Iroquoia

Reconstruction of an ancient Iroquois longhouse

What is Iroquoia? Sounds like a name of a country, but does such a country exist? If so, where?

Well, here and there. The biggest chunk on the shores of the Grand River in Ontario, close to the city of Brantford. Officially it is called Six Nations Territory. Six Nations of Iroquois Confederacy, that is. On a map it doesn't look very different from the rest of Ontario. It is covered in the same network of parallel roads with square angle intersections. Only on a topographical map one can see more woodland between the roads on the territory. In the middle of the territory lies Ohsweken, a village in theory, but there is so much greenery, houses so far from the road that the village looks much like surrounding countryside.

The white people call it an Indian reservation (or a "reserve", according to Canadian terminology). They say that the Iroquois received it from the British Crown because they helped the Crown during the war of U.S. independence. The Iroquois say something different.

I came to Ohsweken to hear what the Iroquois say. At first I didn't know whom to talk to but asking persistently I found the right doors to knock to. From the conversations I had I gather that Iroquoia is a very interesting country.

* * *

Tom Hill is a director of the Museum of Woodland Culture in Brantford. He lives in Ohsweken in one of those houses far from the road. I found him there one Sunday evening, he had no time for me then but told me to see him the next morning in his museum. He received me in his office full of books.

"What do you want to know?"

"I am interested in two things. One is: what is the political situation of the Gran River territory. The other is the Longhouse religion - is it still alive?"

I actually don't have ready questions. I would rather hear what my interlocutors themselves consider important. Tom tells me about the year 1924 when chief Deskaheh Levi General travelled to Geneva. Levi General was a royaneh, which title is usually translated as "chief". That year the chiefs decided that the government in Ottawa interferes too much with internal affairs of the territory which they, the royaneh of the Six Nations Confederacy, did not consider part of Canada. They decided to make it absolutely clear and sent royaneh Deskaheh Levi General to Geneva to get Iroquoia into the League of Nations. He travelled with a passport of the Six Nations and Switzerland considered this passport valid. The League discussed a matter and was quite close to recognising Iroquoia as a member, but in the end pressure of colonial powers (especially Britain) was too strong. While this was happening in Geneva the government in Ottawa decided to solve the problem on the ground by sending the Mounties and declaring the council of chiefs illegal. It was decided (in Ottawa) that democracy would be introduced, a council would be elected and this council would be recognised by the government.

For the Iroquois this was barbarity. Not just the way the so called "democracy" was introduced. In the Iroquois society the chiefs were always selected by women, especially Lakoyaneh, or clan mothers. There were supposed to be fifty royaneh, who formed a kind of parliament. The chiefs, who were men, took the important decisions, but all of them were selected by clan mothers and the clan mothers had the power to revoke them. In Canada in 1924 women had no voting rights. Anyway the elections to the new council were boycotted, about 50 people (men only, of course) took part and elected 12 members of the council from among themselves. The Canadian authorities recognised this council as legal.

"From that time", says Tom, "there weren't any attempts to enter the League of Nations or the U.N. But you can learn more about it if you talk to a royaneh, for example Arnie General. He will also tell you more about our native religion as he usually officiates during ceremonies in the Sour Springs Longhouse. You can talk also to Amos Keye, a faith keeper. He works here, in another building, I'll phone him..."

* * *

Stele for Deskaheh Levi General in front of Sour Springs Longhouse

The other building houses a language college of which Amos is a manager. Smartly dressed as a manager should, he has a long black pony tail flowing to his back. Tom told him about me so he has a prepared answer about ceremonies in a longhouse. But one thing is to hear about something, another is to be present. Could I visit a longhouse during a ceremony?

"Normally people from the outside cannot be present.," says Amos. "In the Onondaga Longhouse in Ohsweken it is strictly observed. In the Kayuga Longhouse in Sour Springs the atmosphere is a little more liberal. Perhaps you could talk to chief Arnie General who leads ceremonies there. But a ceremony of ripe strawberries was there yesterday and we don't know yet when the next ceremony would take place."

Amos is a faith keeper so I ask him about the Iroquois religion preceptes. He says that according to what the prophet Handsome Lake said one has to avoid four great sins: drinking alcohol, abortion, black magic and killing. Most of all one has to remember that everything that people use here on earth is a gift from the Creator. The ceremonies are basically thanksgiving for the gifts, for the fact that maple syrup can be gathered, that strawberries ripen, that corn can be harvested. One has to remember that death is not something to be afraid of. Death is passing into Strowberry Fields. This is what old prophecies say: when man dies, he is surrounded by aroma of strawberries. This is why during ceremonies everybody gets strawberry juice to drink. During this life one has to work. However, chasing money or any other obsession is a sin.

I ask about the language. Amos is a manager of a school where the Iroquois learn their own languages. Does this mean that there are some Iroquois who can't speak their own language? The answer takes me by surprise:

"In the whole reserve, where around 2000 people live, you may fing perhaps 200 for whom an Iroquois language is native. Not long ago Canada had an official policy of eliminating Indian languages. Indian children were forcibly taken to boarding schools where away from their parents they forgot their language. This policy had its effect. Today this is our biggest problem. All our traditions are transmitted orally in native languages. The purpose of this school is to bring back the native languages to the Iroquois."

* * *

Chief Arnie General with the author

Chief Arnie General and his friend Mary wait for me at Brantford railway station. Arnie is not employed by a government agency and so he doesn't need to dress smartly. He wears old jeans, a T-shirt from the Grand Canyon and a baseball cap. He is known for his sense of humour which he demonstrates straight away. Showing me his old banger with smashed lights and several indents, he says:

"Look what white people did to me."

Arnie knows from earlier phone calls that I am interested in longhouses so he takes me to the Museum of Woodland Culture. There is a reconstruction of an ancient Iroquois village there, with a longhouse as it looked three centuries ago. It is a structure covered in bark shingle from top to bottom. In houses like this several families lived. I have to explain to Arnie that I am not interested in tourist attractions but in a longhouse in a religious sense. I want to know what does a longhouse mean to modern Iroquois. In the end Arnie takes me to Sour Springs where there is a "modern" (only a couple of centuries old) longhouse, where the ceremonies are held. It is a house made of huge logs. It is locked, opened only for ceremonies. A sacred place, in fact the weather-worn logs make an impression of being really ancient, even though the Iroquois haven't been building log houses in the old days. This was something they learned from the white people. But still, the atmosphere is there...

I look inside through the windows. There are wooden benches around the walls and two cast iron stoves in the middle. I ask Arnie where is the eternal flame of which I read in books.

"The flame is symbolic. Wampum is the flame."

In front of the longhouse stands a granite epitaph of Deskaheh Levi General who travelled to Geneva. He died in the States but he was from here. A Kayuga chief, at one time he must have officiated in this very longhouse.

We are also going to see the Seneca longhouse and a third one, Onondaga. The Onondaga longhouse is new but built like the Sour Springs one, with huge wooden logs. It is much bigger than the Sour Springs one. Here the Confederacy Council meets since they were driven from the Council House in Ohsweken. I ask whether there is a Mohawk one. Arnie says that once there was one but it was burned by Christians because among the Mohawks Christians are the majority.

The Longhouse religion has no sacred scriptures, the whole tradition is oral. Once a year the Great Law and the prophecy of Handsome Lake is recited in its entirety in one of the longhouses on the Grand River Reservation. This recitatin lasts four days. It is a duty of faith keepers to remember the Grat Law and explain the holy wampums. I ask if there is something about it in English. Mary advises me to seek a book by Jake Thomas who wrote in beatiful English the prophecy of Handsome Lake. Jake Thomas was first a faith keeper and later a royaneh of the Kayugas. He was also a professor of the University of Trent in Ontario. Unfortunately he died a year ago. His death was a great loss, he was a veritable mine of knowledge about tradition. They say he was the last of faith keepers who could recite the whole Great Law in an Iroquois language.

I ask Arnie what he thinks about the elected reservation council. He says that it may be good for administration, for maintaining roads and schools, but the sovereign power on the Grand River Reservation rests with the council of the royaneh.

"The Canadian government thinks they can tell us what to do because once the British Crown gave us the land by the Grand River. They say they gave it to us because we helped them in their war against the U.S. In fact this was the other way around: the whole southern Ontario belonged to the Iroquois who after that war ceded most of it to the Crown and only kept the Grand River for themselves. In return Canada agreed to finance things like roads and schools. This is not too big a price. This was an international agreement. The Iroquois weren't subjects of the Crown but its allies."

Mary is Arnie's friend, not his wife. She doesn't live on the reservation but in a distant town where she is a teacher. She invites us to a restaurant in Ohsweken for a traditional Iroquois dish: venison and corn soup. After that we go Arnie's house where Mary takes a nap while Arnie looks into the engine of his Cadillac, the old banger maltreated by white people.

"That one", he says showing me another Cadillac standing in the yard, "is the same but now it is just for parts. I always had a car but I think this one will be the last. It has to serve me till death which I think is not far away..."

Arnie is 66 and his health is failing but he is still full of good humour. When he was young he earned money with his father trapping pelt animals. He says this still could be done as the woods by the Grand River are still full of game. However, the highrise construction work, where the fearless Iroquois are often employed, pays better. He himself earned money there, but the money disappeared quickly as long as he was drinking. At one point he quit drinking and as it turned out he saved a few bucks. Later he led a folk dance group that performed Iroquois dances. Today his son Brian leads a similar group. This younger group travels around the world although sometimes they have problems entering a country. Some members refuse a Canadian passport and travel with a passport of the Iroquois Confederacy, but not all countries accept this passport.

After some time Mary comes out of the house, rubbing her eyes. I glance at my watch. My last bus to Toronto leaves in half an hour.

"Time flies", I say.

"Doesn't it?" says Mary. "Here on the rez time flies differently. Each time I come here I am enchanted..."

* * *

Yvonne Thomas with an Iroquois flag

Somebody told me that there was a longhouse in Toronto and even gave me its phone number. I decided to phone. The voice in the phone says that it is indeed a longhouse and that in an hour's time they will have a meeting with Iroquois elders.

I go there immediately. "The longhouse" turns out to be a room on the 6th floor of the Indian Affairs Bureau, "the elders" were two middle-aged ladies. One introduced herself as Kontonhonkwas, she was the one who had a lecture. The other one didn't introduce herself, just sat there filming the whole event.

Kontonhonkwas is an Indian name, every day she is known as Yvonne Thomas. During the lecture she mentions every so often her late husband and I have an impression that she was invited in his place. She talks about the Iroquois prophets, the Peacemaker and Handsome Lake. The Peacemaker lived before the white men came. His mother was a Huron woman but his father was the Creator himself. He managed to persuade the constantly fighting tribes of Seneca, Kayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk to make peace and form the Iroquois Confedracy. In the village of Onondaga near modern Syracuse the Ever Growing Tree of Peace has been planted and ever since the rohaneh of the five tribes meet in the longhouse there to solve any problems peacefully. Later another tribe, called Tuscarora, was co-opted and since then it is the Confederacy of Six Nations.

Handsome Lake lived at the time when the power of the Confederacy was broken by the newly created United States. He preached the good news to a broken people. He said that they should turn away from four grave sins: drinking alcohol, which makes men stupid; abortion using herbs, which weakens the nation; black magic and murder. He also preached that the old ceremonies should be kept but otherwise there was nothing wrong in accepting the white man's ways of building houses or ploughing fields. His teaching was incorporated in the longhouse religion and is now recited together with the teaching of the Peacemaker.

People who listen to Yvonne are young Indians, students in Toronto. They are mostly Ojibway and Cree, but there are also some Iroquois. After the lecture I talk to Yvonne. I have so many questions to ask, not about the Peacemaker of Handsome Lake, but about the life of present-day Iroquois. Hearing some of those questions she says that I should live for a few days on the rez, meet the right people and ask them directly.

A few days later I am a guest in a little house on a verge of a virgin forest. It is the place where Yvonne lives with her 30 years old son. Yvonne is a widow, her husband died a year ago, but she seems to be one of those who cannot forget very easily. I have an impression that her husband is somehow present all the time. One day I even hear him talk. Unfortunately this is only a video. Yvonne's husband was Jake Thomas who could recite from memory the whole Iroquois tradition and once this recitation was recorded, but not in his native Kayuga tongue but in English. It is several hours of video. I only decided to watch a short sample, just a few hours.

The Iroquois were famous for their oratory talents, they were even called "the Romans of America". Listening to Jake I understood what it meant: he is telling old tales but can keep the listener tense. This is not really a recitation, each time it is said again in different words. Jake was telling how the Peacemaker brought peace. He didn't pontificate about eternal damnation for sinners. He waited for a "good thought" to be awakened in a sinner, so he can understand what evil is and turn away from it. "Be of good thought, said the Peacemaker, and the world will smell of strawberries."

* * *

Kontonhonkwas, the Indian name of Yvonne, means "Opening the door". Indeed, with her help doors I didn't even know existed - open for me. She knows who to talk to and with a few phone calls organises meetings. The first person we are going to meet is royaneh Harvey Longboat. Harvey has a table and three chairs in a shade of a tree ready for us when we arrive. A thermos with iced tea and three glasses stand on the table. He wears a cap with a design of the ever growing tree of peace and words "Hodenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy" written on it. "Honedosaunee" is the name of the Iroquois in their own language. It means "builders of a longhouse". Yvonne warned me that her presence may influence what Harvey has to say. There is a potential conflict there: Yvone’s husband was known for his disregards of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whereas Harvey, although himself a royaneh, is employed by this very Bureau. He works in administration of education. Among the Iroquois any conflicts are supposed to be solved without violence, but that does not mean that there are no conflicts.

Chief Harvey Longboat

Harvey doesn’t say anything that could sound controversial. He describes how the Confederacy Council functions. There are several royaneh of each of the founding tribes of the Confederacy, whereas the Tuscaroras, who were co-opted later, are represented by Oneidas. Altogether there should be fifty royaneh. All chiefs are equal, all decisions have to be unanimous. Royaneh od each tribe have their places: Seneca and Mohawk sit on one side, Kayuga and Oneida on the other, Onondaga in the middle. The highest in rank (but not in power) is the Onondaga chief Tadodaho. He acts as the speaker of the house. Each problem is first discussed by one side, then by the other, in the end by the Onondagas. However, at the Grand River Reservation the Confederacy Council does not have any political role, only a religious one. Among the Mohawk Christians are a majority, but Christians should not be royaneh, as the royaneh should also lead the longhouse ceremonies. Each ceremony is led by two royaneh and each royaneh has as his helpers two faith keepers, one male and one female. The political role at the Grand River Reservation is played by the elected Reservation Council.

"In New York State it is different. There, in Onondaga Reservation near Syracuse, the fifty chiefs have real power recognised by the U.S. authorities. They have a council that is like a mirror image of our council. This is a situation since the war of U.S. independence, when the Confederacy was nearly destroyed, but was recreated here in Ohsweken and at the same time there in Onondaga.

"Since the famous journey of chief Levi General to Geneva in 1924 there were no attempts to have our independence recognised. Certainly not in Ohsweken. Perhaps you should travel to Syracuse, the chiefs there might have more to say on the subject. The main person to talk to is Oren Lyons. Maybe you don’t have to travel that far: Oren Lyons is a lecturer at the University of Buffalo, from here it is closer than to Toronto."

* * *

Ken Maracle is a faith keeper. We are going to his place without a prior phone call. Yvonne is not sure whether we’ll find him at home. We are in luck, he is there in his shed busy doing something. He has threads stretched there on something like a loom and works weaving warp around them, putting tiny white and purple beads on the warp. This is how wampum belt is made, a belt of beads forming a pattern. Each pattern is a remainder of a historical event, like welcoming the Peacemaker, creation of th Confederacy, treaties with white men. Wampum is a sacred thing. For the Iroquois it is the wampum that makes the treaty binding, not a piece of paper. Ken is making a copy of a wampum memorizing a treaty between the Iroquois and the U.S.

Children run around the yard, some of them with flowing golden hair. I had noticed earlier that the Indians here don’t differ that much from their “white” neighbours. In this case the reason is obvious: Ken’s wife is not an Indian, she comes from the American Mid-West. Ken tells us how they met: he hitch-hiked to San Francisco, where at the time Indians Indians occupied Alcatraz island, on the way he met another hitch-hiker, a girl with whom he travelled all the way there, all the way back, and after they got back they got married. He didn’t emigrate from the reserve, it was her who moved here to live among Indians.

He tells us about the great powwow that will take place here next week. Powwow is a great gathering of Indians, dances in feather outfits to the rhythm of drums. But for the Iroquois all those dances are utterly exotic, it is a culture of western Indians, not from here. Powwow has no connection with what happens in the longhouse. A powwow organised on the Iroquois reserve is a bit for show, for tourists. Ceremonies in the longhouse are for participants only, tourists are not invited.

* * *

Isabel Maracle with Yvonne

Isabel Maracle is advanced in years. Ken Maracle is her son and the golden haired children running around Ken's house are her grandchildren. Isabel does not live with her son, she has a little house with the air-con, which has a positive influence on the climate of our conversation (temperatures this summer reach 40ºC). Isabel is lakoyaneh, a clan mother. The lakoyaneh play an important role in the life of the Confederacy. The royaneh (male chiefs) take the decisions about the community but it is lakohaneh who chose chiefs and have power to recall them. Isabel is a bit deaf and has problems with her eyes but has a sharp mind and clear views about politics.

"We are weak nowadays," she tells me. "We are weak but not only because of the pressure of the Canadian government. We ourselves cannot solve our problems. We have the Confederacy council, there should be 50 chiefs there but actually only about 20 sit. Many seats are vacant and some chiefs never come to the council. Now and again they take a decision about something but it is not binding anyway because the Mohawk bench is empty. Mohawks are actually the majority of the population on the rez! I keep telling them they should accept Christian chiefs. Before 1924 there were Christian chiefs and there was no problem! I don't understand all those disagreements. Teaching of Christianity and of the Longhouse are actually very similar. They talk about the same values, they just use different language. You can find some honest people among Christians as well. I don't understand this. They seem to me like little boys who get a lollipop and run with it without looking where.

Isabel nowadays mostly looks after her vegetable garden. We go there to see how plants grow. There are neat rows of maize, beans and squash, the "three sisters" that the Creator gave to women to look after. There is a separate plot of tobacco, the holy herb that the Creator gave to his people so their prayers can raise to heaven with its smoke.

"I often come to my garden and talk to plants'" says Isabel. "You have to talk to plans so they know they are needed."

* * *

Barb Garlow, who was with Yvonne in Toronto, is a faith keeper. She comes one afternoon with video cassettes recorded during the lecture. Yvonne wants to learn from her mistakes and attentively watches herself on the screen while I talk to Barb. She tells me how she rediscovered the longhouse for herself.

Jake Thomas, Yvonne's husband, for many years ran a school of native languages for those who forgot them. Yvonne, who herself was native Mohawk speaker, taught in this school, while Jake was one of the last fluent Kayuga speakers. Barb saw an advert a few years ago and went to see what it was. She herself talked Kayuga to her parents when she was a child but stopped when she went to school. At school teachers told her that the Kayuga language is inferior and she should not use it. Only when she was thirtysomething she went to the course and the language very quickly came back. At that time she also started being interested in the traditional religion. She started taking part in ceremonies and a year and a half later she was chosen to be a faith keeper. She doesn't know why, in her opinion other people would be better, but she accepted.

It is interesting how Barb sees Christianity. She says that Christianity is not a blessing for Indians, on the contrary. As she sees it - Christianity only brings disagreements and quarrels. The Iroquois tradition stressed tolerance whereas for Barb Christianity, on the contrary, preaches intolerance. For her Christians are ready to burn a temple of another religion as thay have burned a Mohawk Longhouse at the Grand River Reserve.

Interestingly, Barb never heard that Jesus himself said that he was sent to the sinners, to thieves and prostitutes and that conversion meant turning away from sin.

* * *

Wellington Staats

In the centre of Ohsweken there is a new building of the Reservation Council. I ask a receptionist if I could meet Wellington Staats. The receptionist tells me that she has to phone his secretary first. The secretary answers that now he is busy and tomorrow he departs to Vancouver for an important meeting, so only when he comes back it will be possible to know if it is possible to meet Wellington Staats.

Yvonne can't believe it when I tell her this a minute later. Wellington Staats is the chairman of the Reserve Council and she thought that it would be better if I met him independently of her. However, because of this incredible bureaucracy her help will be necessary. Later that day we drive to his place and agree to meet the next day

The next day Wellington drops in for an hour and I talk to him while Yvonne works in the garden. She doesn't want to be present because Wellington knows that her views are very different and perhaps he would feel less free to speak if she was there. Wellington has a different view than the Confederacy chiefs, although for me - an observer from overseas - not that much different. Wellington comes from a chiefly family, his uncle was a royaneh and his sister is a lakoyaneh. When he was young he frequented ceremonies in the Sour Springs Longhouse but at one point he decided it doesn't lead anywhere. Nominal sovereignty, of which the chiefs talk, is a beautiful idea but more important is real independence, for example financial. This is why in recent years the Council tries to build industrial infrastructure, so it could be independent from the Canadian Government financial support. On land bought by the Council just next to the reservation a modern textile factory will be created in cooperation with a company from India. The reason is not to release the Canadian Government from its obligations based on treaties but to create a situation when the government money is not the only source of income.

More interesting is alaw suit that the Reserve Council brought against the Canadian Government. The problem is - why did the reserve shrink so much? According to the original treaty the Iroquois received 6 miles of land on each side of the Grand River (which is 170 miles long) from its source to its mouth. Later parts of this land were either sold off or rented. In 1865 the Canadian Government decided that all this is too chaotic and took the remaining land in trust. Today the reserve territory is only a fraction of what it was originally and nobody really knows why. Considering that a basic duty of a trustee is to provide reports from his activity, the Grand River Reserve Council sued the Canadian Government asking this question: where are the reports?

"The Government tries to defend itself in various ways," says Wellington,"but we of course are not waiting idly for the reports. We are doing our own research, checking archives. We started a computer program which keeps our information in order and allows to check the history of every piece of land. Therefore if the Government actually does give us reports, we can check their veracity. However, I am not sure if we can expect any reports. This is not a question of a piece of paper but of big money. There were illegal squatters who never paid anything. There are places where land was rented to white farmers but nobody knows what happened with the rent. Two cities, Kitchener and Brantford, have been built on Iroquois land, their inhabitants pay tax to the government, but what about the original owners of the land?There are motorways and canals crossing the land as well..."

Wellington leaves exactly one hour later. When I tell Yvonne what I heard, she winks with disbelief.

* * *

Irvin Powless

Syracuse is a city famous for the Greek thinker Archimedes, but not the one in upstate New York, which is only its namesake. I came to Syracuse, N.Y., to meet the royaneh of Onondaga Reservation. I came on the advice of Yvonne and other interlocutors, but they stayed in Canada and I have in a sense to start everything from the beginning. However, I have at least telephone contacts to start with and manage to persuade some people to meet me.

Irvin Powless has only a couple of hours for me. We meet for a lunch in a little restaurant on the outskirts of Syracuse. Irvin is a royaneh in the Confederacy Council here. The council in Onondaga was never de-legalised by anybody and has the real power recognised by the U.S. authorities. The sovereignty question is not so clear, however. The U.S. consider relations with Indian tribes as part internal policy. The Iroquois claim that they ceded most of their lands to the New York state but they never gave up sovereignty over the little pieces of land they kept. Irvin says:

"In the early seventies there was a gathering of American Indian nations and there we were encouraged to renew our international diplomacy. We were encouraged because other tribes have only treaties with the U.S., so the U.S. can treat them as an internal problem, but we have earlier treaties with Holland, France and the British Crown. Our delegated came back to Onondaga and presented this view in the Longhouse. The chiefs agreed that the international diplomacy should be renewed.

"Then the problem of passports appeared. After all you cannot travel with an American passport to international conferences and claim that you are not a representative of the U.S. but another country. We then started issuing our own passports written in Onondaga language. There even is an issue of National Geographic with an article on the subject and a photo of Oren holding his new Iroquois passport. There are sometimes problems with them on some borders but there are countries that recognise them.

"The international conferences are not just wishful thinking. For a few years already Oren Lyons has been a leader of our delegation to the U.N. Conference of non-governmental organisations. We don't have our representation in the General Assembly but according to the U.N. Charter we qualify to be members. We have our own territory, our own law, sovereign authorities and treaties with other countries. In 1924 our attempt to get into the League of Nations failed. We did not try again with the U.N. But our Confederacy is older. This is the world's oldest organisation of independent political units who creating it decided to reject war and solve all disagreements by negotiations. The ever growing tree of peace has been first planted here. Its roots spread everywhere...

* * *

Oren Lyons

Oren Lyons, standing by a pitch where some young people train lacrosse, talks to one of the players. He handles a racket in a gesture showing that at one time he played it himself. To the coach standing nearby he says:

"That guy has to be included in the team."

Oren also has only half an evening for me but he took me to the reservation so I can have a look at least. Oren does not have too much free time because apart from lectures at the university of Buffalo he is active in politics. He is one of the Confederacy chiefs and its representative at international conferences. In rare free moments he is interested in local sport. Lacrosse is a national passion here, for the Iroquois it means as much as football for the British.

"We have our own representation in international tournaments," says Oren, "and it is doing very well. Recently it had the third place in the world cup in Adelaide in Australia. In situations like this one has to have external signs, like a flag. This is why we designed our own flag. You must have seen it in many places. It is designed like a wampum that memorises the creation of our Confederacy. In the middle of it there is a symbol of the tree of peace that has been planted here in Onondaga, and on the sides are four squares representing nations of Kayuga, Seneca, Oneida and Mohawk. It is all in white lines on purple background. Such symbols are important for people who are not interested in politics.

I ask about casinos which are built on other reservations but are absent here.

"We don't want casinos here. You have to pay too much for things like this. We would have to consult authorities on New Your state and that would mean admitting that New York state has jurisdiction over us. This is too high a price. But there is also another problem. There is a casino on Mohawk territory of Akwesasne on the border with Canada. It is run by an organisation called "Mohawk warriors". They are greedy for money and this leads to quarrels. There even proper shoot-outs there. We don't want this here.

"We had a similar problem with tobacco shops. According to treaties Indian territories are excluded from the U.S. taxation therefore cigarettes sold here are much cheaper. The "Warriors" of Akwesasne made big money smuggling tobacco. Some of their stuff was sold here. One family opened a few shops and made big money. But the Council of chiefs agreed that tobacco shops here need a licence. This family didn't have a licence. They made money without giving a penny to the community here. They wanted to benefit from local privileges without respecting the local law. They have been warned many times, the chiefs and clan mothers came to them even in the last moment, but they stubbornly refused to close the shops. In the end one day people came in the crowd, dismantled the house log by log, made a heap and burned it. Tons of the smuggled stuff were also put on that heap and burned, and any money that was found there was burned as well. This was a difficult moment but our community is stronger now."

"Some people accuse us of greed but I don't know why. Nobody takes a penny for his duty as a royaneh. Everything is done in the time free from work."

Oren leads me to the local longhouse. The rules here are different than in the Grand River, no guests are ever invited to ceremonies but one can enter otherwise. It is a low log house, long indeed, everything in wood. Hardly any furniture inside, just benches around the walls and two iron stoves in the middle.

"Here everything started," says Oren. "Here the Peacemaker came to the Hodenausaunee and planted the ever growing tree of peace. From here its roots grow all over the world."

"Where is the tree?" I ask. "Is there any real tree?"

"There is not. It is in human minds."

Oren says that he will take me back to Syracuse soon but he wants to show me one more thing: the bisons. It is getting dark. We drive through woods until we come to an open space, a hill covered in grass. We get out of the car to see a herd of bisons which soon walks away.

"They smelled us," says Oren. "We brought them here a few years ago but we didn't want to tame them. They are completely wild."

There is total silence, one cannot hear any distant murmur of a motorway of of a town.

"What was the reason of bringing them here?"

Oren is silent for a long while, then he answers:

"Spiritual."

Interior of a longhouse

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":