Woman A: We were just talking about how the world is discovering the residential schools.

Kahentinetha: It was not known in the world? It was never known before now?

Sabu: Especially this story of how McGill University was involved, this is a new addition to the story of the residential schools’ abuse of children. As far as I know, nobody had known about McGill’s involvement before.

Woman B: Yeah, nobody had known it.

Kahentinetha: We knew it though. We all knew about it.

Woman C: No one believed us. They shut us down.

Tekarontakeh: We’ve always known that this has been going on. We knew children were being abused and killed. Since I was little, I heard people talking about when they were in residential school and what they went through, all the death and suffering. We were told they were “going to school”, but they never learned to read and write. All they were was slave labor for the church.

It amazes me that even my own people don’t see this. We know how we’ve been dispossessed of our land. We’ve been dispossessed of our language. Everything was taken from us! Our children! And what they put those children through, it was just a continuation of genocide.

And now, all of a sudden, Canada is coming forward with new programs for Native people. This is going to be the final nail in the coffin of Native people as a people. Now they’re just going to totally assimilate us without any question. It’s finality they say they’re looking for. Canada is saying how they care about human rights, and how humanitarian they are, which is nothing but lies. How are they going to trick us into accepting these lies? They talk about “Indian control of Indian education”. They talk about “Indian self-government”. And to the world, it looks nice, they think that the Native people finally got control of their own education. Our people don’t control any education. It’s still the same bullshit that always existed.

And then all of a sudden, Canada expresses a concern about missing and murdered Indigenous women. They attack Muslims and everybody else in the world about the mistreatment of women, but the women here in North America still are being mistreated! We all know that most of the women who are missing, are missing because of police. We have 31 women who were raped and so on in Val-d’Or, Quebec, and not a single policeman was charged.

This is happening all over Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Women are being mistreated all over the place. But the government said, “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women”, so that becomes a distraction. But we know they are missing, and we know nothing’s being done about it. And then they’ll finance little groups in cities, such as Indian centers, and say they’re going to do something for missing women. It’s a Band-Aid to cancer! A Band-Aid to cancer! Then they say, “Native people need to heal.” But we’re not sick! We’re oppressed.

All of a sudden they come out and say, “Oh, we’ve discovered 215 children in BC. Oh, here’s what terrible things the residential schools did.” And all they wanna do is tell us they’re sorry, but they don’t wanna do nothing about it. In our culture, there’s no such thing as an apology. When you do something wrong, or you make a mistake, you fix it. That’s our way.

The Vatican owns 75 million acres of land around the world. The Vatican is largest single landholder in the world. All the wealth, all this gold that they took from our people, all the silver, everything — they took it to the Vatican. And now, the Pope is wondering if he should apologize? He’s wondering if he should make a trip here. He’s supposed to go to Africa, but he’s gonna postpone that trip so he can come over here. But if he comes here, it’s already selected who he’s going to see: people who don’t know any better. The Vatican will never come talk to a guy like me, no goddamn way! They want to talk to people that they can apologize to.

There’s never gonna be respect for our people. Never. They don’t know what respect is. It’s an ugly word for them. And that’s because respect is something they could never live by.

In our way, when there is death, we pay our respect to the people who lost someone. When we put the body in the ground, we say to the people, “We have now returned the body back to where it belongs, to our mother.” Our mother takes that body, so when we’re done with the burial, no one leaves their mind at the grave. You cannot do anything for the people that pass. You can’t live for them. You have to live for the children that are here now and the ones that are coming. After ten days from the time the person passed, we say, “Now, you have a responsibility to move forward. You’ll never get over your grief. You’ll never forget the people that you lost. But, they have to stay in the past, and you must go into the future for the children.”

Now, today, where did all these orange t-shirts come from? Where did all these orange flags come from? All this propaganda, who pays for it? All these groups are supposed to be helping our people. Who’s paying for it? All these “band councils”? All these “Assembly of First Nations”? All these “Congress of American Indians in the United States”? Who pays for that? It’s the Canadian government. And whoever pays you, that’s who you work for. You’re not working for your people. That’s all window dressing, making our people believe that all this bullshit is for us. It’s not!

Sabu: Over so many years…

Tekarontakeh: Yes. And I’m not going to make excuses for anybody. I’ve lived through all these different things. I’m gonna tell it the way I see it. In our people’s ways, they say there’s three strings. The first string represents the cleansing of your eyes, so you can see the truth. The second string is to clean the ears, so you can hear the truth. Sometimes, you’ll hear something, but you didn’t see it, so you don’t know if it’s true. When your eyes and your ears work together, your eyes and ears have reaffirmed the truth. So when that truth you take, it goes in your mind. The third string is when you speak the truth, what went in is what’s gonna come out.

But these people, they’re so busy crying, they got tears in their eyes, they can’t see the truth. Because of so many lies throughout the generations, they don’t know what the truth is anymore. And so now, their minds are all at the grave. They’re concerned about the dead women, about the dead children. What about the ones that are here? We don’t forget the past, but we can’t change it. We have to move forward. And not just us, this has happened all over the world! The church is responsible for this all over the world!

Sabu: I was very impressed by your part in the Mohawk Warrior Society book.

Tekarontakeh: That’s because I’m the best liar.

<laughter>

Sabu: We all read parts of the advance copy. I was very impressed by what you said about the struggle to recover your traditions. Your traditions were not just given to you, you had to work so hard to recapture your traditions together with your comrades. This is so encouraging for Indigenous peoples across the world. I knew people in Hokkaido, Japan, which is Ainu territory. They say about the Ainu, “Oh, they lost their language, they lost their culture.” But this is a really great example of recapturing tradition and culture.

I was also very impressed that you insist on your own language. You don’t fight by using American/Canadian imperialist language. You use your own language. Even in court!

Tekarontakeh: People say we lost our culture. I say, no, we did not lose anything. I say, every morning the sun comes up in the east, and he sets in the west. Every day, the wind is blowing. Every day the Earth is pushing, and food is coming, medicine is coming. She continues to give life. How can you say it’s lost? No! It’s still here! It’s we, the people, who are lost. We need to get back into the recognition of these things.

Our culture is not about making necklaces, or moccasins, or canoes. That’s not our culture, that’s things we make. Our culture is our relationship to this land, and how we respect the sky and everything that’s in the sky. And when we say, we are the people who make the house, it means, this Earth is our floor. And our feet touch this floor. Our head touches this floor. We make this house by becoming the walls that connect the sky and the Earth. We look to the east, and have eastern door keepers. We look to the west, and have western door keepers. Anyone who wishes to follow our ways can connect to creation. Not to an imaginary being someplace in the sky that nobody ever sees, that everybody says, “He controls all.” Well, he’s not a very good person, because all the suffering, everything that he causes in this house that creation gave us the ability to build.

And when we say, all of our relations, we don’t just talk about our human relations. We talk about our mother, the Earth. We talk about our grandfathers, the winds. We talk about our grandmother, the moon. We talk about our mother’s brother, the sun. We talk about the plants and animals, which are our brothers and sisters. That’s our relations. The water that continues to keep the world alive, the rain that falls from the sky — that shows us. And how precious it is that you’re showing us that life is going to go on. This is our culture, and our language goes with this culture. Our language is alive. It’s not a noun. It’s got life. It’s living.

Everything’s alive: that’s our culture. Not material things — it’s what’s real. Our eyes tell us it’s real, our ears tell us it’s real, and so we can talk about it in reality. Instead of this religion, which is all make-believe. It only exists in the mind. There’s nothing to prove that these things exist except faith. Faith — I mean, such nonsense! And the whole world wants to follow this faith. They want to believe that there’s a being up in the sky. They want to believe there’s an evil one below. No! You wanna know? The evil one is in the Vatican, and every one of these countries has to kiss his butt. When you become president of the United States, where do you go? To the Vatican. You become prime minister of Canada, where do you go? King or Queen of England, prime minister of England — everybody gotta go to the Vatican and kiss his ring.

That’s where this “sovereignty” idea comes from. Everybody will tell you, “We have to assert our sovereignty.” No, we don’t. We have to be free. Sovereignty comes from the church. It does not come from creation. Our people need to start to understand these things.

I sound angry because I am. I’m angry at what’s happening, at what’s going on. I’m not angry at the people who don’t know — I’m angry at those ones who are doing this continuously, generation after generation. And the thing is that —- it’s crazy! — they get their way. They do what they do. And who do they get to enforce their will? The people. They put a uniform on your child. They put a gun in your child’s hand. They put a club in your child’s hand, and your children beat you down and will kill you because they willed it. It is a very sad world.

A: When my kids come home from school and they tell me what they learned that day, it’s so awful. I have to deprogram my children from what they learned at school from a young age.

Kahentinetha: It’s all programming, conditioning of our minds. The conditioning is right in there. And even when we’re grown up, and this happened sixty, seventy years ago, you know that you still have to fight it because they put it in you when you were just so little.

Tekarontakeh: We were in Ganienkeh, and my father and another man from Akwesasne came up with us there. They were sitting outside my father’s house, telling stories. So I stopped to sit there, we talked in the language, and the idea of death came up. They talked about how afraid they were to die. And I said, “Why are you afraid? We’re all going to die someday. We don’t rush it, but when it comes, it’s our time.”

Even in our ceremonies, we say that we never know how many days we will have on this Earth. We can have one hour, or we can have a hundred years. None of us controls that. I said, “So why are you afraid of dying?” And they looked at me and said, “You’re not afraid of dying? You’re not afraid of death?” I said, “And neither should you.” He said, “But you didn’t grow up like us.”

When my father and this other man were young, they went to those schools. They even went to church. As little children, ideas of hell were put in their minds. But me, I was raised by my grandmother, and she didn’t go for none of that. She told us that when you die, you will feel no pain. The white man’s belief is that when you die, if you did something wrong, you’re gonna burn. But she said that that’s impossible: it’s only the body that feels pain. When the body goes back to the grave, those nerves are no longer living, so you can’t feel pain. She said, “Your spirit doesn’t have feelings, it doesn’t even have a form. So how is it going to feel pain?” She was very logical and scientific about everything, and she told it in her own way.

So, when I was growing up, I was not afraid to die. I was not afraid to get involved in the struggle and risk my life. I wasn’t afraid. And so my father and his friend says, “Well, you grew up differently.” I said, “You’ve also heard all the things that I’ve heard. You’ve been a part of all the things I’ve been a part of. But yet, you still have that fear. I know why you guys have that fear: because everything that the church said was wrong, you two guys did it. And now you’re wondering if you’re going to pay for it in hell.” And they said, “That’s true.”

The church made the statement: “Give us your child for five years, and we will have them for life.”

A: So as the children grow, even if they don’t go to church no more, all of their core values that they hold are all influenced by their upbringing. How they perceive it, it’s all coming from the church first. So it’s harder to overcome that. You have to go in deep, strip it away. And how long does that take?

B: They get rich, too. In church, they scare you by telling you that you’re gonna go to hell, and you’re only gonna go to heaven if you do what they say. You’ll forget about everything that was natural. You’ll only know what they tell you. And since you’re always afraid, you’re constantly giving them money. Go to the church, put money in there, put money in there, put money in there, all the time.

Tekarontakeh: The church scares children into what to believe. But children are not foolish. Children can think. But we need to encourage them to think. In our language, they always tell you: [Mohawk language]. When something, no matter what it is, [Mohawk language], take the body of whatever it is, split it open. Look at the inside, understand the inside. Then you know why the outside is what it is.

We say, [Mohawk language], your mind will never be firm on the ground until you know and understand the truth. When you’re confused, and you can’t understand what’s going on, we say [Mohawk language]. Some people today think that means you’re crazy, but it doesn’t mean that. It means that your mind has not settled, and so your mind is like a snowstorm. When there’s a blizzard, it’s hard to see anything clearly. But when the snow all lands, everything is clear. That’s why our word for white, [Mohawk language], you can see everything clearly because of that white background. You see? Our language describes things.

But today, we have two ways of speaking our language: we have the Christian influence on our language, but we also have the natural version of our language.

Sabu: In the book Mohawk Warrior Society, you said that language is a poem that connects us and Mother Earth. To synchronize with the Earth through the poetry of your ancestors’ language — that’s a very beautiful expression.

Kahentinetha: My Aunt Francis explained it that way. She said she didn’t like the way they’re teaching our language in schools, because it’s based on just a translation of English. Whereas she says it’s [Mohawk language 31:57], meaning it’s a song. It comes from the Earth, and then it makes pictures, and then you start to see these pictures, and then you communicate with each other through these pictures. That’s what a language is, and that’s how it should be taught. I’ll never forget that.

B: But now, everything is…what do you call it?

C: Sterile.

B: Yes. Sterile. Language is taught through memorization work. The first thing they made me do when I started school, was stand up with the whole class and look at the wall with the queen’s picture, and sing “God Save the Queen”. I never heard my mother tell me to save the queen. She hated the queen! And here’s me, singing to the queen at school. They don’t explain anything, but they make you sing it, and they punish you if you don’t.

Tekarontakeh: When we were growing up, we always had people at our house. There was no television. Everybody used to come to visit, and all the old people would talk and talk to us. I was so young, and I had this passion to listen to these people. I always sat with them around the table. Then they would say, “Time to go to bed!” So I’d go to bed, but I’d lay at the top of the stairs just to keep listening. They knew I was there, but they had to tell me to go to bed with the other children. Later my grandpa would pick me up and put me in bed after I fell asleep while listening in secret.

Listening to all these things that they talked about made my mind different. And so when I went to school and they told me I had to tell God to save this or that — no! I didn’t sing “O Canada”. I didn’t do the Lord’s Prayer. I stood out in the hall instead. When it was over, I’d come in to do my schoolwork. That was how I was in school, because there was something that the old people started inside me.

And that’s why I did all the things I did, why I was ready to take the risks: because those people who raised me were the ones who showed me the way. I was 4 or 5 years old when they went and took land back in the Mohawk Valley. And after we left that land, I always asked my grandmother, “How come we left?” To me that was heaven! She said, “Listen and learn. Someday, we’ll go back.” By the time I was 20, we went back in and we took the land again. Because that was in me from childhood, to go back and take that land.

A: Your mind has to stay open to keep figuring things out. You gotta use it. You can’t just take what you’ve heard for fact. You have to take in what everybody says, but you have to figure out for yourself what’s the right thing.

Tekarontakeh: The old people used to say, “Let me tell you how it was told to me. Let me tell you how I heard it. Let me tell you my understanding.” Instead of saying, “I’m gonna tell you this is the way it is!” My grandmother said not to listen to somebody who talks like that. I asked her, “If he’s so smart, how come I shouldn’t listen to him?”And she would say, “Because he thinks he knows it all now. He no longer has the ability to learn. Your mind is always growing. And when your mind stops growing, you stop growing.”

So that’s why the old people always said, “Let me tell you how I heard it. Let me tell you how it was told to me. And let me tell you my understanding.” Because in our way, you respect the fact that everybody has a brain and you respect that they have the ability to dissect things, that they can think things over. The more important part is that, even though you and I might have a difference of opinion, it is not a reason for me to hate you. I need to listen to you. I need to hear what you have to say. Maybe what you have to say will change my way.

Kahentinetha: That’s what my father told me. I didn’t want to go to school. I couldn’t speak English, I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t read or write. But he said, “You have to go.” And I said, “Why?” He said, “Because if you don’t, they’re gonna put me in jail.” I said, “They’re not treating me well at school, and they’re hitting us if we speak any of our language. I’m so badly treated there.” And he said, “You have to go. But, there’s only two questions you have to ask all your life. The first is, why? And the second is, prove it. Whatever they say, you ask for proof.”

Philippe: The culture is a method for thinking.

A: We’re born with instincts. That’s nature. That’s how every cell continues, by an instinct.

Tekarontakeh: Even that word nature, in our language, we say Sha’oié:ra. Oié:ra is a direction. Sha’oié:ra is the direction creation continues to travel. That’s the direction we must follow. We don’t go against creation. We go with creation. Everything that’s man-made has a time limit on it. Man is constantly trying to change the Earth, to change creation, but he has failed. And every time he fails, he tries to create something else, which brings on five more problems. But if he just went with creation, which has continued to go on for millions and millions of years… Life as we know it may change, but creation will always be. It was here way before human beings were here. And it’ll be here long after the human being is gone. We must stop thinking that we are the center of creation, when we’re the things that are the most unnecessary.

Sabu: That’s true. In the book you said that in your language, there’s no “Creator”. Creation exists, but there is no “Creator”. I love that! I hate “Creator”, like the Christian image of some old man with a beard.

Tekarontakeh: In our ways, when we gather, someone is asked to say words to prepare everybody’s mind, to focus on our purpose for being here. If it’s for council, or for thanksgiving ceremony, or if it’s for a marriage or for somebody who passed, we have a special way for preparing our minds at the beginning. When the old people would make this address, they always started with the people who are gathered. These words are for you to put your mind in the right frame of mind for what we’re here for.

Then we start with our mother, the Earth, the one who gave us life like our own mothers. They gave us life, they continue to take care of us, to feed us and give us medicine. Then we address the water because the water is our closest cousin. Then we talk about our brothers and sisters, all the animals: from the ones that crawl beneath the Earth, to the ones that crawl on the Earth, to the ones who fly. We address all of them, all the way to everything that’s in the sky. We say that every one of these animals is a relative. Even the stars are our distant cousins. They’re always there to show us the way. Just because they’re not as close to us as the water doesn’t mean they’re not as important. Everything is important. Everything is necessary, otherwise it would not be in creation.

In the end they say, “Now let’s turn our direction to that which made all things possible.” It was told to us by the ones who came before that we shall never know the face of this power, nor shall we know where this power dwells. The only thing we will know is what we can see in the creation. And so, they said, we don’t know if it’s one, or if it’s more. We don’t know. But we have an obligation to say thank you. That’s all. You just say thank you, [Mohawk language]. See, [Mohawk language] doesn’t really mean thank you. [Mohawk language] means [Mohawk language], it has happened. You see? When someone gives you something, then you say, [Mohawk language] which is, it has happened.

Sabu: Acknowledging with respect. That’s beautiful.

A: Often my daughters come home at the end of the day and tell me that at school they spoke of something, and the teachers explain, “That’s the Creator.” I have to say no, that’s not the way it is. My daughters said other kids in their class ask each other, “Do you believe in God?” One kid said, “No, I don’t believe in God.” The others asked, “Well, what do you believe in?” And the kid said, “[Mohawk language], the Creator.” It means He who created. It’s turning the creation into a religion. Creation becomes about the Creator.

Tekarontakeh:That’s what I mean about the two ways to speak our language: the Christian way, and the natural way.

Kahentinetha: Somebody asked me, “Don’t you believe in God?” I said, “Yeah, you’re looking right at her.”

<laughter>

A: And my daughter says to me, “Well what do you believe in?” I say to her, “I believe in myself.” I believe that I can do it. I can take whatever needs to be, and I can take care of it. I can’t tell my daughters what to believe in. I could set examples, and I could conduct myself in a way to respect certain things. I can make them see what makes me right, what makes me live in a proper, fruitful manner.

Tekarontakeh: In the old language, we never talk about [Mohawk language]. “He who created” — we don’t say that. When we talk about a power, the power we have the closest connection to is this Earth, and our mothers. Our women and the Earth. And that’s why we call them Ka’nisténhsera’, life givers. Ka’shatsténhsera’ is the power of life. And [Mohawk language], it’s like this umbilical cord, it connects to our mother. And the fire in us comes from our mother. The energy that gives us life is that fire that comes from our mother. So that’s Ka’nisténhsera. When we talk about what families we come from, we say, [Mohawk language], what fire do you come from? Who you are is who your mother is. See, just like us, Kanien’kehá:ka: because this part of our mother, Kanienkeh, that’s the land of flint. We’re not “flint people”, we’re people of the land of flint. There’s other people who are the people of the land of standing stone. Then you have the people who are from the land of the hills, and the people who are from the marshlands, and the people of the big mountains. All of our people are in reference to the land. That’s why the old people would ask, “What is the land like where you come from?” They don’t ask you, “What’s your name?” They said, “[Mohawk language]”, what is the land like where you come from? Then you tell them, “I come from Kanienkeh.” And they say, “Oh, now I know who you are!” Then they say, [Mohawk language], what do they call you? They don’t ask you what your name is. They ask, “what do they call you?”

A: It depicts how you think and what your opinions are. Because, where you come from, you see it from a different direction than someone else would see it from. You’re coming from a different land. You conduct your everyday life different because of where you come from.

Sabu: Your language has a lot of identification with, or references to, land formations, geological states, animals such as the bear or the wolf…

Tekarontakeh: The bear and wolf are symbols. We have Wolf Clan, Bear Clan, and Turtle Clan. Today they’re teaching the children, “[Mohawk language].” It’s wrong. You are not a wolf. See, I just did some stories in the books for the school, in our language. But I wanted to teach the children what these things really mean. So in one story there’s this little girl and her grandfather. They are going to the woods, and they see a wolf. And the child thinks to herself, I wonder if my grandfather knows that’s my clan. So she says, “Grandfather, did you know that’s my clan? I’m a wolf.” And the grandfather says, “I know that’s what you believe. But the proper way is [Mohawk language], you are a path maker.” She says, “Why is that proper, and not the wolf” He says, “The wolf is an animal. You are a human. You’re a path maker. You use the totem of the wolf to symbolize who you are, your family.”

Why is the wolf the path maker? It’s because the wolf is one that does not hibernate. He’s here all summer, all winter, so he always knows everything that’s going on. He becomes a path maker because his survival depends on his speed and quick thinking. So that’s why he’s the one who sets the agenda for the council. And then the bear, the same thing. The bear is [Mohawk language] — not [Mohawk language], which is the bear, the animal. [Mohawk language] are the ones who like the honeycomb, they’re always looking for it. So that bear, he knows his environment and he’s always turning stones over, digging in the ground, and climbing trees. He’s always looking for that honeycomb because he wants the larvae in the honeycomb, the baby bees. That’s what he likes to eat. But he likes the extra honey as well.

A: That’s why I’m that way.

Tekarontakeh: The wolf will give the issue to the bear first, because he’s so thorough in these investigations. The bear is so thorough that he was able to bring out things that would otherwise not have been seen. Even though he can move fast, he doesn’t move it fast if he doesn’t have to. When the bear finishes and he gives it back to the wolf, he explains how he reached his conclusion.

So now if the wolf agrees with this, then he gives it to the turtles. See the turtle hibernates, and also, he’s not very fast. So when the turtle is going to make a move, he really, really has to think things out. Even though the turtle has a shell that provides him protection, it doesn’t protect him from everything. In the wild, there are foxes, there’s also the hawks and other big birds that can get to the turtle by breaking open his shell. So that turtle, he has to determine what move he’s gonna make. And so if the turtle agrees with the other two, then he gives it back to the wolf. And so now they understand that all three sides of the council, they agree.

But before they can go forward, it’s given back to someone from the Turtle Clan. And so that speaker will get up and he’ll explain the whole issue to the people, taking time to explain the whole thing. And then he explains the conclusion that the council has come to. He then asks the people, “Do you agree?” If the people agree, they say nothing. If somebody disagrees, they gotta say why. And sometimes that one person will catch something everybody else forgot. And so the council has to go through the whole process again, until the council and the people come to the same conclusion. Then, the council can ratify the decision.

Sabu: Consensus.

Tekarontakeh: Total consensus.

Sabu: That’s the longhouse model?

A: Yes.

Tekarontakeh: If there comes an issue that they can’t solve, then they say, “Well, at this time, since we cannot reach a conclusion, then we suggest you all take this matter home and put it under your pillow. We’ll attend to that at a later date.” Nothing is ever pushed aside. If you have to prolong this for a while until you get more information, eventually it’ll come back, and eventually it will be resolved. But they always say, Skén:nen, [Mohawk language], go slowly. Go slowly, because if you run, you’re going to trip and fall. Go slowly. Because the decisions that you make, if they’re not good decisions, your children will inherit the bad decisions. So you bring harm to your children.

Philippe: Skén:nen is also the word for peace.

Tekarontakeh: Skén:nen, everything’s peaceful. But you can’t have peace if you don’t have Ka’shatstenhsera. Ka’shatstenhsera is creation, the power, the power that is there. The reality that is there, you have the ability to connect with that reality. And if you make those things work, then you will have peace. And then there’s Karihwí:io, the way of reality, that which is real. Skén:nen, Ka’shatstenhsera, Karihwí:io: those are the three principles. But also, you need the fourth principle: it’s the one that binds all the three together, never to be separated. You can’t just use one part. One part alone will not last, you have to connect all the three together. Your power, yourself, creation. And then, you have this power that binds you, we call that, Ostonwa’kó:wa. We call it the great feather. It’s so gentle, but yet it’s powerful, and it can keep everything together. And so we make a wampum, and we call that [Mohawk language]. It’s a circle wampum. And every family and every responsibility is represented within that.

It’s all about responsibility. Each of the four principles has the power of responsibility, but you must bind them all. There’s a bind between your eyes and your ears, your mind and your voice. And then there’s your body. You can make your mind healthy, but if your body is not healthy, your mind will not be clear. You need to make your body and your mind work together because creation designed you that way.

Just a few things that I learned…

Ariel: I’m thinking about the power, Ka’shatstenhsera. I noticed the definition of that word in the glossary of the Mohawk Warrior Society. I found it very beautiful. I’ll go ahead and read it, it says:

"Ka’shatsténhsera refers to the inner power carried by every living creature to make life continue. As for human beings, their power is to be grateful for everything that sustains their lives. Ka’shatsténhsera’ is a willful desire to persevere by sharing our strength with all our relations."

That’s very moving. The human power is the power to be grateful, and to acknowledge these relations.

Tekarontakeh: Yes. And you use the things the way in which it was meant to be. That’s why we say [Mohawk language], don’t ever be wasteful. Just because there’s a lot does not give you the right to waste it, because there’s others. There’s others. And that doesn’t mean humans only, it means there’s animals out there, there’s insects out there, there’s birds out there! They all rely on that same thing you need! You see? And this Kaianerehkó:wa, today we say it’s the great good path. But it’s not really that. [Mohawk language] is it’s here. [Mohawk language], that it was all made right. And [Mohawk language] is a great power. Kaianerehkó:wa, the great goodness is already here.

A: Now the task is to is to keep it that way.

Tekarontakeh: And to live in accordance with it. Your values, your principles, everything. It’s the philosophy that our ancestors passed on to us. This is why we call them, [Mohawk language]. [Mohawk language] is the ancestors. Your grandparents. It just means the ones before you. [Mohawk language]: the life you’re living is a reflection of what the ones before you have done. [Mohawk language]. You’re a reflection of your ancestors. Maybe not identically, but everything that they’ve done, good or bad, you have inherited. This is why when we refer to one another, we don’t say that anybody is your property. People today say, “Oh, [Mohawk language]”, my daughter; “[Mohawk language]”, my son. No. In the white man’s way, he owns those children. With us, we say [Mohawk language], [Mohawk language]: I have a responsibility to this child. I have a responsibility. I have to try to show her the way. I have to ensure that she can live her birthright.

Philippe: What I find really powerful is how in that mindset, the more you’re free, the more you’re responsible. You have to be free to be more responsible. From within the psychological warfare that Christianity put on you, it’s always to make you less free and more selfish, and therefore less responsible at the same time. So then you identify “freedom” with doing bullshit…

Tekarontakeh: Some of these people, because they think like Christians, see we call our way Kaianerehkó:wa, and they translate it as The Great Law. There’s no such thing in our way as a law. Tewatatewenní:io, we are free. We are free in our ways. If you have a law, having a law means that you don’t have freedom.

Sabu: We are also interested in the struggle that you’ve been going through. That’s one of our main concerns in coming to speak with you today. The world is so apocalyptic, and the struggle to oust capitalism and the imperialist nation state is really important. But what kind of struggle do we really want? So in that sense, I’m very interested in your organizing and your community. For example, in relationship with the American Indian Movement (AIM). You are kind of comrades with AIM, but different, right?

Tekarontakeh: The American Indian Movement is an organization. We, on the other hand, are a people. An organization is not different from a corporation, not different from a reservation status. Our struggle is a common struggle of individuals. There’s no such thing as an “American”, no such thing as a “Canadian”. They have nothing in common. The only thing that they have in common is a common interest. And what is the common interest of Americans and Canadians? It’s this land and all its wealth. That’s the only common interest. They don’t have common language. They don’t have common beliefs. They don’t have a common history, a common culture — nothing common other than that greed! And they will do anything to acquire it because they all live in accordance with the culture of possession.

B: With no respect.

Tekarontakeh: Right. When the American Indian Movement was organized, I supported them. I stood shoulder to shoulder with them on different occasions. But I would never become a part of them. The old people always told us, “You are a people.” That’s why you’re Onkwehón:we. On:kwe is the human being; ón:we is the forever. We are the people of the ways of forever. But when an organization comes together and has no common interest, then they are not of the way of creation. Because creation is not divided. Creation is one.

C: It’s always about respecting. Always about respect.

A: I respect her freedom, her choice. I respect his freedom, his mind. I respect her mind and her freedom. We all look at each other as equal. And no one is higher. We’re all the same. We all want to continue to go on and live in harmony.

Tekarontakeh: When our children are born, the mothers and grandmothers choose a name for that child. Then in the time of the strawberry festival, or mid-winter or harvest time, the mothers and the family bring that child to where the people are assembled. And the speakers will say, “This is the mother of this child, this is the family of this child, the clan. This is the father, and this is the clan of that father.” And they say, if the mother and father are both of the ways of our people, we say “[Mohawk language], this child is complete. And this child will be known to you as [Mohawk language]. So you all know her name to be [Mohawk language].” And they say, “She has with her a special gift.” We don’t know what it is. She’s too small. She hasn’t shown it yet. But as she grows and develops, she will start to demonstrate what her natural ability is. When we recognize what it is, then it is our responsibility, [Mohawk language]. People think it means to respect. No. [Mohawk language] means we will help enable her to be the best that she can be. Not to be the best, but the best that she can be. When a child does what they’re naturally good at, they enjoy life. And so once she gets this way about her, and she makes it really strong, then it is a benefit to all of us. And there may be many children who have the same gift, but all in different ways. We all have the responsibility to help enable that child to be the best they can be. No one should ever be higher. We should never put more importance on one. Everybody has their reason.

It’s just like the maple trees, they give us sap. The walnut trees, they give us nuts. Everything gives something to all. The forest is not made only of one kind of tree. You need the hardwoods and you need the softwoods. They help each other. You need that fungus on the trees, or the trees will not survive. And the fungus needs the tree, or the fungus won’t survive. It’s all connected. Everything.

People don’t know that the trees communicate to one another. Now, they’re figuring that out. And we’ve known this ever since the colonizers got here. We were telling them, but they didn’t wanna listen because there were no dollars connected.

A: They wanted control. And that was the church, that was the way to control it. By saying that something’s higher than you, and only the church can communicate with that higher power.

Tekarontakeh: I was told this story, there was some Onkwehón:we people who lived in what’s called the state of Louisiana. And they were almost wiped out. But they started coming back and they decided they wanted their land back. So they approached the Louisiana governor and said, “Listen, this is our land. You stole our land. We want our land back.” And the Governor of Louisiana said, “We didn’t steal this land. We bought it from the French. So if you have an argument, you better go see that Frenchman.” So they went to France and they said, “You stole our land and sold it to the United States.” And France said, “No, we didn’t steal your land. Your land was given to us by the Vatican. The Vatican gave it to us under the Doctrine of Discovery.” And so these Onkwehón:we went to Rome, and they said, “Listen, you stole our land. You sold it to the French. The French sold it to the Americans. Well we want our land back.” The Pope said, “I didn’t steal your land!” They said, “What do you mean you didn’t see our land?” And the Pope said, “God! God stole your land! You got a problem? Pick it up with God.”

Sabu: Oh shit! That’s the world, the way it is now. Colonialism to global capitalism, the continuum of shit.

A: So now, there’s people going to the Vatican so the Pope can apologize to them. That doesn’t make anything right. The Vatican is doing it so they can say, “See, world? We apologize to them. We’re sorry.” This doesn’t get them off the hook. There is no “sorry”.

Kahentinetha: There’s no end to what they did. It’s fixed. It’s done. They did it.

B: Then they admitted it that they did all this damage.

Philippe: He’ll be pretty close, in Quebec City, apparently. Already, all the hotels are booked around there. Just for the Pope, he moves with a delegation of 500 people. He has two planes.

Kahentinetha: When’s he coming?

Philippe: Next month.

Tekarontakeh: We should have a conference with him.

Kahentinetha: We should have pushed the colonizers right back into the ocean like we were supposed to do, but we didn’t.¹

A: All of our explanations of the world, in the end, it’s all about a respect for someone’s freedom. For example, if I need medicine, I go out there, I look around, I find medicine. Then I put some back. Or I say something to myself, not to some “higher power”. I say something to myself that I appreciate this medicine I picked, and it’s gonna help me. And then I’m gonna function better. I don’t pick all the medicine and then make everybody come to me for it. No, I leave it so it can grow. And you leave it for someone else. Once you take everything and you try and make it for greed, then there’s nothing left, and then it doesn’t continue. It struggles to continue. So everything is about this respect.

Tekarontakeh: That’s the way a lot of our people feel today. They do it in the most respectful way. You know, a lot of times people get the idea that the Native people can talk to the plants and animals. Here’s an example, like what she said about medicine picking. Before, usually it would be the grandmothers or grandfathers who go pick the medicine for someone. And when they went, they took the children with them. So the kids go along and they look around and they find some of the medicine, and the kids want to pick it. Grandma says, “No, no, don’t pick that one. We need to know if there’s more.” So they go all around, they find the medicine a second time and then the kids want to pick it. Grandma says, “No, no. You need two to make sure that there’s gonna be more.” And they find more medicine a third time, and the kids want to pick that one. Grandma says, “No, no. Sometimes something might happen to one. This way, there’s always another to take its place.” So they keep searching until they find a whole patch of medicine. Oh, the kids want to pick it! The grandma says, “No, no, no, no. Before we start, you go gather up some sticks, so we can make a fire.” So the kids gather these sticks. The grandmother makes a fire, and she takes out her tobacco. And then she talks to that medicinal plant and she burns a tobacco addressing it.

And so this is where people get the idea that we can talk to the plants. But we’re not talking to the plants. The grandmother is addressing the plants, but she’s really talking to the kids. She’s showing the kids how to respect these plants. We don’t know if the plants understand us, you know? But we know the children understand us. So now the grandmother and the kids, they pick that medicine and they take it home. The grandmother prepares the medicine, and the children are involved in the preparations too. So now the kids know the whole process of making the medicine, so when the grandmother’s no longer with us, that granddaughter can know how.

Sabu: Tobacco smoke has a function?

Tekarontakeh: A long time ago, there were two kinds of tobacco: one with purple flowers, another with yellow flowers. But our ancestors, they felt that this yellow one is the one that we could use, for our minds. So when we burn the tobacco, we’re not just talking to that one plant, we’re not just talking to that one person. That smoke rises. We give a thanks to the wood, to the fire and to the smoke, because they will raise our words so all of creation will know of what we are doing. We ask the participation of all of creation to continue to make these things happen. It’s always about the creation. And it’s always about our passion, which is the knowledge of creation. It’s always about our responsibilities, and the continuation of life.

That’s why, when we have ceremonies, on the first day we have a ceremony which is all about addressing the people. Thanking the people, encouraging the people. The next day we have a ceremony for the creation. And we say, if we follow the ways of creation, creation is like a family. That’s why the Earth is the mother. That’s why our grandmother is the moon. That’s why our sisters are the plants and animals. Our grandfathers, the four winds; our eldest brother, the sun; our cousins, the stars; our cousins, the waters. All of this is family. And as long as that family works together, life will go on. So we as humans, we need to be reminded, always, constantly, to continue the harmony. Because the harmony will bring you peace. The harmony will bring you life. It’ll make you strong.

And so, the third day we do the peach stone game — it’s called a game, but it’s not about a game. It’s about appreciating and enjoying life. So for the game, we divide the house. On one side of the house, if they try harder, we say that’s the side that’s gonna win. Everybody brings something of themselves. Maybe you’re a carver, you bring something you carved. Maybe you made water drum, or you made rattles. Maybe you made a quilt, and you brought that. That’s what you’re putting up in the game. It’s something of you, that you put up. And the side of the house that wins, they get the gifts. But not only do they get the gifts, now they have the responsibility of conducting all the ceremonial business within the home. And so now, the other side, they’re not losers. Now they get to sit back and relax and watch the others conduct their responsibilities. But the real part of the story is that, if you try hard, you will be rewarded. But if you didn’t try hard, what it tells you, don’t take this as a negative experience, you take it as a learning experience: that if you would’ve tried harder, you would have got the rewards.

And then the fourth day of ceremony is what we call the [Mohawk language], the Great Feather Ceremony. This is the thing that embraces all what we have done, to always remind us to use all of creation. Not just bits and pieces of creation, but all of creation. That’s what it was meant for.

Sabu: On such an occasion, the ceremony lasts four days?

Tekarontakeh: Yeah, four days. Then we have four nights of dancing.

Sabu: How many people join usually?

Tekarontakeh: When I was a boy, we were lucky if there were twenty people. Our longhouse was very small, because we were constantly being oppressed by the Christians.

And then in the ‘60s, when we were young men — we were just boys really, teenagers — we were listening to the old timers talking about our ways and our responsibilities and so forth. And they talked to us about the men’s council fire, Rotisken’rakéhte. They explained to us about the responsibilities of the men’s council fire. So seven of us talked about it, and we said, let’s rekindle that fire. Because that fire has been extinguished for so long, let’s rekindle that. We went to the council and we said, “We want to rekindle our fire, the men’s fire. And we want you to sanction us.” They said, “We can’t.” We said, “Why? You’re the one that taught us this.” They said, “Maybe we taught it to you, but we don’t have the power to sanction it. Kaianerehkó:wa already gave you that responsibility. We’re not going to make a decision when the decision has already been made by creation.”

And so that’s when we started. We became very active. We started learning our songs more, and so on. All on the cultural side. But then we got into the very political side. We started fighting against the band council. We started fighting against the police. Some us remember when our grandfather took us to Mohawk Valley and fought for land. So all of these things were there, and we just kept on.

Now today you go to ceremonies, and it’s not one longhouse anymore, sometimes you got three longhouses in a community. It could be anywhere from 100 to 500 people at a ceremony. But the problem is that most of them go because of religion. They’ve taken this way and made it a religion. They’re not taking this way as a way of life.

A: Or as a responsibility.

Tekarontakeh: Right. And the thing is, that was influenced by the churches. It started with the Seneca people. Not just Seneca, but many of our people died from disease, they died from war, they died from so many things. And the people were in a bad way, a desperate, depressed way. And the churches brought alcohol to our communities, and they really messed up our people. They denied our people to leave the so-called “reservation” to go hunting or fishing. We were in prison. So, in their desperation, one of the men — he was an alcoholic now, and he was not a good person — he started having hallucinations, delirium tantrum from the alcohol. But his nephew was an Anglican minister. And so the church, the Mormons, the Quakers, the government, they all got together, because there was benefit to all of them, to bring this religion to the people. They called it the “Code of Handsome Lake”.

In their desperation, the people said, “Well if we take this on, it’ll help us get back to our old ways.” But the new religion brought temperance rules to them and told them that “We don’t want you singing, we don’t want you dancing.” The Mormons don’t do that. They don’t sing and dance. Neither do Quakers. And they didn’t want us to make our corn husk dolls either. But our people resisted. They said, “No, we’re still gonna sing. We’re still gonna dance.” So a lot of the mandates from the church, our people did reject, no matter what was gonna happen.

So this religion grew, and it spread throughout. But it didn’t come here to the Mohawks. There was no need to bring it to the Mohawks, because we had Catholicism. But everybody else got the Code of Handsome Lake.

And so our people tried to continue practicing our ways. But we couldn’t sing and dance, because if we sang and danced, the Royal Mounted Police (RCMP) would come, and they would raid our ceremonies like it with a drug bust. People would be arrested and their children taken and sent to a residential school. So our people had to hide, and we couldn’t sing and dance anymore. But we kept our language, we kept our beliefs, we kept our principles. In 1924, the Canadian and American governments finally lifted the ban on our ways because they thought we were all Christianized. Either Christianized through Catholicism or through this Handsome Lake, which was baby class Christianity. So they figured it was done. When they lifted the ban, our people built a longhouse where they could assemble and sing their songs and so on and so forth. And we just kept building it up.

Then the ‘60s, we became more physical. At the time of my grandfather, they were fighting against the Seaway, but they were always trying to do diplomacy, but that never got them nowhere. And as young boys sitting there in council and listening to the old people, I would hear him say, “Let’s send a letter to Ottawa. Let’s send a letter to Quebec City. Let’s send a letter to Albany. Let’s send a letter to Washington.” And finally I asked him, “Did we ever get a response?” Nobody ever paid attention to our letters. So why are we sending letters?

This is why the men’s fire rekindled. And this is why we said we’re gonna take action when we want something done. We’re gonna do it. And we had people like Louis Hall and others tell us, “Put in your mind: there’s no such thing as you can’t.” And so from seven teenagers, our society became thousands. We just kept building and building. Today people say, “Where are the warriors?” We’re still here. But we will not fight because somebody wants to use us. We will pick and choose our battles. Because that’s what the old people told us: “Pick and choose your battles.”

In 1990, they decided to shut the bridges down. I had a smoke shop right over here. And the guys came to see me and told me what they were thinking of doing, and they wanted a yes or no from me. I wouldn’t tell them yes, and I wouldn’t tell them no. All I said to them was, “Listen, if you’re gonna do anything, think about what you are doing. Evaluate what you have to gain and what you have to lose.” They didn’t think. They shut the bridge down, they shut everything down. You know, that was a bad move. A lot of times I have thought about it, I think I should have told them, “Yeah, shut the bridge down. But as quickly as you shut the bridge, remove yourself. You’ve demonstrated to the outside you have the ability to make more moves. As quickly as you went on the bridge, you told the world what you are capable of. But then get off it, don’t sit on that bridge. And don’t sit at the roadblocks, don’t give the outside all the time in the world to create embargo against you and to study you and to pick you apart.” And that’s what these guys did, that’s what happened.

A: Make them afraid of what you’re capable of, but don’t give them all your cards. You don’t show them your numbers. They shouldn’t know what we’re going to do next.

Tekarontakeh: When we rekindled the fire, we asked Karoniaktajeh, Louis Hall, to make us a crest. We had a singing society, and he had made us a crest, as the singing society. So we asked him to make us a crest, as Rotihsken’rakéhte. That’s the council fire of the men, and that’s also the word for warriors. And so Louis says to us, “Yeah, I’ll make you a crest and put Rotihsken’rakéhte, but on the bottom, put Warrior Society.” “The reason,” he said, “is because we’re in a psychological war. Take advantage of what the white man has done. The white man has labeled us as savages, as the fighting Indians and warriors, and all this kind of stuff. And now they believe their own propaganda. So use that.” So he made us a painting, and we had it turned into a crest. There were only seven of us, so we went to the printer and asked for seven crests. But the printer told us that for a few dollars more, we could have 250 crests. So we told the the printer to make us 250 of them. Back in that day, we all wore denim jackets, and so all of us put the crest on our jackets. And we walked around Kahnawá:ke with those, and all the young people fell in love with this. They all wanted one. So the seven of us got together and we talked about it and we said, you know, we got all these crests, and everybody wants one. It didn’t cost us a lot, so we just gave crests to everybody who asked for one. Now there were 200 young people in Kahnawá:ke walking around with this Warrior Society crest. Now the elected system, the police, everybody was in a panic! All these blue jackets with this warrior crest and everything. They had so much fear, not knowing that it was really only seven of us. These crests made it look like there was more of us.

But those crests, and those little things we did, got people to want to get involved. They wanted to know more. So we started associating with other young people, and talking about not drinking and not taking drugs, and we were teaching them our songs. We would go to the hospital, where there were bleachers for baseball, and we would sit there and sing. All the old people in the hospital would come outside and sit on the porch and listen. Some of these old people, all their life, they never heard these songs. Someone was a hundred years old, they never heard our music. But the thing is, I don’t care how long you’ve been in the church, when you hear that music, your feet will move. It was the music that brought the young people. All that happiness, that camaraderie, to sing and dance. Now the young people wanted to know more. And we kept on, kept on, kept on.

Then we had evictions, we kicked the white people out of here. And we shut down the drug dealers. We did all kinds of things. We took over land. We started cigarette shops here. The authorities said it was illegal. But we said, it’s not illegal for us, and we just did it. And look at today, everybody has all this wealth! But you know, some of these people don’t even remember how they got it. They don’t look at those seven boys and what those seven boys did. But it wasn’t all about the seven boys: it was the older ones before us who kept it alive. They kept our knowledge. It was there in the archives in their minds. And we got it back.

A: Yes. And it’s my job to give it to my daughter and my son and my other daughter. It’s my responsibility.

Tekarontakeh: See some of these people can’t tell you the stories, of how this all came to be. We always had individuals who were fighting. Like Kahentinetha, and our cousin Clifford, and her brother Frank, and different ones. They were always out there in Ottawa or someplace else trying to raise commotions and trying to defend our rights. When they started they were just little kids, but they knew these things were happening. Then in 1968, we shut down the international bridge and they arrested Kahentinetha and I, and about 56 other people. I was a 15 year old boy. First time I ever went to jail.

Kahentinetha: You should see the movie about that. You are on Indian Land, the National Film Board.

Tekarontakeh: When I was arrested, you know what they charged me with? Assault and battery to 40 police officers. I looked like a little girl! You know, I had long hair.

Kahentinetha: I was charged with beating up 24 police. I went on trial for that. Two trials.

Tekarontakeh: You were bad.

<laughter>

Sabu: In terms of the difference between the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Mohawk Warrior Society, the difference is that AIM was a movement, but you are a people. Which means you are struggling bodies, it’s your community itself rather than an organization.

Tekarontakeh: We were maintaining who we are, clearly defining who we are. Whereas AIM, they came from all walks of life. Their downfall was because they were an organization.

A: Anybody can go in and say that they want to be part of AIM, and then they could take them down.

Kahentinetha: AIM was very heavily infiltrated. And they took very important positions within the organization — we don’t have that.

Tekarontakeh: The head office of AIM was in New York, and the director was an FBI agent named Doug Durham. That’s how infiltrators can go. Whereas with us, they can’t infiltrate because the thing is, say somebody comes from Akwesasne: we talk to the people there. We ask, “Who is this person? Who is their mother?”

Kahentinetha: We all know each other.

Tekarontakeh: This is why they could not infiltrate us. Because we work as families.

Kahentinetha: In terms of the Ka’nisténhsera’, or as we call ourselves, the Mohawk Mothers, basically, we were all raised in the Kaianerehkó:wa. And so we started to interpret the Kaianerehkó:wa together. And when these unmarked graves and other issues came up, we started to organize. But, we’re not really organizing, we’re just following and interpreting the Great Peace. So we started doing this, and we’re doing it in basically the same way that the seven young men in the Rotisken’rakéhte did it. Our adversaries don’t know who we are. We use only our [Mohawk language] names, and when we sign documents, we all sign with a sign, not in writing. And, they didn’t know what to do! First I thought, well, we’ll say something explaining that. But then I thought, some of these so-called “treaties” were only signed with an X, and that was a treaty. So why couldn’t they accept the way we signed these different documents that we had to file in the court? And so we decided that we’re not going to go under their laws. What we’re doing is saying, we’re going to use the Kaianerehkó:wa, and the courts can use their law, and let’s see which one wins. Yes. That’s the basic way that we’re going to approach this.

A: We’re just following what our responsibilities are. And anything that we’re doing, they can’t refute it! Because our way is the natural way, and nature always wins.

Kahentinetha: Yes. It’s all based on the natural world. So, everything that we interpret, it’s not very hard for us. We just simply sit here and we say, “Well, what does the Kaianerehkó:wa say?” And then we come up with an answer. So the courts were pretty angry with the way we were doing it because right away they said, “You can’t; you can’t, you can’t, you can’t; you certainly can’t!” They sent us 800 pages of why we shouldn’t and why we can’t use the Kaianerehkó:wa.

A: And then we just said to them, “In your own law, which you think is superior, it says that our law is superior.” Read your own law! You read it. It’s in there.

Kahentinetha: We’ve explained a lot.

Tekarontakeh: It’s our understanding, not our law. It’s our understanding that prevails over what they have. You know, the judicial system is not where we should be taking these issues. The only reason we’re in the judicial system is because of duress. We’re being forced into it because they’ve got a gun to our heads. The way we look at it, guns are not always the solution. When you have to really defend yourself, you do whatever you have to do. But if you can avoid bloodshed, you do. Hopefully, the more we go out there and explain about our experiences, there are people who will be listening. The courts will never listen, but there will be people in there who will listen. And people like Phillipe here, the things that he does: it’s gonna open the eyes and the minds of many people, and they’re gonna see this. Because those people out there, they’re thinking to themselves, we as a people, no matter what race we come from, what civilization we come from, we’re all facing the same. We are all under the thumb of some…

A: A hierarchy, that they’re trying to…

Tekarontakeh: Some oppressor. I wouldn’t say a “hierarchy”. He’s an oppressor. And we’re all being put under that thumb. You got this young girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg. She’s been talking about the environment, and she started a big movement. But the thing is that they’re asking the corporations to comply. But the corporations will never comply. Now the next choice is, these young people are going to have to make it happen. You can’t talk about it. That’s what you call “buffalo speech”. You know, make buffalo speech all you want — until you’re ready to take action. But understand, you have a responsibility, and you have a choice. Whatever choice you make, you must take responsibility for your decision.

Like what happened here in 1990: all these young men, everybody was like “Yeah let’s do this!” and “Let’s do that!” They thought it was a weekend excursion. But when it started going into weeks and months, all of a sudden they’re looking at it like “Whose fault is this?” They weren’t looking at what the issue was. They were looking at like “Whose fault is it? Who put us in this situation?” And I remember, some people started complaining about our war chief. They were all saying it was his fault. I reminded them, I said, “This was not his fault. When you were all gathered and you were talking about what you wanted to do, and you asked him for his direction, all he said to you was, ‘Whatever you decide, I will stand by your decision.’” Instead of telling them that they shouldn’t have done it, he just said, “I’ll support your decision.” It was a very interesting thing that happened. And so, you know, I almost came to fisticuffs with some of these guys. Because they wanted to blame him. And so, I had to put the fear of God in them.

<laughter>

Anyway, you know, we were told a long time ago, when Japan went to war against United States, the emperor of Japan was not of that mind. But he supported the people. He said, “This is what you want to do, I will support you.” Even though he was against it, he supported them. In the end, things didn’t turn out good, but the people still respected him, they loved him. Because he didn’t rule them.

Sabu: Actually I disagree about the Japanese emperor. This is the only point where I disagree with you.

Tekarontakeh: But this is a story we were told.

Sabu:But that’s a false story. He’s responsible. We believe he should be really prosecuted by the Japanese people. He’s responsible for drawing all of the Japanese people into the invasion…

Hajime: And all the Korean people…

Sabu: The annexation of Korea, the invasion of Manchuria, the massacre in Nanjing, the mass murder and starvation of millions and millions of people throughout the Asia-Pacific: he’s responsible. So that’s the only thing I disagree with you about.

A: That’s the conversation that we had before you came this morning: I would like to sit with you and know your stories for real. Because you have come to us, you’re able to hear from our mouths what’s happening. The way we feel, how we conduct ourselves. And we have read things over the years about other parts of the world — history books, articles, TV — you never know what’s true until we speak together, until we meet firsthand.

Kahentinetha: Nobody understands us, and nobody understands that this is our land. That’s it. There’s no question about it. It’s verified by even all of the people in this country. They even acknowledge it. So what does that mean?

Sabu: You know, the emperor’s family — if you’ll allow me to speak a little bit about the Japanese emperors — I hate the emperor. The imperial family is responsible for invading the native land of Ainu people. Generation after generation, his family has occupied Japan from south to north. They pushed out the Ainu people to the northernmost island of Hokkaido. So we are on the side of Ainu people, and Okinawan people, and also some ethnic minorities living in Japan, like Korean residents. We are on that side. And the emperor’s family is the symbol of this invasive force of the Japanese empire.

Hajime: They’re like the Vatican.

Sabu: They are from Manchuria. They are an invader from the Asian continent to the Japanese archipelago. Many, many years ago, they invaded.

Kahentinetha: We aren’t told that. I mean, that’s not right.

A: That’s what I need to hear firsthand.

Kahentinetha: We need to know that!

Hajime: I would like you to see this film that my friend made, she’s a Korean director. It’s called East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, or, Looking for the Wolf. The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front was a group, and one of the cells called themselves Wolf Brigade. They conducted bombings of Japanese corporations that profited from Japanese imperialism. And so this film follows this history and the afterlives of these attacks.

Kahentinetha: I would like to see that. I’m glad you brought that up.

A: I’m interested, because that’s what I was saying to Kahentinetha this morning, I was saying that the people that are coming to see us today, we can say, this is what we know about them. But in fact, that could all be lies. Just the way we are misconceived, you can be misconceived as well.

It’s in our histories, what we have experienced. It’s in our minds and it’s in our memories. It’s been handed down to us, because our people experienced it and they have told it to us. But the same goes for Korean people and Japanese people, only they can tell us firsthand, because what you hear on the news — none of our opinions ever go on the news. It’s all the opinions of some Native person who works for the government that speaks on the news, and they’re told what to say.

Tekarontakeh: It’s the ones that we say [Mohawk language]. They’ve got a stamp on their ass that says “Made in Canada”. They accepted what Canada and the US wanted. When I was a boy, there was a tourist shop here that sold all kinds of crafts, little tipis and little dolls and all kinds of stuff, selling them as “authentic Native crafts”. But when you turned them over, it says, “Made in China”, “Made in Japan”.

A: And so now, a big hindrance is that a lot of our people get paid, and they’re spewing this stuff. And my kids, their generation grow up with it. And we’re trying to take that out of our equation. But it’s everywhere!

Tekarontakeh: The government controls all the media in this community. You can’t go on the radio, you can’t go on the television, you can’t go to the newspaper, because the government funds everything. Like this APTN, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Years ago, myself, my brother, and my cousin, we did about 11 shows on an independent TV station here. We talked about all historical things, we talked about social things, we talked about a lot of things. But one of the things we never did was, we never mentioned names. We attacked the band council system, we attacked things that the church lied to us about, you know, different things like that. We talked about all these things, but we never mentioned names. Because it wasn’t about the individual, it was about everything that happened.

Well the band council approached this woman who owned the station, and they wanted to buy all the air time, because they wanted to take us off the air. But she wouldn’t do it. And people out west, in western Canada, got to see some of these shows. There was a Native woman who worked for APTN. She loved our show, so she wanted to give us some air time. But she had to talk to her superiors, which was CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And CBC said, “There is no way we will ever permit this guy to get on the air.” So it never happened.

Kahentinetha: And you know what happened to me? I got blacklisted. 50 years ago.

Tekarontakeh: Before I was born.

<laughter>

Kahentinetha: That’s what they did to me. I was never to be ever mentioned in the mainstream media. And I’m still not.

Phillipe: That was 1970, when it happened?

Kahentinetha: Yes. 1970.

Phillipe: Just before that, she was always on the news.

A: It’s too powerful. It’s too powerful to give us even one minute of air time.

Sabu: Also that was an important moment of the whole movement. The power of the movement was so strong.

Kahentinetha: It was in the ‘60s during the anti-war movement and all that. The American Indian Movement, the Red Power Movement, all of that was happening at that time. And I was involved with that.

Sabu: ‘68 was also very big in Japan. It was the time of the rebellion. And somehow, a lot of information about the Black movement in the US came to Japan, but not so much from the Native American movements. Only some info about AIM, that’s all we heard about, you know, the Alcatraz occupation and stuff. But nobody knows about this whole thing you guys have been doing. So it’s very important to introduce everything you’ve been doing.

Kahentinetha: There is a big history here. It goes way back, you know, Mad Bear and all that stuff that happened. It’s one after another, we’ve always, always resisted. But, it’s been wiped out, the memory has been wiped clean. Nobody knows about that. And nobody has the time or the money to actually bring it back.

A: The government spends a lot of time and energy to not have us heard.

Tekarontakeh: See, even for us to get funds from, say, overseas — we have a lot of friends overseas, and they would more than happily support us — but they can’t get the money here. Here in Canada, five families own the banks. They want everything. The United States, same thing. So you can’t transfer money. They won’t allow it. Right away, they’ll investigate what you want the money for. But if we were a band council and say we could get funding from Spain to oppress our people a little more: the bank would allow it to come in. But for us to start investing in building an economy, or helping to reacquaint our people with our culture and our ways of life? No, no. There is no room for that.

Kahentinetha: You have to understand, the band council was set up in 1924, and it was called the “100 Year Plan”. It’s coming to fruition in two years, in 2024. The plan is to completely eradicate us. And that’s when they set up the Indian residential schools and the Indian day schools. The band council was set up to do that. They were the people on the inside, and they were the ones that pushed the whole program. If you read the Indian Lands Act of 1924, it’s right in there. It’s also all in the Indian Act. That’s the law right now, to this day. We are prisoners of war. We were placed on these reserves, and they took away all that land, and they gave all of our land and all of our resources to the provinces. That’s the basis of the position that we’re in right now. And in 2024, they will make a law, there are no more Onkwehón:we. No more. We will not exist anymore. By a stroke of the pen, passing it through Parliament…

A: So those band councils that are infiltrated into our community: they are paid people, from our people. And because of this money, they go and they work for the government, and they’re signing things left and right. They don’t even have any control. Some of them don’t even have the education to understand what they’re signing.

Kahentinetha: The government uses all kinds of methods to bring them under their control.

A: They label it as though they’re doing great things for us, or they’re gonna create a new “sovereign law” for us. That’s what they say. But I’m not “sovereign” of anybody. I just am who I am. I’m free.

Kahentinetha: The other thing is, all of the Indian territories are under the army. The Department of Indian Affairs is a department of the military.

Sabu: Oh I see, I didn’t know that.

Tekarontakeh: Yes. When our people first went into talks with the Europeans, it was always our men, not “chiefs”. It was the men who went and dealt with external affairs. And so we would deal with the military. When they talk about treaties, it was the military on both sides who met at these talks. So, when our representatives go, we say in our language [Mohawk language], we create a bundle, symbolically, that they carry with them. And the only thing that they can discuss is the bundle, which means it’s only what they were instructed. That’s what they would do. It wasn’t one sit-down and you came up with an agreement. No. It was many, many trips back and forth. Because every time we would meet with them, we had to come back to our people and tell our people what it was they were asking for. And today, people will call that [Mohawk language], it means treaty, or agreement signing. But in the old language, we didn’t call it that. We called it [Mohawk language]. [Mohawk language] is the land. By the time the talks about treaties came about, it was already when much of our ability to defend ourselves was going away. And so in order to have some form of peace, we always had to allow them use of land. We never gave them the land. We allowed them use of land, and that’s all. This is why still to this day, they cannot produce one shred of evidence that our people ever relinquished any of our land. And we have never relinquished our birthright.

When Canada wanted their own flag, they approached the Crown and the queen said, “Oh, yeah, you can have a flag. Every corporation has a right to apply.” So they made a flag. Then they went back to the Crown, saying that they wanted their own constitution. And the queen said, “Every corporation has to have a constitution.” So they made a constitution. Then they went back a third time, and they wanted the Crown to give them dominion over this land, and the people. And the queen said no. They said, “Why not?” She said, “I cannot give you what does not belong to me.” Because the land didn’t belong to the Crown. It still belonged to the people of this land. And the queen told them, “The only way you can have dominion over the land, is if you convince the Native people to transfer title to you, and you cannot have dominion over these people unless they are willing to enfranchise with you. But until then…”

So that’s why this man, Lloyd Barber, was appointed to be the head of the Land Claims Commission. Ever since the ‘70s, they’ve been pushing this whole land claims issue. And the thing is, the people who are pushing the issue of land claims are no longer our people, but Canadian citizens. They’ve alienated themselves. That’s what that circle wampum is about: that as long as we all adhere to what was designed for us through creation, through our ancestors, we have that birthright. We have the right to put the name, we have the right to the clans. If anybody should decide that they wanted something contrary to our ways — and in that wampum it makes it very clear — should you go out, you will go out naked. You will go out naked, and you will lose your name. You will lose the right to your clan, and you will lose your birthright to this land. And so now you are one of them. You’ve immersed yourself in that. In other words, [Mohawk language]. It’s like if you take this napkin and you stuck it in oil, it would be immersed with oil. Well, that’s what happens to them.

A: You’ve been treasonous to your people. Now, if you’re in the Canadian government and you do something treasonous, they put you away for life.

Tekarontakeh: In our way, if you decide you want to go, you’re free to go. We will not stop you. That’s your choice. But remember, again, you gotta accept what comes with that choice.

Sabu: But here, in this conflict between you and the government, there’s something essential to grasp what is happening with this whole civilization and capitalism. And the enigma of how to oust capitalism and the nation state is there, embedded within this conflict. I mean, your tradition refused the idea of owning the land, right? They would absolutely lose in terms of reasoning, they don’t have any reason.

Tekarontakeh: This is your mother. The mother can have ten children; one child cannot say he owns his mother. She is her own. You have use of your mother, to help you to grow and to survive. But you can’t own her. And you cannot dissect her, and say “well you get this finger, and I get that finger” — you can’t do that. That is the culture of possession. For us, there is no such thing as a border. There is no such thing as “this land is only for Mohawks, and this land here is only for Cayugas.” No.

We have a belt that reminds us, it’s called the “Dish with One Spoon”. That dish is Earth, our mother. And the one spoon is that we would never use sharp objects when we eat, because we’re all eating from the same mother, and because of fear that we might accidentally pierce somebody’s skin and the blood will flow. And in this way, we all have the right to water. We all have the right to medicine. We all have the right to food. No matter where we are upon our mother, we all have that right. It was the British who came and started making borders. That’s always been their motto: “divide and conquer”. That’s all it is, conquering and conquest.

Kahentinetha: The other thing too, when they say, “Well we bought this land and look, we got these deeds.” Well, the Indian interest is with the unborn people, the unborn children. And so we can’t sell it. We have to take care of it. We’re the caretakers. That is why we’re here.

Philippe: The real owners don’t exist yet. The ones that do exist, they’re not the owners anymore.

Tekarontakeh: When they’re in the Earth, they’re still part of the Earth. When they are born, now they have use of the Earth. So no one could ever sell this land. No one. Because no one has a right to sell their mother.

Kahentinetha: And you can’t even transfer it to anybody, because our mother can’t be owned by anybody except those that are still in the Earth. It’s very easy for us to understand that concept. And we sense it, we feel it. We feel it with our children, and the children feel it too. They know about it from the time they’re born, they’re reminded of that.

Tekarontakeh: Our people say that the white man never has enough. They say, even a pig looks up once in a while. We say the white man [Mohawk language], he dives in and he doesn’t look up.

<laughter>

Kahentinetha: The other important thing is the fact that, when the colonizers came here and they wanted to sustain themselves, we said “okay, you can use some of the Earth and grow some food, and we’ll show you how to do it.” They were only supposed to be here temporarily. But what happened was they decided they were gonna stay. And so they asked us, “Well, what do you call us?” And we said, “We call you the [Mohawk language]”. And they did not know what that meant, because they never asked us. But it’s not a very complimentary description of who they are, which means that they are… How would you say it in English?

Tekarontakeh: In English, you’d probably say that they’re squatters. See, when we built our communities, we would take the poles of trees and we would put them into the ground. And then we could bend them over and tie them and cover it, you know. That’s what we call [Mohawk language], we embedded that pole in the ground. And so what they did when they became squatters, they were embedding themselves in the Earth, and then claiming that it belongs to them. So that’s why we called them [Mohawk language]. And then later they thought it meant Canada. But it doesn’t mean that.

Phillippe:

That’s why they were in such a panic, trying to put all those devices and fancy wordings…

Tekarontakeh: And also to change our language. You know, for all these generations, they did everything to try to take our language away from us. And now they’re putting millions of dollars in for languages to be re-spoken, but that’s all it’s gonna be, is spoken. Nobody’s gonna be living that language no more. They’re gonna be living in English. You see? Today I was looking at this advertisement, they got this building on the other side of the tunnel. And there’s people in there, who are not first language speakers, they just learned how to speak our language. And now today they have the title “professor”— they’re professors of our language. And I know damn well, they’re not professors of our language! Maybe they profess, but it doesn’t mean they know our language. They may speak words in our language, but they don’t think in our language, they don’t live in our language. You see?

And again, they’re separating things. Like, if you look outside and see that it’s gonna rain soon; we say, [Mohawk language]. [Mohawk language]: it’s something that you can see, it’s obvious. That water that’s gonna come down from the sky: that’s [Mohawk language]. Because when it comes down from the sky, it’s gonna quench the thirst of everything. It’s gonna refill the lakes and streams, and even the underground streams. And we say, that’s precious. By this act of nature, it’s telling you how precious this is, because it’s telling you life is gonna continue. You see? [Mohawk language].

But if you say [Mohawk language], and you ask some professor what it means, they’ll say it means it’s gonna rain. They’re negative. They say, “There goes my golf game. There goes my picnic. There goes my suntan, there goes my hairdo.” It’s all negative. The only one that’s happy is a farmer. Or else, they’re finally happy to see the rain when their lawn turns brown, and they want their lawn to turn green. So that’s the only two positives that they look at. They don’t see that the rain is life!

A: It’s everything. It’s the most valuable.

Tekarontakeh: It’s the essence of life. Is that the right word, essence?

C: Yeah.

Tekarontakeh: It’s the essence of life. Sometimes I have trouble with some of these English words.

A: So when you say [Mohawk language]: like, “How much does this cost?” And you say [Mohawk language], it’s worth a lot. You don’t say, “It’s expensive.”

Tekarontakeh: [Mohawk language] is like… Something that’s [Mohawk language] — it’s precious. It’s like the leaves that cover the corn, we call that [Mohawk language], because it protects the corn. And when we talk about [Mohawk language], to love somebody: but our love is not an emotion. Our love is real. Because when you say [Mohawk language], it’s that I take all the goodness of myself, and I embrace you with all my goodness. That’s a love. It’s not emotion, like “oh geez, look, she’s so beautiful, I’m in love with her.” That’s called lust, it’s not love. They don’t know that, such a thing as love, you have to work for it. It doesn’t just happen.

You know, before, our peoples used to come together from all over. And the women would try to match their children, with the hope that when they have grandchildren, they’re gonna have good qualities. So they put two young people together, and then they say, [Mohawk language]. Today they’ll say [Mohawk language] means they’re gonna date. It doesn’t mean that. It means you’re going to work, to make a possibility of something to happen. And in that time, you get to know one another. You get to know each other, you get to know each other’s families. And the two families get to know one another. Everybody has to be in agreement, because they all have to work together because of the new life that’s gonna come, the children. And so everybody has a responsibility to ensure that these two people, when they have come to a decision, that they are prepared to go through life together, and bring children into this world. They know what they’re doing, and they’ve established this relationship. And through time, by working together and knowing one another, they create the love. They create it, you see?

Our language has got a ton of history. Words they don’t even know today. A lot of old speakers, like I’ll ask them “Do you know why we call the priest [Mohawk language]?” They say, “No, never thought about it.” But that’s the problem now. The language you’re learning, doesn’t teach you this. The word for priest, [Mohawk language]: [Mohawk language] is something that was burnt to a crisp.

Kahentinetha: We used to burn them.

Tekarontakeh: We burnt seven priests. We were supposed to burn eight of them, but one of them ran away. But the thing is, why we burnt them — it wasn’t our way to burn somebody at the stake. That was a European practice. These Jesuits were here for a while, and then they went back to France. And then when they were in France, they made statements that when they return to the Americas, they will become martyrs. So when they returned, they went to the Dutch colonists, and they told the Dutch exactly what they were doing. Our people never suspected them of being harmful, because they had no weapons. They walked around in dresses, just scribbling on paper, you know, what the heck. But our people didn’t read and write like that, and so what our people didn’t know was that these Jesuits were giving all this information to the military: when to attack our villages, when the men weren’t home, and all this kind of information. And our people wonder, how these French soldiers know when to attack us?

So the French Jesuits revealed themselves to the Dutch, and they wanted the Dutch to tell us this, so they told us. The thing is, in our way, there are only three capital offenses: treason, conspiracy and espionage. There’s no capital punishment for any other wrongdoing but those three. And so our people arrested them, they put them on trial. And these guys confessed that this is what they did. So this was conspiracy and espionage, and it was decided they would be executed. But one thing about our people: even our enemies, we treated them in a respectful way. We asked them, “What is your preference of being put to death?” And if they didn’t have a preference, we would hit them with one blow to the head with a club. An instant death, no suffering, no nothing, that was it. Your lights were put out and that’s all. But these Jesuits asked us to burn them at the stake. And our people thought, well that’s crazy. But if that’s your wish, then we’ll fulfill your wish. So the Jesuits described how they wanted this thing built, pile all these sticks and stick a pole in the ground, tie us to it and light it. So we did it. And that’s when we started calling them the [Mohawk language]. The first crispy critters of North America.

<laughter>

Kahentinetha: We’re having this issue right now about the reparation payments for those of us that went to these schools here, Indian day schools. And of course, they really did do a lot of awful stuff at these schools. So they say they’re gonna pay us for what they did, and that it would then be over, and that’ll be it. And I just thought of it just now, that maybe this is the time when we should bring back the old ways. You know, we’re all going back to the way we did things in the beginning.

Philippe: The club on the head.

Kahentinetha: Yeah. The club on the head. They could all be martyrs!

Tekarontakeh: The payment for us going to residential schools and Indian day schools is a bunch of bullshit. These lawyers came up with the idea, and the government went along with it. It would be $200,000 for each person, to wipe the slate clean of what was done to our people. But one of the things is that the government never determined or made it clear, what is it that you went through? At residential school, a lot of things that happened was very sadistic, as far as I’m concerned. But what they didn’t clarify is what was done to us.

Some of us went through the physical abuse, got strapped, you know. When I was going to school with this one girl, they locked her in the closet all day long. They beat her up and threw her in the closet. Another guy, they tied him up with a skipping rope, they taped his mouth and every time they would pass they hit him with a ruler. And so different things were done to kids. And the thing is that, some of our kids may not have suffered physical harm, but the psychological harm was much more severe. The old people always made it clear, when you hit somebody with something, that is a physical thing, it will heal. But when you poke the mind of someone with a sharp stick, that will never go away.

And this is what they did to every single one of us. My first day of school was the first day somebody smacked my face like that. This woman, a tall, giraffe-looking woman, her name was Ms. Cummings. She was saying something to us. And I didn’t understand, I mean, I understood a little bit of English, but not the way she talked, so fast. My friends Johnny Good Leaf and his sister Louise were there, I knew them from the longhouse, and I knew they spoke our language because we played together. So I asked in the language, “What did that woman say?” And as I was asking, she was already coming down the aisle, and she smacked me. All I seen was a big flash of light. I jumped up and I ran out the door, and I ran out of the school. I hung around near this store called Joe Stocks. I hung up there until my Aunt Viola came out, and as soon as I seen her I started crying. And she said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “That goddamn woman smacked my face!” She said, “Why? What did you do?” I said, “Nothing! I don’t even know why she smacked me!” So we went back into the school, and Viola walked right up to her and she kicked her right in the ankle. Holy shit! I said to Viola, “You can do that?” She said, “Yeah. Whenever they hit you with anything, you hit ’em back.” That was the beginning of my education.

Kahentinetha: A lot of other people started doing that. Our Aunt Josie, when she was very pregnant, she went with her sister, and she went right up to Mr. Rawlings and she just whacked him! Punched him in the face. She said, “Don’t ever touch my kids again.” And she walked out. She had a lot of kids, she had 14 kids. And they didn’t like that.

Philippe: Because you’re supposed to show the other cheek, right?

Tekarontakeh: But the day it stopped, them physically hitting us: the day it stopped was the day that [Name] came to the school. He was one of the representatives from the longhouse, what people call a chief. His granddaughter was in my class, we were the same age. And they beat her. They beat her all over her hands and everything. Her hands were swollen. So she went home, and the old man seen that. The next day he came into that school and he told them that if any of this happened to any of these kids again, he would file charges against all of them. The old man was smart. He had gone to residential school — but he didn’t learn to read and write — but when he came home from residential school, he no longer had our language. But in his later years he started to learn our language, and he was as fluent as anybody else. The people had such respect for him, they put him up as one of the [Mohawk language] in the longhouse. And he’s the one that put a stop to kids being beat up in school in Kahnawá:ke.

A: Well, I was at the tail end of it. And I thought we were in a different time, because I always knew about how bad it was from the stories. So when I went to school, when I was a young girl, my teacher pulled my hair. She grabbed me by the hair, and I turned around and did it back to her. I got sent to the principal’s office. I went in the principal’s office, and he’s a Mohawk. And he looked at me, he said, “What happened?” I said, “I just did back what she did to me.” And he says, “Am I gonna call your parents?” I said, “You can call them, because I wouldn’t get in trouble.” Everybody in that school would be done for. They would take care of everybody in there. My mother raised me to stand up for myself, and they knew where I came from and that if they called home, they would all be finished, these people. But the abuse was still happening. It was still happening when I was in grade 5.

Philippe: This was in the ‘70s?

A: Yeah. I was born in ‘72. So when I was 10 years old, in 1982, it was still going on.

Kahentinetha: In the ‘40s, it was really bad because some of those teachers were World War II vets, military people. And they settled things differently. The way they settled things like this in Europe, I don’t know. But that’s how they treated us.

Tekarontakeh: When I was growing up, you know, they sent us to what they called the Indian day school. A lot of people in the community called it the “Protestant school”, but it was for everybody who wasn’t Catholic, they got sent there. So there was the Catholic school and the Indian day school. And every day after lunch and on the way home, I had to fight every day. I was always fighting with the Catholic kids, because the nuns and the priests were telling the Catholic kids to beat us who weren’t Catholics, because we were children of the devil and all this kind of bullshit. The crazy thing is, five days a week you’re fighting with these kids, and then on the weekends, they’re at your house. They’re your cousins, you’re playing with them. On the weekend, there’s no difference between us, we’re families. But during the week, we’re enemies.

Kahentinetha: It’s very, very confusing. You’ll be playing with them. And then on a weekday, you walk down the street and they don’t even look at you. They pretend they don’t even know you. They still do it today.

Tekarontakeh: See, and that whole thing — when they talk about what kind of traumas did we suffer as children and in schools? This is something that lives with you forever. There’s no dollars to fix that.

Hajime: So those Catholic kids were also Mohawk?

Kahentinetha: Yeah, they’re our cousins. They’re our relatives. We had one cousin there, Richard Horn. He used to wait for me and my brother. We were 6 and 7 years old, and he’d wait for us after school, and then he’d beat the two of us up. He was a little older than us. And when we walked down the sidewalk there, they had to cross and walk on the other side. They put that division within the community. Separate everybody. Do not trust each other. And that carries with you for the rest of your life. You don’t even know why somebody doesn’t like you. They don’t know. Nobody knows.

And those priests took advantage of us, like myself, I’d go and play basketball or something like that, and they told everybody else to go home, and then they would try to attack us. They’d say like, “Oh, can you stay and help me put all this equipment away?” And then next thing I know, I’m fighting off the priest. Fighting, like actually fighting, and then running away. He did it to the Protestant girls, and then I found out later that he did it to the Catholic girls too.

A: For me, I’m living in a different generation where I heard the stories. Some of that was still there. You’re seeing the aftermath. Some of my teachers were survivors of residential schools, so they have it instilled in them. And so they were treating me a certain way. Somebody physically touched me, but I was brought up in my household where nobody touches you. Somebody touches you, you take care of it, okay? So I did something. Now this is a new age, where it’s actually public. Everybody’s wearing that orange badge on their shirt, saying “It’s okay now, everybody knows about residential schools.”

Now my daughter goes to Mohawk immersion. But even that Mohawk immersion, and what they’re teaching them about our ways at school is skewed. There’s a teacher who’s judging my daughter, so my daughter comes home and she says, “I don’t understand why this teacher is doing this to me. She’s telling me that I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’m being mean. And I’m not! I’m being creative.” I say, “All right, you’re gonna write her a letter and you’re gonna demand an apology. You should give her respect, if she gives you respect.” You have to stand up for yourself. That’s my daughter’s job, to stand up, and then to show her children how to stand up.

Kahentinetha: The other thing too, throughout my lifetime, there’s always been this division here between the ones working for the band council and the rest of us. The ones working for the band council, they get all the jobs, and they discriminate. So there’s all these programs that are funded with money from the Indian Trust Fund. It’s meant to be for all of us. And the band council also gets money to run the community, for each one of us. Like myself, I’m 82: so for 82 years now they’ve been getting money for me, because I’m on the list here. But do you think I ever got any of that money? I don’t know what they use it for, they don’t tell me. And they help me with nothing.

And then they have this economic service called [Mohawk language], which we call [Mohawk language]. And they’re supposed to treat everybody equally and give you some money to start a business. And every time I have tried to get that money, I can’t get it. They find something wrong with my application, or they say I don’t qualify. They always find a reason why you don’t qualify. And then they give you a bit of money, maybe $2,000 for something. Then you gotta pay it back, which, you didn’t even know you gotta pay that back. They’re after me now, to pay back some money.

A: The money that’s yours anyway.

Kahentinetha: It’s all our money. It all comes from the Indian Trust Fund.

Philippe: And now the money for what you lived through at the day school, too. You were given only $50,000 instead of $200,000, because you would have to prove everything that happened to you, describe it in detail, and give evidence.

Kahentinetha: And the worst part is that the government did not want to be taken into court for trial, so what they did was they admitted guilt to everything. So for a few years now, I’ve been applying. It says you can apply from $10,000 to $200,000. I said, with what happened to me, they should be paying millions to me! But I applied, and I applied for the top amount. So I waited for a long time. Finally, a couple of days ago, they sent me this letter and they said that I’m not eligible for the top amount, they’ll give me $50,000. Well, if you give me $1, why not $200,000? It’s my money. So now I’m just saying, okay, you’re guilty. You admitted your guilt. And they want me to go and explain and tell them more. I can’t do that. I absolutely cannot do that. And I don’t have to. Because when they’ve admitted guilt, then anything I say, they have to say everything I said is true.

Tekarontakeh: That’s why the Pope doesn’t want to admit.

Kahentinetha: Yes. Then they admit everything is true, and they have to pay. And now they’re putting me in a situation where they say, here’s the money, but you gotta tell us. You gotta tell exactly all the details of what happened. I can’t do it.

A:It’s sick. Sick.

Tekarontakeh: They stole trillions off you and they want to give you chump change.

Philippe: And they want you to relive all those memories. A:All the atrocities.

Kahentinetha: I cannot do it. I know I can’t.

Phillipe: It’s the same process for the land claims too, where the law is made such that you can’t ask for anything else than a monetary compensation. And then it would be over and you could never sue them again.

Tekarontakeh: When the Land Claims Commission was established, they said that they’ll settle with the Native people, but they’re only gonna pay you what the land was valued at the time of contact. So if it was 4 cents an acre, that’s all they’ll pay you, never taking into account inflation and everything else.

A: And not taking into account how the land has been abused.

Tekarontakeh: So the band council put in these land claims. And it’s been agreed to in the courts, that the government was wrong. So now, they dictate to you how much they’re gonna give you. But the lawyer’s fees come out of the compensation too. And then with what money you have left over, you can buy some of your original land claim back — at today’s prices. And also, if you want it to be tax exempt, you have to register under the band council. So it doesn’t become Native land, it becomes Crown land, the queen’s land.

You see? And they still don’t understand, like in British Columbia, some of the Native people got $1.4 billion for their land, but they lost thousands and thousands of acres. And now their chief says, well, now we’ve got money that we could put into economic development and help our people out, and we can buy some of our land back. But nobody’s telling the people that if you buy it, it’s still not gonna be yours. It’s gonna belong to the queen. And so you lose everything. You lose the land that you’ve already got, and then the one you get back, you’re gonna lose that too because your reservations are considered Crown land.

This here is not Crown land. Kahnawá:ke is not Crown land. The government says that they recognize every other people, they say they recognize the band council. But people don’t understand what that means. The only people who still do not have any recognition are the Kanien’kehá:ka. Our people. We still don’t have recognition, because we have never relinquished anything. We’ve never given anything up.

Back in ‘73, when we had the evictions, the band chief wanted to bring the army in. And the army said, “We can’t go in there, because that’s not part of Canada.” So they called the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). And the RCMP said, “We can’t go in there, it’s not part of Canada.” So they turned to Parti Québécois and they asked them to step in, and they sent the SQ (Sûreté du Québec), the Quebec Provincial Police, and that’s who we had problems with. Because with the SQ, they figure anything within the borders of Quebec is theirs. And so they didn’t really respect any of our rights or our independence from them.

Then in 1990, they did send the military. Because already the band councils had signed jurisdiction over to the provinces. People have short memories here. They don’t realize, in ‘73 they couldn’t send the army. Why is it they can send the army now? When we first blocked these roads over here, the band council came here and they started yelling, “Lift these roadblocks!” And we just turned around and said, “Listen, either you’re with us, or you’re against us. If you’re against us, then get the hell out here!” And as our band council knew, it was political suicide to turn against us. About an hour later, they came back and said we could have whatever we need. Yeah? Whatever we need? So we said we want all those steam shovels and bulldozers and everything. And we dug all these roads up. We made tank traps.

They knew at that time that this wasn’t just a warrior society, it was gonna be men from all walks of life in Kahnawá:ke that were gonna pull together. We had the support of the people. So the band council knew if they went against us, they had to save face somehow. Next thing you know, they’re sitting at the negotiating table with Canada. What are they doing there? They had no business there. But even the so-called Longhouse people, they approved, they sent these goddamned sellouts to negotiate on our behalf. Next thing you know, they’re sending them to Geneva, they’re sending them to Holland and all that, to represent us. And I asked, “Why are these people here? Why do you get in bed with the traitors?”

Kahentinetha: Well they’re doing the same thing in our fight with McGill University. It’s the first thing they do, when we filed in court, they get in touch with the band council. Not just here, but in Kanehsatà:ke. And then they put out a press release that that’s what they’ve done, and they’re already taking care of this matter. It’s really so they can avoid us, the Ka’nisténhsera’. So then we did a few things — we don’t want to tell you what we did, but we did do something, within our rights — and now, whenever McGill gets in touch with the band council, the band council says, “We have no comment.” So now they’re not contacting the band council like they used to, and they’re just not saying anything.

Philippe: Yeah. But, it’s been acknowledged. In one lawsuit the court acknowledged that the band councils are federal employees.

Tekarontakeh: The band council is not a government, it’s a committee.

Kahentinetha: And the judge acknowledged that. And yet, every time something happens, they get in touch with the band council, which is just a committee. The Ka’nisténhsera, and the people, are in a much stronger position. And they refuse to deal with us.

A: Just like with the bridge, they went to the band council. And we said, “No, you have to come to us.”

Kahentinetha: We wanted to know if you have any questions about what we’re doing, the Ka’nisténhsera, what the women are doing. We wanted to know if you wanted to ask any questions about that.

Ariel: Thank you. I’ve been sitting on one. I am struck by the power of your continuous struggles. And I see that in this lawsuit against McGill, it’s not only about the courtroom and its ruling, right? You’re making this stand there, that is one of many in the long history of your struggle. But the forces you’re up against are so powerful, and they’re at work in every realm of life, sowing violence and destruction and alienation.

And you’re struggling against all of that. So my question is, how do you strategize, and choose your battles?

Tekarontakeh: How do you separate the clean water from the cesspool? You know, ever since I can remember, we’ve been fighting this system. We’ve been fighting it and fighting it and fighting it. And we’ve never had the resources to really launch a good fight. But we’ve done things in the past that showed us that we have the ability to do things. And, you know, I’m not getting younger, and I get a lot of calls from people from this community and other communities. They’ve got problems and they want me to come and help them fix that problem. And I tell them, I’m not that young guy no more. I’m not no 20 year old. I’m not no 30 year old. You know, I’m not even a 50 year old. I’m getting older, and I can’t do the things I did when I was young. I’ve learned a lot more than I knew back then. But I’m saying to myself, why am I gonna continue fighting this fight that we’re never gonna win? Okay? We’re not gonna win.

I look back at 1974, when we went into the mountains and repossessed land, and we decided that only we would have the jurisdiction within that land, and we would work toward becoming self-sufficient and economically independent. We talked about having a moneyless state and all this kind of stuff. And it wasn’t just for the Kanien’kehá:ka, but it would be for all traditional-minded Native people. We were successful to a certain extent. We started out, we took 612 acres. Today we have over 10,000 acres, but our claim was 9 million acres, so we’re still getting more land. And now today we have our own schools, we have a little sawmill, maple syrup operation, agriculture, buffalo, beef cattle — there’s so many things that came out that was good. Now there’s a lot more emphasis on language and things like this.

But you have people there who went in, who still had reservation mentality, and that’s a hard thing to get out of anybody. It’s like a religion. And then we ended up, like a dictatorship happened, you know, and so on. So if you were gonna stay and try to build that thing up, you would always have to deal with this element. I was one of the organizers. I was a negotiator, I did the public relations. I did everything that was asked of me. I even brought my own personal monies into that project. We built a super bingo hall. I brought the cigarette industry to them, I did a lot of different things. And today, the powers that be don’t want me there. Because the powers that be are threatened. They think, well, he’s too smart. He’s gonna take it away from us. I don’t want nothing. If I wanted something, I would’ve never give them my money. I would’ve just kept it for myself. But that’s not how I was raised. I was always raised to love my people, to help my people, and that’s what I did.

So now I’m saying, if we want to have some real success, we have to get lands. We have to reacquire lands. I was one of the people that was appointed to what they call the Land Rights Committee. That was to start getting land back, whatever way, by hook or by crook, but to get the land. I believed in that. But, a lot of the people that I was appointed to that committee with, they didn’t believe it, because they never did nothing.

So in my mind, I’ve been at it for a couple years now, and I am going to get land back. And I’m gonna take all the experiences that I have, and where I see we made mistakes, and make sure we don’t make those mistakes again. And to rebuild a people. I’m not just looking at Mohawks, I’m looking at all Onkwehón:we. In my conversations with them already, every one of them has said they wanted to learn [Mohawk language], the language we speak. Because our language is more sophisticated than any other Native language. We have descriptions for everything. And our people here today, there are a lot of dollars going into language and everything, but it’s never gonna be. But the thing is, it’s a good start, because there’s lot of young people who are learning to converse in the language. But if they are gonna be a part of what we’re doing, then, see there’s two things in our language, we say, [Mohawk language], and [Mohawk language]. [Mohawk language] is that he just talks in our language. The other one, [Mohawk language] — how would you translate that?

It’s not just that he speaks it, but he actually is that language.

A: He embodies it.

Tekarontakeh: Yeah. He’s embodied with that language. And so this is why I say there’s two ways to speak our language. There’s the Christian way, and there’s the natural way. And so these kids who at least learn to say the words, now they come into this, and then we can really teach them how to be a part of that language. How to know that language. And not just to mimic what’s out there.

Kahentinetha: About how to be that language.

Tekarontakeh: That’s right. That’s why, see, we’re putting together agricultural programs, we’re putting in for more economical housing. Like today, people get a little bit of money, and we’re building castles here, you know? And when the taxation comes in, those people with the big houses, how are they gonna keep the lights on? Because you’re gonna be paying taxes, all that extra money you had is not gonna be there no more. But so the thing is, the first step is get the land. You get the land, you get the people. Get the resources to start to help the people start a new life. And we’re not just working with people in this area. We’re working with people in British Columbia, we’re working with people in Alaska, we’re working with people in Mexico, and Bolivia and a few other places. So this is all gonna be connected. So they will all be like satellites to support one another, and to start to carry on a trade between each other. We don’t have to fit into the world order. We can do this amongst ourselves. We can do this! There’s nothing to stop us but us.

A: I don’t wanna conform to a new world order. I want to make our world what it’s supposed to be.

Kahentinetha: Based on who we are. We are part of the natural world.

Footnotes

1. Tekarontakeh: “They were supposed to stay only in their ship, on the water. That’s what that Two Row Wampum is about, it’s about a relationship. When they came here, they came to trade. It started with the Dutch, they wanted the hemp; the ropes that we make, the cloth that we make, all the different products that we make from hemp. So we explained to them, this is the way of this land. We are of this land. We evolve from this land. You, on the other hand, the only thing we know about you is you came in a ship. There is no evidence of where you traveled from, because as soon as you pass the water goes back to the way it was. But we understand you are here because you want things that we have. And you want the cloth for your sails, for your ship. You want the ropes for your ships. You want these other things that you can take home, wherever that is. But we’re gonna tell you, you need to stay in that ship. Your people stays in that ship. Your religion is in that ship, your language is in that ship. Everything about you is in that ship. The only connection you will have to this land is the hemp rope that we will tie to your ship. And we will tie your ship to a bush over here, just so it doesn’t drift off. Once you do your business, then you go back to where you come from. So that’s why the Dutch, their symbol to that Two Row Wampum is the hemp rope.

   Then the French came, they wanted our iron, our metals. A lot of times they give you the impression, Native people, we only work with bones and sticks and stones. But we had smelters, we made iron. We worked with copper, we worked with all different kinds of metals. Silver, even, and gold. The French wanted our iron because it was superior to anything they had in Europe. And for the French, we said the same thing, they stay in their ship, and that iron chain connects them from their ship to a bush on this land. And when they’ve done their business, they go back.

   Then the English came, they wanted our silver. And so this is why they came up with the expression, the silver covenant chain. It’s that silver chain that will connect their ship to the bush so they don’t drift off. Then the Americans, they were crazy about gold. So their symbol was a gold braid. That was their symbol saying that they would always respect that Two Row Wampum. That was their symbol to trade with us.

   Queen Anne sent a letter in regards to Quebec, Ontario, New York state, the United States itself, and Canada. She said, “Let me remind you, you who have gone to the Americas: you are not nations. You are not governments. You are only trading companies.” It’s no different, see they had that same relation when they were in India. The East India Trading Company, all of them went there for trade. They were not sent to colonize. So everywhere they went in the world, it was for trade. But once they were there, their greed made them want to colonize. And they wanted everybody to be like them. They wanted everybody to be under their control. And all they did was ruin different cultures, all over the world. That’s all. It’s a cancer.”

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