the authority of each
and every Native government.
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