Placemaking entails a collaborative, creative process where communities distinctive environments, arts, and cultural activities while also mapping its world. To placemakers and visitors alike, names hold immense power “Adirondacks,” a place name that evokes a world unto itself. By contrast places — New York State, Essex County, or Elizabethtown — the exotic “forever wild.” in the place name is inherently tied with an idyllic Native American
Craigardan nurtures interdisciplinary creative practice through an international residency program, community education, and the farming and stewarding of 320 acres of fields and forests in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
CRAIGARDAN
Friends,
This booklet is an introduction to both Kaia’tihtakhe (also referred to as Jackie Hall), and to Craigardan’s own truth and reconciliation process. Craigardan exists on unceded land, and as a place-based organization we continue to work to understand the history of place, how we were able to come here, and our part in reconciling this history with our collective future.
We first met Jackie through a mutual friend and member of the Craigardan board, Loren Michael Mortimer. Jackie came to Craigardan to co-teach a public class on the history of broken treaties with Mike on our new campus. Since then, we’ve had the privilege to welcome Jackie many times — this is an open and ongoing invitation as we work towards building a relationship of trust and mutual benefit. We are guests on her land, the land of the Kanienʼkehá:ka people.
While you are at Craigardan, you may meet Jackie — either on the farm, up on campus, or out on the trails. She often comes to spend time on the land, gather food and medicine from unpolluted ground, and exchange knowledge with our staff and artists.
Jackie’s presence here is a gift, and we ask you to graciously help us in making her feel welcome. Our collective care and stewardship of this land — and the creative placemaking that we engage in — are all ways to honor the people who came here before us, and who are still here today.
Jackie and I have put together this booklet to provide you with some background information on Jackie’s personal story. This includes her writing which has appeared in the Gardan Journal. We’ve also included an article by Mike Mortimer and a transcript from his talk on the meaning behind our land acknowledgement, which is the framework on which our Community Agreement is built.
If you’d like to do further reading, the Craigardan Syllabus is included to provide you with suggestions.
I hope that this booklet also serves as a departure point for your own exploration into the history of where you live, and how we can create a new path forward together.
Michele Drozd Executive Director michele@craigardan.org
During my time at Craigardan, I have found myself answering the same questions, each time a new cohort arrives on campus; so, I thought I would share some information about myself and what my roles and responsibilities are.
First and foremost, I am a Kanienkehaka woman, mother of seven children, whose main focus is ensuring that our future generations can sustain themselves on our ancestral territory, without any sort of outside interference in accordance with the Two Row Wampum.
Since 2017, I have been working as an independent journalist, covering the ongoing issues affecting indigenous people across so called “North America”. At this moment in time, I am publishing stories on my website sodalitenews.com, Sharing-our-stories.com and a magazine called the Gardan Journal. Prior to beginning my path in journalism, I was a cultural educator and researcher with organizations such as the Akwesasne Cultural Center, The Six Nations Indian Museum, and the Wild Center; and continue to do so on an independent basis.
Gathering from my experience as an indigenous journalist, as well as being born into a family who continues to adhere to the Kaianerekowa (an ancient governance system which the United States of America drew inspiration from when forming their de facto constitution) and have been reclaiming lands within our traditional territory for generations. I was raised with an understanding that we are to leave the land better than when we came, for those not yet born.
Which is why, back in 2020, I chose to reclaim land on our ancestral territory in so-called “Dundee, Quebec.” just outside the boundaries of Akwesasne; Which resulted in a land based language camp being created. Several years later, it continues to be a place where we are free to educate our young people how we see fit; where we steward, remediate and cultivate the land. The Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp not only serves as a place to reconnect to the land; it also serves as a place where we work to reclaim our language and traditional practices that were violently stripped away from us through assimilative tactics known as Residential schools, Day schools, 60’s scoop and the Millennial scoop. Being a survivor of the Millennial scoop, I wholeheartedly understand what these generational scoops were meant to do to us as children; they were meant to kill the Indian in the child and save the “man”. My very existence is a testament to our resiliency as the original people of this land.
So, when someone asks me “What do you do here at Craigardan?”
My first reply is always, that I am here cultivating food and gathering medicine on land that has not been contaminated by industry with heavy metals such as PCB’s and mercury. So, that I can bring clean food and medicine back to my people in Akwesasne; one of the most contaminated pieces of land in North America, land that we call home.
For generations, Akwesasronon have been experiencing oppression and environmental genocide; which is still ongoing. For far too long, there has been this belief that we must remain on land that is slowly poisoning us into extinction, so that we may remain who we are and not be forced into complete assimilation. I am here to change that narrative and lead by example, by maintaining the path that my ancestors walked, so that the next generations can follow in my footsteps, if they so choose.
~ Kaia’tihtakhe ~ (also referred to as Jackie Hall)
DIVIDE AND CHOOSE OR DIVIDE AND CONQUER?
By Jaclyn Hall Akwesasne, NY
“When you begin to understand the concept of ‘Divide and Conquer’ and its origins, you begin to see its implications in plain sight.”
Some of the elements of this ancient technique are:
• creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign, and distributing forces that overpower the other
• aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign
• fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers
• encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political and military spending
Coming from an Onkwehonwe perspective with ancestral ties to the traditional territory of the Kanienkehaka, who continue to uphold the responsibility of adhering to our original instructions and way of life, known as the Kaianerekowa*; it is plain and clear that the colonial tactic of divide and conquer continues to be inflicted upon our people to this very day.
One very specific example would be the ongoing negotiations between the State of New York, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council (BIA-America), the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (Indian ActCanada) and the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs regarding certain land claims of our traditional territory. Although it may look as though we are being presented with a choice, which looks and sounds like some sort of justice or reconciliation, in reality it is an ancient practice known as “divide and choose” or “cake cutting,” which is truly a divisive tactic at its core. The reality is that we are not being offered our land back, but financial compensation instead.
The fact of the matter is that the State of New York is in negotiations with Akwesasronon (People of the land where the partridge drums), not three separate peoples. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council is an administrative branch of the U.S government, which is the same de facto government that strategically implemented the Doctrine of Discovery into U.S law specifically to deal with our people by way of the Marshall Trilogy (three U.S. Supreme Court cases that led to the U.S asserting “jurisdiction” over our people and our lands by assuming that all Onkwehonwe nations are no longer capable of selfdetermination; instead we are seen as “Domestic Dependent Nations.”) One could ask themselves: how did we become a domestic dependent nation? And, what defines a domestic dependent nation? To date the foreign government does not have a clear answer.
One of the principles of divide and conquer — creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign, and distributing forces that overpower the other — happens to be one of the most prevalent practices implemented when it comes to the Rotinoshoni, and speci fi cally Akwesasronon, whose lands are not only divided by the imaginary colonial lines known as the international border, but by state and provincial borders as well. These lines seem to have been created as a means for economic trade and commerce, making it easy for the underlying issue — of foreign entities asserting their jurisdiction over people of another nation who are situated on their traditional territory — to go unnoticed.
To take a more in-depth look at what exactly was intended when colonists decided to draw a line through our unceded territory, one would have to fully immerse themselves inside the borders of our modern-day concentration camp known as Akwesasne.
One way that colonists were successful in creating such divisions was by fi rst imposing the competitive mindset onto our people, instead of adhering to consensus through our ancient practices, such as bringing our minds together as
one by beginning every ceremony and council meeting with the Ohenton Kariwatekwen (Words that come before all else — giving thanks to the natural world). We have degenerated into a society where people compete with one another for their own personal interests, under the guise of band council elections and referendums where the majority of “eligible” voters rules, completely disregarding the input and minds of the ones who are not “eligible” in the eyes of foreign governments and their indoctrinating policies.
So, another question is: what makes a person of Akwesasne an eligible voter? Who decides who has a say in our internal relations and negotiations? On the surface of things, it may seem as though we are given the space to make our own decisions within the confines of our “reservations,” but when you really begin to break it down, you come to realize that it is all a façade, appearing as though we are truly a democratic people. But what is democracy in colonial terms and how does it differentiate from our ancient practices and principles, known as the Kaianerekowa (the great law of peace), which the colonists of the new world drew inspiration from when creating their constitutions?
Now to circle back to how this competitive mindset contributes to the divide and conquer tactic: When one sees others in the sense of “you and I” or “us and them” it does not leave room for the understanding of the collective interest as a whole, which is the ideological thought process at the core of the Kaianerekowa (the great law of peace).
“Despite all the genocidal attempts to completely wipe out our people and our culture in order to occupy our lands and extract our resources, we are still here.”
When it comes to Akwesasne, colonial lines have been drawn and competitive mindsets have been instilled and continue to be reinforced by the ongoing genocide in fl icted on our peoples, through the assimilative processes of the residential school system and the modern-day education system. The number of Kanienkehaka people who participate in the elective band council systems seems to have increased since its implementation, due in part to another tactic mentioned earlier: aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign . When monetary incentives are offered to a people who have had their selfdetermination and selfsustainability violently stripped away, it is no surprise that they are more than eager to fulfill the expectations of foreign entities in order to receive the “benefits and privileges” being offered.
A true democracy does not exist within the structures of foreign colonial polices. It is much more appropriate to refer to Canadian and American governments and their administrative bodies (i.e. elected tribal councils and band councils) as a “representative democracy” intrusively overseeing all tribal councils and their internal relations – where the people vote for representatives, who then enact policy initiatives. Whereas, in a true “direct democracy,” the people decide on policies without any intermediary or representative; there is no superior oversight, but equality and consensus.
I have not even begun to touch on the last two principles, because there is such a vast amount of experience and knowledge that comes along with it. For now, I will focus on the tactics that are clearly being utilized in present-day Akwesasne, in regards to the ongoing negotiations with the State of New York and certain foreign entities being enabled by the participation of an assimilated peoples.
I feel it is necessary to point out that not all Akwesasronon have completely assimilated into modern-day society. The Kaianerekowa people of the Longhouse are still very present within the confines of Akwesasne, although it may not be as
apparent to an outsider perspective. We are still speaking our language and conducting our ancient ceremonies, practices, and diplomatic relations with other nations. Despite all the genocidal attempts to completely wipe out our people and our culture in order to occupy our lands and extract our resources, we are still here.
There are those among us who continue to assert our power as the natural human beings of this land we call Anowareke (Turtle Island). We continue to defend our lands and waters, in order to preserve what little we have left for the next seven generations. When we speak of the next seven generations, we are not only speaking of our kin, we are speaking of all humanity who reside on our mother, the earth.
One of the main things we are taught as young children, immersed in the teachings of the Kaianerekowa, is that the natural world is not to be bought or controlled. Instead, we are taught to be caretakers of the earth. I truly believe that the principles of the Kaianerekowa have the power to bring humanity back together, and allow us to reconnect with the lands that were intentionally and competently tended to by our ancestors — who had us in their minds and hearts — as we are the seventh generation.
*For those who are unaware of the Kaianerekowa, it is an ancient practice of consensus with peace, power, and righteousness firmly instilled in our minds and hearts; these principles are the very foundation of how we conduct ourselves as a natural people, and there are those of us who will continue to do so, even in the face of adversity.
“Kunene” by Tereza Nesnídalová. Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic Pigment on dyed canvas
Patterns of Patriarchy
By Jackie Hall Akwesasne, NY
Generations of practicing patriarchs continue to add to the disempowerment of women. Whether it be with malicious intent or not, this practice began somewhere around the time Western society shifted from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to settled agricultural communities which then led to the establishment of patriarchal systems within these societies.
The same cannot be said for Onkwehonwe people (Original People of this land), specifically the Rotinoshionni who have always had both a society of hunter-gathers and an “agricultural” society; these were the roles and responsibilities of both men and women. It was not until the first colonizer stepped foot on the shores of turtle island with orders to indoctrinate our minds and dispossess us of our lands, that the systemic disempowerment of our women began.
Unfortunately, we as the Kanienkehaka have not been able to escape patriarchy’s reach, nor could many other Onkwehonwe who were forcibly assimilated. Once Church and State got their hands on our children, they proceeded to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Patriarchy has become so prevalent in what was once a matrilineal society, that it is now very difficult to practice the Kaianerekowa without major resistance from those who are perceived to be in positions of power.
In our ancient practice, known as the Kaianerekowa, the need to fight for gender equality did not exist because the women held power just the same as the men. We all carried out our distinct roles and responsibilities according to our clans, and according to gender.
The way we organized ourselves as a people was intrinsically structured in a way that we were able to achieve a series of shared goals for the benefit of the collective; whether it was at a clan level,
nation level, or confederacy level. Our system of governance was so sophisticated that citizens from other nations attempted to duplicate the Kaianerekowa in an effort to create a de facto constitution enforceable in the “New World” in an effort to break away from the citizenship they left behind.
Our governance structure and forest diplomacy were remarkable enough for the newcomers to draw inspiration from, but they could not allow the savage Indians to have intellect and diplomacy without first adopting their Christian god, who was believed to be superior to any other gods or goddess.
The Kaianerekowa is a living body of principles derived from the natural world. To be maintained, it must be practiced and adhered to according to our cycle of ceremonies, which requires us to uphold our roles and responsibilities as men and women. This includes the understanding that every living being is of equal value, that we are not superior to one another and there certainly is not one entity who carries supreme power over the collective.
We all carry our own power/sparks. When brought together as a clan, nation, or confederacy, we become one of the most powerful forces reckon with. But to become that powerful force, we must all bring our sparks back together and allow our council fires to burn once again. That may mean working to uplift our people’s spirits so that they may gather themselves and reignite that which was meant to burn inside them.
For far too long, oppressive forces have made sure to keep us scattered and divided so that we are unable to reignite our ancient council fires and reclaim our power. When we begin to rebuild ourselves and our families adhering to the
The Women's Nomination belt, is representative of when women have the task of selecting new male representatives of individual clans amongst the six nations, which make up the Rotinoshionni confederacy. The women's nomination belt is still in use today, and it is one of the most important wampum belts in Rotinoshionni and U.S. history. Jigonhsaseh, the first clan mother, helped form the Rotinoshionni confederacy and its oral constitution, known as the Kaianerekowa, which is said to have inspired the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
generational knowledge that has been encoded into the foundation of the Kaianerekowa, our living body of principles, then we can begin to address the root of the problem we face as Onkwehonwe people in this modern day.
Knowing that our practices have been in place long before the first colonizer stepped foot on our shores, and that only the mindset of our people has changed due to all the assimilative tactics implemented across turtle island; it is apparent that we need to reclaim and regulate our familial structures and encourage our people to think critically in order to determine for ourselves how to bring generational wealth back into the lives of our families.
There is a lot of unlearning that we must do, and it starts with understanding the origins of patriarchy and how it continues to impact human life.
There is an understanding amongst those who continue to practice the Kaianerekowa that no human can control the natural world. As the natural world continuously moves through cycles, so do we as a natural people. Those who have maintained their connection to mother earth are aware of these natural cycles.
When we talk about patriarchy from an Onkwehonwe perspective, It is seen as nothing more than a mechanism to disempower one gender in particular in order to gain control over our bodies, lands, and resources.
It was only through “Interpreted Jurisdiction” that colonizers were able to make claim on lands that were left in its natural state, because they appeared to be uninhabited by humans. When in fact, we as Onkwehonwe are a natural people,
who’s guiding principles are to leave the land better then when we came.
The Kanienkehaka were historically a seminomadic people who would build villages throughout our territory to sustain our families for a period of time. The villages would then be moved elsewhere to allow the land to rest. Now, we are forced to live on small plots of contaminated lands, degraded by corporations who have no connection or concern for the land or our future generations.
A modern-day example of how patriarchy is still in effect is the functioning BIA Tribal Council, established on just about every “federally recognized” Tribal land allotment, continuing the notion that we are a bunch of domestic dependents incapable of governing our own bodies, lands, and resources.
After the attempts at completely exterminating us had failed, Church and State attempted to completely assimilate those of us who remained so that we would forget who we are, forget our songs, our language, and our traditional ecological knowledge. Once they realized they were unsuccessful in completely assimilating us into western society, Church and State went on to actively disempower and sterilize our women to the point that now our own people have begun to model the same behavior, replacing our roles and responsibilities with power and control.
Once this issue can be acknowledged within our own familial structures, then and only then will our people become empowered and inspired to fulfill their roles and responsibilities once again.
“When we talk about patriarchy from an Onkwehonwe perspective, It is seen as nothing more than a mechanism to disempower one gender in particular in order to gain control over our bodies, lands, and resources.”
Assertion of the Assumed
By Jackie Hall Akwesasne, NY
The Doctrine of Discovery, a co-mission sanctioned by the Pope over five hundred years ago, ultimately allowed European rulers to explore and colonize all of the non-Christian world by enforcing what is referred to as “Assumed” jurisdiction - claiming the entire world is under the pope’s jurisdiction as God’s representative. This was an assumption that empowered European conquerors to commit mass genocide on the original inhabitants of what is now referred to as the “Americas” and all throughout the nonChristian world, justified through ideologies such as Terra Nullius, Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism.
Farther north, in what is now referred to as “Canada,” European rulers continue to instigate conflict amongst their successors. They continue to occupy the land in so-called “North America” in the name of economic growth and resource extraction; which only serves the crown and its best interest, while encouraging further oppression and environmental genocide on the remaining indigenous people of so-called “Canada.” They are subtly poisoning us to extinction while continuing to fund the indoctrination and institutionalization of our young people with the same trust money gained by extracting the natural resources of our land.
After over 95 percent of the population was wiped out by the intentional spread of disease and acts of genocide, it was much easier for European colonizers to starve out and displace the original inhabitants who remained. But, that wasn’t good enough. Church and state took it a step further by forcibly indoctrinating the minds of those who remained, through assimilative practices such as Indian residential schools, day schools, 60’s scoop and most recently the millennial scoop; all in an effort to make sure the original people of this continent would forget who they are and where they come from, severing their connection to the
land, and ensuring that there would be no further resistance to western colonization.
Artwork by the late writer and activist, Louis “Karoniaktajeh” Hall
One should ask themselves, was I educated, or was I institutionalized and perhaps indoctrinated? There is no question that this is what took place in Indian residential schools and Indian day schools, which were functioning institutions up until 1997 when the last Indian residential school closed, and then in 2000 when the people of Kanehsatake took control of the last remaining Indian day school in so-called “Canada.”
“Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act Fund of March 3, 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869 the United States, in concert with and at the urging of several denominations of the Christian Church, adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska Native children to accomplish the systematic destruction of Native cultures and communities. The stated purpose of this policy was to Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” US Indian Boarding School History – NABS
Many refer to the colonial era as if it’s in the past, but one could argue that the colonial era continues to this very day; it has only evolved into a more subtle genocide that is not easily distinguishable. This genocidal and assimilative doctrine is still recognized as legitimate by the United States Supreme Court and has been since 1823, by way of the Marshall trilogy, which ultimately led to Federal Indian Law, defining Indians as domestic dependents under the protection and control of the U.S. This was invoked as recently as 2005 when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg cited the doctrine in her ruling during the Oneida vs. Sherill case; which goes to show that the Doctrine of Discovery is very much alive and continues to be weaponized.
The same tactic was implemented and maintained in what is now referred to as “Canada” by way of the St. Catherine’s Milling case in 1888. The Canadian court continues to rely on the doctrine as fundamental to its interpretations of section 35 (1) of its de facto constitution; which claims to recognize and affirm Aboriginal treaty rights. But what the world has seen proves otherwise; the indigenous people of so-called “Canada” are currently being stripped of the very same rights referred to in section 35, without any regard for “Truth and Reconciliation” or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Despite being repudiated by Pope Francis in March of 2023, The Doctrine of Discovery remains the very foundation to Federal Indian Law in what
is now referred to as the U.S. and Section 35 (1) in so-called “Canada.”
“Historical research clearly demonstrates that the papal documents in question, written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith,” the Pope’s statement declares. Nonetheless, “the church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal
Photo taken by Jackie Hall, during the Annual firing at Craigardan. Pictured is a young Kanienkehaka child reconnecting with the natural world on their unceded territory.
dignity and rights of indigenous peoples.” The statement goes on to say that “the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.” The two Dicasteries, therefore, affirm, “It is only just to recognize these errors, acknowledge the terrible effects of the assimilation policies and the pain experienced by indigenous peoples, and ask for pardon.”
The statement then quotes the words of Pope Francis: “Never again can the Christian community
allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.” Pope Francis goes on to say that, “in no uncertain terms, the Church’s Magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being,” and concludes, “The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political Doctrine of
Back, initiated and led by the original people of so-called “ North America,” continue to challenge the legality and morality of the Doctrine which, even though recognized as unjust and racist, still informs the policies of governments such as Canada and the United States when determining who is worthy of basic human rights.
Discovery.”
Church defends Indigenous peoples: ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was never Catholic - Vatican News.
So, when we see that these papal bulls written by the pope, over five hundred years ago, are the true backbone of all assumed jurisdiction in the so-called “Americas;” we begin to understand the true foundation of western colonization and what empowers the assertion of their assumed jurisdiction over what is now referred to as “North America.” Grassroots movements, such as Land
There are many recent examples of the ongoing criminalization of Indigenous land defenders who continue to protect and preserve the land and water for coming generations. They continue on despite experiencing colonial violence by militarized police officers with injunctions in hand, who continue to enforce their assumed jurisdiction over our ancestral territories. So, to say that our existence is resistance only touches the surface of what it truly means to exist as Onkwehonwe, on our ancestral territories. Every weapon known to man has been used against us; to completely exterminate our way of life and who we are as a people. The fact that we are still here speaking our languages, singing our songs, passing down ancestral knowledge to the next generation and instilling in the minds of our children the importance of leaving the land better than when we came; goes to show just how resilient we are as a people, and as the original caretakers of the natural world.
A collage of photos taken by Jackie Hall, while reconnecting her family with the land at Craigardan, which is located on unceded Kanienkehaka Territory.
MAKING THE PLACEWORLDS WE IMAGINE: A LAND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
By Loren Michael Mortimer, PhD
What does it mean to make a place? Placemaking entails a collaborative, creative process where communities sculpt a region’s identity around its distinctive environments, arts, and cultural activities while also mapping its interdependent connections to the wider world. To placemakers and visitors alike, names hold immense power over our imagination. Consider the “Adirondacks,” a place name that evokes a world unto itself. By contrast with nearby English names for settled places — New York State, Essex County, or Elizabethtown — the exotic “Adirondack” sets the space apart as “forever wild.”
This idea of timeless wilderness embedded in the place name is inherently tied with an idyllic Native American past, made manifest for tourists and residents alike through canoe trips on Indian Lake, hikes along the Indian Pass through the High Peaks, and great camps bearing names like “Uncas” or “Sagamore.” These place names allude to a time when Native Americans dwelled in those sublime spaces, an era seemingly consigned to campfire stories and museum exhibits, without specifying the land’s original makers.
Indeed, place names can be misleading, erasing histories of continuous Native American presence and care for their ancestral lands.
Neither the Indigenous peoples who have dwelled in the region for the past 11,000 years nor early European explorers used the name “Adirondack” to describe the 9,000 square miles of uplands and wetlands within the boundaries of the park. The American geologist Ebenezer Emmons first applied the name “Adirondack” to the
1775 Map of the Adirondack Region
region in 1837, appropriating and anglicizing the word “Adirondack”—a Kanien ʼ kehá:ka (Mohawk) slang for northern Algonquian speaking peoples— without consulting with nearby Native American communities or recording historic Native place names in his new survey maps.
And why would he? Emmons worked for New York at a time when the state government promoted racist policies to dispossess Native peoples of their remaining lands and deport them westward. His geologic survey mapped mineral resources for industrial extraction, and his writings invented the “Adirondacks” as an uninhabited wilderness ripe for economic exploitation, rather than a living Indigenous homeland.
Just as names make places, they also frame community relationships. As anthropologist and ethnographer Keith Basso observed, “if placemaking is a way of constructing the past, a venerable means of doing human history, it is also a way of constructing social traditions and, in the process, personal and social identities. We are, in a sense, the place-worlds we imagine.” Emmons’s map of the Adirondacks represented a white man’s fantasy rather than a historical reality. It also invented a place-world that seemingly legitimized non-Native acquisition and development of Indigenous lands. By interrogating the origins of the naming of the Adirondack Park and acknowledging the unbroken history of Native American presence within its boundaries, non-Natives take an important step in reimagining, repairing, and remaking sustainable relationships with the lands and its original makers.
Indigenous land acknowledgements have increasingly become standard practice in public gatherings in historically colonized places around the world. From university commencements and academic conferences to city council meetings and national political conventions, formal acknowledgments of the land’s Indigenous
caretakers have played a significant role in addressing the painful legacies of colonialism by raising public consciousness of the societal change needed to heal those intergenerational wounds. Meaningful land acknowledgments take diverse forms, such as short email signatures or organizational mission statements, to advance social justice through supportive alliances with nearby Native communities.
More than a perfunctory recitation of a region’s Native histories, land acknowledgments function as powerful decolonizing acts that work to reverse the intentional erasure of Indigenous presence in their homelands. Within the Adirondack Park, land acknowledgements are consistent with historically documented Indigenous protocols that enabled ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples to maintain cooperative, interdependent, and peaceful relationships through place-based ceremonies and reciprocal obligations to care for the land. For example, visitors to a Kanienʼkehá:ka community first participated in a Woods Edge ceremony wherein they signaled their peaceful intentions and acknowledged their hosts. Their gatherings still commence with the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen--“the words spoken before all else”--giving thanks to the people, mother earth, plants, animals, enlightened teachers, and sacred beings with whom they share intimate bonds of kinship.
Land acknowledgements are a point of departure on a process of reconciliation with our extended human and non-human families. This journey demands research, reflection, and reaching out to Indigenous neighbors. It opens new possibilities to remake our worlds, transforming our mental map of seemingly familiar spaces, by recentering and rooting human relationships to the land and the biologically diverse communities it sustains. An effective land acknowledgement should, as Abenaki scholar Lisa Brooks explains, invite individuals to “feel themselves entering a place-world” and “be
compelled to use their minds interactively to try to comprehend it.” Land acknowledgements serve as our map through these place-worlds and our instructions on how to care for them.
Consider Craigardan, and its responsibilities to care for the Indigenous lands of Kohserà:ke in the territory of the Kanienʼkehá:ka people, keepers of the Eastern Door of the Six Nations Rotinoshoni.
Kanienʼkehaá:ka people still safeguard the waters that connect their communities to the mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes of Kohserà:ke, as their ancestors had done for millennia. Open to diverse Native peoples as a common “dish with one spoon,” the peaks of Wawôbadenik are sacred to Wabanaki peoples and their Anishinaabe relatives who fished streams flowing through present-day Elizabethtown, New York. Now and forever, the original stewards of these lands remain intimately and inextricably connected to these lands.
While Native terminology and place-names in land acknowledgements may disorient at first, the patient and respectful work of learning to understand their encoded knowledge opens possibilities to expand our mental maps of shared place-worlds.
Kohserà:ke means the “wintering place” in the Kanienʼkehá:ka language, and early Euro-American maps of the region that would become the Adirondack Park feature this Indigenous place name. Winter hunts sustained Native communities, particularly those along the St. Lawrence River that were vulnerable to crop failures from early frosts. As the easternmost of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy or Rotinoshoni , Kanien ʼ kehá:ka conducted diplomacy, engaged in trade, and occasionally waged war against Wabanaki and Anishinaabeg neighbors in their role as “keepers of the Eastern Door.” With its interconnected network of rivers, lakes, and portages, the High Peaks region and Champlain Valley functioned as both a literal and metaphorical door to the Six Nations. Likewise, Wabanaki stories and place names in the region
testify to its significance in their sacred geography, such as the name Wawôbadenik to describe the highest peaks in the region. The Great Law of Peace that confederated the Rotinoshoni also established common hunting territory where all could “eat together from one bowl” without a cutting utensil, to prevent bloodshed. Through wampum treaties with their Wabanaki and Anishinaabeg neighbors, Rotinoshoni diplomats transformed their “wintering place” into a commons where former enemies became relatives through mutual ties to the land. Long before the creation of the Adirondack Park, its lands and waters have always been spaces where diverse peoples and their place worlds converge. Land acknowledgements are statements of intention for deliberate action, not a substitute for the painstaking labor required to honor those commitments. They run the greatest risk of devolving into empty speeches when done without attention to the unique Indigenous histories of a place, its overlapping place worlds, and living descendent communities. Indeed, Indigenous communities endure in the Adirondack Park or within a one-hour drive from its “Blue Line” boundary, including Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, Ganienkeh Territory, Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Mohawks of Kanesatake, Oneida Indian Nation, Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, the Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation, Elnu Abenaki Tribe, the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, and the Abenakis at Odanak. Their continued presence in their homelands underscores the importance of communicating land acknowledgements in the present tense and active voice. Land acknowledgements should nourish what Akwesasne historian Darren Bonaparte has described as the “living history” of “living cultures” that “has come to life in the minds of the people, an inner reality in which our ancestors continue to guide us.” Native Americans freely offered this knowledge to early European settlers as “original
instructions” for living on the land in beneficial reciprocal relationships with Native communities, what Seneca historian John Mohawk described as the Indigenous “art of thriving in place.” Treaties embedded these instructions to facilitate peaceful and sustainable coexistence in mutually made placeworlds. Land acknowledgements offer new generations a path to restore and renew these agreements.
For more than two centuries, non-Natives and their descendants have derived economic benefits and built social capital on Adirondack lands taken from Native Americans without due compensation or legal cession. Settlers did not hack a civilization out of a “howling wilderness,” inasmuch as they built their towns on top of Native villages, dammed fisheries, logged forests, and mined metals that had formerly been integral to Indigenous regional trade networks. The regional identity and tourist economy of the Adirondack Park revolve around the appropriation of Native American technologies such as canoes, snowshoes, toboggans, and maple sugar. At the very least, a land acknowledgement should recognize the ways non-Natives continue to benefit from the dispossession of Native lands. The most effective land acknowledgements heal those traumas, provide fair compensation for Native consultations and knowledge, and support Indigenous community initiatives. Ultimately, the work of land acknowledgements creates networks of collaboration and creativity based on respect, equity, and reciprocity through shared connections to beloved places.
Land acknowledgments need not only be public performances or institutional protocols. As a daily mindfulness practice for non-Native people, land acknowledgements compel individuals to recognize that their community was built on Indigenous homelands and resources. They remind us that Native peoples never vanished from their lands; they remain present even if their homes are now farther
away, and the bones of their ancestors are forever part of the land. The work of land acknowledgement comprises conscious acts of placemaking that recognize the colonial past while also disrupting its legacy of racial inequality and ecological degradation.
Ultimately, land acknowledgements raise consciousness to the needs and possibilities present in our place-worlds. They are daily calls for decolonizing action to rebuild and reimagine sustainable systems that integrate the needs of human communities with the integrity of the natural world. They remind us that whatever places we make, we are on Indigenous land.
Loren Michael Mortimer, PhD, is an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University’s program in Race, Migration, and Indigeneity.
Further Reading
Cutcha Risling Baldy, “What Good is a Land Acknowledgement,” www.cutcharislingbaldy.com
Darren Bonaparte, Creation & Confederation: The Living History of the Iroquois
Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast
Joseph Bruchac, Roots of Survival: Native American Storytelling and the Sacred Elizabeth Hoover, The River Is in Us Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community
Melissa K. Nelson, ed., Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future
Melissa Otis, Rural Indigenousness, A History of Iroquoian and Algonquian Peoples of the Adirondacks
Tehanetorens, Wampum Belts of the Iroquois
Craigardan occupies the Indigenous lands and waters of the Kanienʼkehá:ka people, keepers of the Eastern Door of the Six Nations Rotinoshoni.
We acknowledge that Kanienʼkehá:ka people still safeguard the mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes of Kohserà:ke, as their ancestors had done for millennia. We bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to the Kanienʼkehá:ka people and their relatives among the Six Nations for being on their land today.
We affirm our obligations to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. We honor the Great Law of Peace and Indigenous treaties that made these lifegiving spaces a shared “dish with one spoon” with Wabanaki and Anishinaabe peoples who have held these lands as sacred since time immemorial.
We recognize our Indigenous neighbors at Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, Ganienkeh Territory, Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Mohawks of Kanesatake, Oneida Indian Nation, Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, the Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation, Elnu Abenaki Tribe, the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, and the Abenakis at Odanak as the original stewards of the land and their past, present, and future connections to their sacred spaces within the Adirondack Park.
We accept responsibility for deceptive land sales and broken treaties that enabled non-Native settlers to establish a farm now called Craigardan on Indigenous land more than two centuries ago.
We commit ourselves to healing the intergenerational traumas of colonization, racial discrimination, and environmental degredation through mutually beneficial alliances with our Indigenous neighbors to build sustainable systems that integrate the needs of human communities with the integrity of the natural world.
Iononténion: Acknowledging Indigenous Pasts, Presents, and Futures within the Adirondacks
Video Presentation Transcription:
Michele: Good afternoon everyone thank you so much for coming. My name is Michele Drozd, I’m the executive director here at Craigardan. We are an arts organization and a community farm that leverages collective creativity for social good. We bring people together for place based and interdisciplinary learning, providing creative residencies, courses, and events that span diverse and artistic disciplines in order to foster curiosity, inquiry, and collaboration. We are located on 320 acres just outside of Elizabethtown in the Adirondack park occupying the indigenous lands and waters of the Kanien’kehá:ka people.
Mike Mortimer has been a guiding light for Craigardan’s own truth and reconciliation process which we began discussing in 2019 when we first moved to this new location. Mike drafted Craigardan’s evolving land acknowledgment which we are in the process of bringing to life and to action. This land acknowledgment which Mike will share with you, is the context within which we come together here at Craigardan. It is the opening of our community agreement, it is the reminder that our actions here must honor those whose lands we occupy. But this is just the beginning, we still have a long way to go.
Mike: Thank you for that warm introduction, Michele. I am speaking to you today from the
ancestral homelands of the Muscogee people, what we now call Atlanta. Muscogee people have occupied these lands and continue to remain on this land for millennia. And when I walked to Emory University this morning to come and speak to you, I walked down a road now known as North Decatur Road. That is a path, a road, that is at least 2,000 years old. It is connected to the town of Pakanahuili, or Standing Peach Tree, from which the main streets in Atlanta still get their name. And it was part of a continental-wide network of highways and trading paths and rivers that one could take directly to what is now Craigardan. Route 9N [in Elizabethtown] comprises the old Wampum Trail that connected the Haudenosaunee (Iroqouis) nations to the coast. And that trail extended inward, down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, converging at what is now known as Stone Mountain and right to the path that led me to the office this morning. So, we're all connected. And we're on Native land, no matter where we look. And what I want us to think about today and have a substantive conversation about is precisely Craigardan’s evolving land acknowledgement. Evolution is one word because it is a process. But I was thinking–I'm always thinking about clay when it comes to Craigardan–and I think about the process by which potters take the earth and give it form and give it substance. And it has to be molded. It has to be worked and reworked on the wheel. And then it has to be fired in the kiln. And I think that's the process we're going to go through today. And I've got to cover 20,000 years at least of Indigenous history in the next 20 minutes. So, I hope this is really the point of departure of many substantive conversations to follow, as well as continuing conversations we've had around Craigardan. Today I'm going to focus on Craigardan's land acknowledgment as that point of departure. Land acknowledgements are sites of immense discussion in academia, and in the nonprofit world. Land acknowledgements, when done well, are points of departure. They frame our actions. They speak to our intentionality. They can be the source and summit of what it means to be doing place-based research and creative work accountable to Indigenous communities. But, when done poorly, they can also be performative, and they can reinforce the kind of colonial structures that they were meant to challenge. So, what good is a land acknowledgement? What I want to do is take you on a very brief journey through Indigenous history, grounded in the text of Craigardan’s Land Acknowledgement, or one version of the text of the land acknowledgement.
The title of today's talk is Iononténion, Acknowledging Indigenous Pasts, Presence, and Futures within the Adirondack Region. This word “Iononténion” gets at the challenge of doing Indigenous history in the Adirondacks. Iononténion is the generic Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) word for mountain, or specifically mountain with a jagged peak. It is one of the terms that's used to describe Vermont’s Green Mountains on the other side of “the Waters in-Between,” otherwise known as Lake Champlain.
As one of many Native words to describe this place, “Iononténion” is a word that grounds us physically at Craigardan because the campus stands in the shadow of the jagged peak of what we today call Hurricane Mountain. Even it its modern form, “Hurricane Mountain” retains an Indigenous place name, although it’s not Iononténion. The modern name comes from the 1800s. During the 1830s, a poet named Charles Fenno Hoffman came through the Adirondacks, and he imagined a fanciful Native history of the land. He wrote epic poems about it. And he decided that the mountain we now call Hurricane Mountain was going to have a Native American name,“Nodoneyo,” which has no direct translation in any Iroquoian or Wabanaki languages as far as we know. While researching the origin of “Nodoneyo” and consulting Native friends about potential translations, I learned that there may be some Native American origins to this name. Hoffman had Native American guides leading him on his Adirondack hikes. These guides, most likely Mohican, not Mohawk, gave him some information about Indigenous landscapes. In his poetry, he called this place “the mountain of the great wind or the wind spirit.” But just like his name for Tahawus, the cloud splitter (Mount Marcy), he made either that up or mangled a Native American term to make “Nodoneyo” the name of the mountain we now call Hurricane Mountain. Which seemingly makes sense, but there's no Native American terminology for mountain of the great wind spirit that sounds anything like “Nodoneyo.”
Historians, like craftspeople who restore furniture, have to strip the old varnish off and get down to the original wood. As we peel back the layers of paint and varnish mapmakers have applied to this mountain, we have a name like “Hurricane Mountain.” But “hurricane” is a Carib word! The Carib and Taíno people were the Indigenous peoples on San Salvador that were first encountered by Christopher Columbus. So “hurricane” is technically an Indigenous name, just not from this particular corner of the world. More broadly, Hurricane Mountain is one of the High Peaks in the Adirondack Mountains. But
“Adirondack” comes from a pejorative that Iroquoian-speaking peoples would apply to Algonquin speaking-people. Settlers started applying this word to these mountains in the mid 1800s. So, we have to strip that fanciful Native history that's been layered on this seemingly familiar landscape. And when we do that, we can really start to interrogate what it means to say that Craigardan occupies the Indigenous lands and waters of the Onondaga or Mohawk people. Keepers of the eastern door of the Six Nations, Rotinoshoni. If you've been to grade school, you might have heard the term Iroquois Confederacy or Iroquois League. Again, these are non-native terms.
The Haudenosaunee or Rotinoshoni, people of the Longhouse, understood their political system in terms of not just kinship structures, but also the Longhouse as a way to structure their social relationships. And everybody in that Longhouse had important roles to play. Under the Great Law of Peace that organized the Five Nations, later the Six Nations of Haudenosaunee Longhouse was that different nations had special responsibilities based on their spatial position within the Longhouse. And for the Kanien’kehá:ka people, they were the keepers of the eastern door. And that meant there was their responsibility to maintain diplomatic, military, and trade connections with all of their neighbors, stretching from what we now call New York City all the way up to the St. Lawrence River. Of course, the Wabanaki peoples who were on the other side of what we now call Lake Champlain, the waters in between.
Craigardan occupies the Indigenous lands and waters of the Kanien’kehá:ka people, keepers of the Eastern Door of the Six Nations Rotinoshoni. When we come to Craigardan, the lands and waters of what we now call the Adirondacks was a gathering place for diverse people. But when we recognize the Kanien’kehá:ka people, we're also recognizing their sovereignty as the continuous keepers of the eastern door. And that Craigardan's relationships with other members of the five, six nations necessarily have to run through our Mohawk neighbors who still reside in the region.
To really see this illustrated, we're going to go back in time a little bit, to this 1775 map depicting the present-day Adirondack region on a British imperial map of colony of New York. Now, notice in Craigardan's draft land acknowledgement, we acknowledge the Kanien’kehá:ka people still safeguard the mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes of Kohserà:ke, their ancestral homeland. So Kohserà:ke is one of many historical Native Names that describes the region we now call the Adirondacks.
Let’s take a closer look at this imperial map, a map that was produced in Great Britain. And when I say an imperial map, it really is kind of a 30,000 foot view where imperial planners in London are trying to make decisions about other people's lives. The map illustrates this important corridor, the Hudson Valley, that connects the Atlantic coast up through the Champlain Valley into the High Peaks region and up to the Great River. And the keepers of the Eastern Door didn't just have to deal with restive colonial powers in this region, they also maintained this critical lifeline that connected British New York to French Montreal and Quebec. And as much as this was a vital component in indigenous international economics, it also reminds us that this is a fugitive landscape: a landscape where enslaved peoples were carried as captives, black and indigenous unfree people, as well as colonial captives who were captured in war and would most likely either be sold as servants in France or as adoptees into native nations. If we take a closer look at this map, we can see a couple of other important details. There's a little bit of written history on this map, which is an indication that not all primary sources are reliable. You can see “the hunting territory of the Confederate Indians.” The British crown and imperial planners render it as the blank space on the map—although is was well known to Indigenous peoples, it remained illegible to colonizers and empire builders. The mapmakers tell this story about how the French Iroquois surrendered this territory right on the map. But this was just a story to legitimize a land cession that never occurred. The map also erases Native American communities. Two thriving communities, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory and Oswegatchie, what is now Ogdensburg, are omitted on this map. This map tells us a great deal about how non-Natives envision the space, while in its own way also reminds us that that reparative work has to undo two centuries of fictive history of the land, of overlapping claims to the land, and the erasure of Indigenous peoples on the land.
And then of course, to find Craigardan, you can kind of see on the top of that map the Bouquet River. You can always find Craigardan because you know where the bend in the river is. So that's about as far as Non-native colonizers had come. So that's just kind of gives you a sense that these lands were known but they were not understood.
The painting of “Skywoman,” by the late Akwasasne Mohawk artist J.R. Thomas who
passed away recently illustrates the Haudensoasunee creation story. I will not share the full creation story now, but what I want to draw your attention to in this image, as we go through the land acknowledgement: we bring our minds together as we give our thanks and greetings to the Kanien’kehá:ka people and their relatives among the Six Nations for being on their land today. We affirm our obligations to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. The text here draws from the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, which you may know as the Iroquois Thanksgiving Address, but that again is a crude English translation of a bigger Native concept. The Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen comprise the important words that spoken before all things, whether it was a council meeting, before a meal, these are words of intention. And even the words change, like a land acknowledgement, no two iterations of the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen are the same. They derive from the creation story. They represent the first words spoken by the creator to the people on earth.
Non-natives can engage this language because it is not restricted cultural knowledge. They are appropriate for the text in a land acknowledgement because for centuries before, when colonizers first arrived and even to the present day, the Haudenosaunee had elaborate ritual protocols for non-natives for coming on other people's territory. And they expected newcomers to learn the ritual forms, to learn the land acknowledgement, the Wood's Edge ceremony, and to speak those words with intention and truth. And so when we gather on Kanien’kehá:ka land, we should be thinking about how the Kanien’kehá:ka people expect us to engage, and expect us to use our words. And that's why even though it might seem jarring, and you don't have to do this when you give your iterations of this land acknowledgement, but for me as a historian, it grounds my words in four centuries of international diplomacy that took place on this land, that's taking place on this land. And so we honor the Great Law of Peace and the Indigenous treaties that made these life-giving spaces a shared dish with one spoon. You could see the dish with one spoon visualized in the Sewatokwa’tshera wampum belt. This is in the Great law of Peace. And this concept aligns with what we we tend to think of the role of Adirondack Park Agency or the Blue Line. Non-Natives like to think they created this semi-public and private wild space during the Progressive Era in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But in reality, the keepers of the Eastern Door, the Rotinoshoni, first developed this ethos and cared for this as a space where people could come, fish, hunt, grow crops, and partake in the land without violence. The “dish with one spoon” is not a metaphor as much as instructions for when the people are gathered, there's a dish for everybody. And you take what you need. And there's one spoon and no knives. People can come here to use and engage these resources, but not mine to claim individually. Violence within the territory and over its shared abundance was forbidden.
And we recognize our Indigenous neighbors… Because if you got in your car and plugged in your GPS, within a two-hour drive of Craigardan, you could be at Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, Ganienkeh Mohawk Territory, Kanatsiohareke Territory, Kahnawake, Kanesatake , Odanak, etc. These are Craigardan’s neighbors. They have maintained connection to the Adirondacks or the region we now call the Adirondacks, even though their villages might have moved. They're producing arts in the Adirondacks. They're still here. And in the land acknowledgement, we never just talk about Indigenous peoples in the past tense. We mention our neighbors because these relationships are important, too.
We accept responsibility for the deceptive land sales and broken treaties that enabled nonnative settlers to establish this farm now called Craigardan on Indigenous land. At no time did the Seven Nations of Canada nor the Haudenosaunee cede the lands and waters that now comprise the Adirondack Park to the state of New York. In 1796, leaders from the Seven Nations were summoned to a treaty council in New York City, but that council was rigged because the presiding officer, Justice Abraham Ogden, had a brother who was involved in the Ogden Land Company that was trying to take possession of a vast tract of territory from what is now Ogdensburg through what we now call the North Country of New York. The scheme reserved six miles-square for Akwesasne Mohawk territory. Even though the treaty council followed the official protocol, commissioners did not come to make fair deal. They said, “we've signed a deal with other groups of Mohawks who have already ceded the land. And if you don't sign on the dotted line, you're going to lose your reservation land. The state is New York will take everything if you do not sign right now!” So the chiefs, one of them was the the African-Abenaki Colonel Louis Akiatonharónkwen, faced an impossible choice. They took the deal and lived with consequence of their painful decision for the duration of their lives. Their descendants continue to reckon with the community division as they navigate the perilous politics of land claims and environmental rehabilitation in the twenty first century.
But that 1796 treaty is also signed by George Washington and attested to by the Secretary of State, reminding us then, as now, that Native diplomacy is not the work of the Department of the Interior. This is international statecraft with sovereign Native actors. Akwesasne, Kahnawake, these Native communities remain sovereign nations. And even as they're losing their land, it's recognized in these treaty documents.
In the aftermath of those sales, settlers were able to migrate to the western shore of what we now call Lake Champlain. And one of those settlers was Manoah Miller. Now we know that Miller’s last will and testament shows he was not slaveholder. He started several lucrative businesses in what is now Crown Point. And succeeded during a very difficult period in the ecological history in the Adirondack region, the so-called year without a summer. We see that in 1816, he's trying to develop a new plot of land known as the Miller Settlement, where Craigardan's buildings now stand. Later on, as the valley gained prosperity in the 1830s, brick kilns and other improvements were added. But Manoa Miller didn't live that long. He died in 1819. But if you look at his grave, his epitath reminds us,
“You all must die, the Lord knows, and be among the silent dead. Though now in beauty you must die and turn to dust.” In some ways, we can see how Manoa Miller is etching his own history into the land. He's doing so with poetry, creativity, but he would not be able to lay his bones there but for those treaties. For Manoa Miller, his history is now entangled in the history of the land just as surely as the entangled histories of place names and treaties and settlements that now comprise Keene Valley. Miller’s story shows how settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. And as the contemporary cartakers of this land, we are responsible for Manoah Miller and all the other caretakers of the land just as surely as we are responsible for that Indigenous history.
And so this is where we are now, we commit ourselves to healing the intergenerational traumas of colonization, racial discrimination, and environmental degradation through mutually beneficial alliances with our indigenous neighbors and all non-white communities to build sustainable systems that integrate the needs of human communities and the integrity of the natural world.
Hopefully what I've shown you in this brief introduction, we can map the intersecting complexity points of diverse human histories embedded on the landscape through figures like Colonel Louis, whose father was an enslaved African who rose to be a chief and colonel in the Continental Army, of course, who had to sign those treaties, as well as Manoah Miller who thought about his heritage and his family while also benefiting from those fraudulent land sales, even though he himself did not participate in them. And all of this history requires us to think about what those next steps are collectively, evolving in partnership with our native neighbors, otherwise, what good is a land acknowledgement?
Craigardan Syllabus
Bonaparte, Darren. Creation & Confederation: The Living History of the Iroquois. Akwesasne, QC, Canada; Akwesasne, NY: The Wampum Chronicles, 2006.
Bruchac, Joseph. At the End of Ridge Road. 1st edition. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2005.
George-Kanentiio, Douglas M. Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. Westport, Conn: Preager, 2006.
Grumet, Louis; and Caher, John M. This Land is My Land
Hall, Louis Karoniaktajeh. The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival.
Hill, Susan M. The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River. Winnipeg, CANADA: University of Manitoba Press, 2017.
Hoffman, Charles Fenno. The Vigil of Faith and Other Poems. New York: S. Coleman, 1842.
Hoover, Elizabeth. The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Jacoby, Karl. Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation, With a New Afterword, 2014.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. First edition. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Otis, Melissa. Rural Indigenousness A History of Iroquoian and Algonquian Peoples of the Adirondacks. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2018.
Porter, Tom. And Grandma Said--Iroquois Teachings as Passed Down Through the Oral Tradition. Philadelphia, Pa.: Xlibris Corp, 2008.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Duke University Press Books, 2014.
Taylor, Alan. The Divided Ground Indians, Settlers and The Northern Borderland of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.
