Seneca nations activist and philosopher John Mohawk headed a discussion at the Koffler institute on Monday evening. Mohawk, a professor and head of Indian Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, gave the last talk for the year in the Aboriginal Studies Distinguished Lecture Series. His topic was the making of Native poverty in Canada and the US. The poorest populations in the United States are living on Native reserves, said Mohawk.
Mohawk went on to give a brief history of the various ways that the Aboriginal peoples of North America had been disenfranchised and how this had led to the poverty that is now being so widely experienced. The professor touched on many interesting points, including how corporations had used the poor settler hunger for land to enrich themselves. Mohawk talked about the Indian Wars and pointed out that many victories against the U.S. army were poorly documented or went un-dramatized in movies. The modern United States army was formed for the purpose of fighting in the Indian Wars, said Mohawk.
One of the shocking facts that Dr. Mohawk shared with the audience was that the Massassaugas of New Credit were paid the equivalent of $30 for land the size of Toronto. The professor described some of the U.S. government’s damaging aboriginal policies such as forced relocation in which many died and were ripped away from their homes and the strategy of “allotment” where natives were given small pieces of farmland to help “civilize” them, but lost their ancestral territory as a result.
Although the Canadian Aboriginals had not experienced the same level of bloodshed as those south of the border, Mohawk had strong words about the atrocities committed in this country. Here “education has been used as a tool to embrace Canadian nationalism and to de-Indianize.” He referred to the incidents of abuse in boarding schools. “Canada’s participation in boarding schools ranks Canada as [the] country with the most to atone for.” Taking control of education is very important, according to Mohawk. “We need to define what kind of education we need.”
Mohawk explained why he believed that the government was dragging it’s feet with land claims, “What they’re really hoping for is that under current membership rules bands will decline in number and become extinct.” Although there will still be aboriginals, they will not technically be part of bands and therefore eligible for compensation.
In dialogue with the audience following the historical background, Dr. Mohawk expressed his hope for the future. “We’ve got a lot of work to do but I’m optimistic.” He stressed the need for people to take aboriginal studies and to do research because he believes that it is a field in which there is still a huge amount of work to be done and many questions that have yet to be answered. “Nations are imagined communities. A nation makes itself by imagining itself. Then it pursues that vision. That’s what they stole from us. People don’t know how to get it back.”
Mohawk sees great steps being taken by aboriginal leaders around the world, especially in South America where they are gaining a real voice. “In our lifetime I think that one of the states in the Western hemisphere will fall into the hands of Indigenous peoples.”
The Department of Aboriginal Studies is also running a Literary Reading series, with the final guest Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm appearing April 1 at First Nations House at 4:15 pm.
