Post by blackcrowheart on Nov 28, 2005 20:06:29 GMT -5
Indian law scholars comment on proposed passport regulations
Posted: November 28, 2005
by: Tom Wanamaker / Indian Country Today
SYRACUSE, N.Y - After the War of 1812, peace negotiators sought to physically separate the newly independent United States from the British colony of Canada. They drew a line up the St. Lawrence River, across Lake Ontario, up the Niagara River and through Lake Erie that sundered Americans from British Canadians. It divided the Haudenosaunee as well.
More than two centuries later, crossing this border is a feature of the daily lives of contemporary Haudenosaunee people and remains a critical issue.
On Nov. 8, the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship at Syracuse University held a panel discussion entitled ''Imposed Borders: Haudenosaunee Perspectives.'' Participants discussed the continued impact of the international boundary on Haudenosaunee life. Center director Robert Odawi Porter, Seneca Heron clan, moderated the event.
''I haven't found any other Indians that have so much concern and intensity over borders as the Haudenosaunee - why is this?'' Porter asked.
One panelist, Chief Brad Powless, Onondaga Eel clan, spoke of early relations between the Haudenosaunee and the European newcomers.
In the early 1600s, Powless said, ''we noticed new neighbors on our borders.'' His ancestors, he said, recognized early on that contact with Europeans would continue for ''a long time.'' Even though the newcomers' ways were different, this did not give Indians the right to impose Native ways on their new neighbors, he said.
''How can laws be transferred from one people to another people?'' Powless asked.
He displayed the Guswhenta - a wampum belt showing two purple bands on a white background. Also called the ''two-row wampum,'' the Guswhenta represents a treaty of friendship between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch negotiated in the mid 1600s.
The three white stripes denote ''peace, friendship and forever,'' which, Powless said, are supposed to last ''as long as the grass grows green, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and as long as the rivers flow.''
The purple bands are parallel paths down the river of life taken by the Europeans' ship and the Indians' canoe, he said. The tight knots at one end of the belt denote the beginning of the Dutch-Iroquois relationship, while the unfinished, frayed end means that the two peoples remain on their parallel but separate journeys.
European ideas of individual land ownership and strictly defined boundaries were alien to the Haudenosaunee way of thinking.
''We had a difficult time with this idea of boundaries - 'our land' versus 'your land,''' Powless continued, adding that the traditional Haudenosaunee idea of ''one bowl, one spoon'' epitomized his people's cooperative and generous nature.
''The Six Nations always came together,'' Powless said. ''We help each other. Boundaries are hard to understand. We traveled through others' communities and lived peaceably in each others' lands.''
Audra Simpson, Mohawk, is an assistant professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. She grew up on the Caughnawaga Mohawk territory in southwestern Quebec, not far from where the U.S. - Canada border cut through the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation.
''The border is part of our everyday life,'' Simpson said. While ''the border is not a uniform experience good or bad,'' she gave examples of demeaning behavior by border guards encountered during her frequent crossings.
According to Simpson, passports and other forms of identification ''permit as much as they deny.'' ''Bloodification,'' the imposition of blood quantum limits, in the passport/ID process is colonialism because it ''treats us as bodies with a percentage of blood in order exercise our rights to move,'' she said.
''We're not Canadian and we're not American,'' Simpson said. ''They [the border guards] just don't get it.''
Jolene Rickard, Tuscarora, spoke of the Indian Defense League of America, which has fought for eight decades to uphold Native border crossing rights granted under the Jay Treaty of 1794 and the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. Her grandfather, Chief Clinton Rickard, founded IDLA in 1926.
''My grandfather and his contemporaries had courage to continue to be Indian, while others said he was 'returning to the blanket,''' Rickard said, adding that exercising sovereign rights was ''a real experience, not just rhetoric'' for many Tuscarora. Chief Rickard and others believed it was their responsibility to preserve indigenous rights to cross the ''medicine line,'' as they referred to the border.
''The IDLA was established to guarantee unrestricted passage on the continent of North America for Indian people,'' according to a statement on the group's Web site. ''Unrestricted passage is considered an inherent right for indigenous people.''
The group takes its inspiration from Deskaheh, or Levi General, a Caygua sachem from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario. In 1923, Deskaheh traveled to Geneva to address the League of Nations regarding Canadian interference in treaty rights guaranteed to Native peoples. Although he gained an enthusiastic following in Europe, Deskaheh was unable to address the league directly and he returned, discouraged, in 1924.
Every year, on the third Sunday in July, IDLA leads the ''Border Crossing Celebration,'' a march across the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge that spans the Niagara River downstream from the famous waterfalls.
Rickard said that IDLA maintains dialogues and is ''constantly negotiating'' with four commissions that govern the various bridges between New York and Canada. In July 2004, approximately 300 people participated in the march across the border.
''The march is important,'' Rickard said. ''The more people that come out, the easier it is to maintain the dialogue.''
Posted: November 28, 2005
by: Tom Wanamaker / Indian Country Today
SYRACUSE, N.Y - After the War of 1812, peace negotiators sought to physically separate the newly independent United States from the British colony of Canada. They drew a line up the St. Lawrence River, across Lake Ontario, up the Niagara River and through Lake Erie that sundered Americans from British Canadians. It divided the Haudenosaunee as well.
More than two centuries later, crossing this border is a feature of the daily lives of contemporary Haudenosaunee people and remains a critical issue.
On Nov. 8, the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship at Syracuse University held a panel discussion entitled ''Imposed Borders: Haudenosaunee Perspectives.'' Participants discussed the continued impact of the international boundary on Haudenosaunee life. Center director Robert Odawi Porter, Seneca Heron clan, moderated the event.
''I haven't found any other Indians that have so much concern and intensity over borders as the Haudenosaunee - why is this?'' Porter asked.
One panelist, Chief Brad Powless, Onondaga Eel clan, spoke of early relations between the Haudenosaunee and the European newcomers.
In the early 1600s, Powless said, ''we noticed new neighbors on our borders.'' His ancestors, he said, recognized early on that contact with Europeans would continue for ''a long time.'' Even though the newcomers' ways were different, this did not give Indians the right to impose Native ways on their new neighbors, he said.
''How can laws be transferred from one people to another people?'' Powless asked.
He displayed the Guswhenta - a wampum belt showing two purple bands on a white background. Also called the ''two-row wampum,'' the Guswhenta represents a treaty of friendship between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch negotiated in the mid 1600s.
The three white stripes denote ''peace, friendship and forever,'' which, Powless said, are supposed to last ''as long as the grass grows green, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and as long as the rivers flow.''
The purple bands are parallel paths down the river of life taken by the Europeans' ship and the Indians' canoe, he said. The tight knots at one end of the belt denote the beginning of the Dutch-Iroquois relationship, while the unfinished, frayed end means that the two peoples remain on their parallel but separate journeys.
European ideas of individual land ownership and strictly defined boundaries were alien to the Haudenosaunee way of thinking.
''We had a difficult time with this idea of boundaries - 'our land' versus 'your land,''' Powless continued, adding that the traditional Haudenosaunee idea of ''one bowl, one spoon'' epitomized his people's cooperative and generous nature.
''The Six Nations always came together,'' Powless said. ''We help each other. Boundaries are hard to understand. We traveled through others' communities and lived peaceably in each others' lands.''
Audra Simpson, Mohawk, is an assistant professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. She grew up on the Caughnawaga Mohawk territory in southwestern Quebec, not far from where the U.S. - Canada border cut through the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation.
''The border is part of our everyday life,'' Simpson said. While ''the border is not a uniform experience good or bad,'' she gave examples of demeaning behavior by border guards encountered during her frequent crossings.
According to Simpson, passports and other forms of identification ''permit as much as they deny.'' ''Bloodification,'' the imposition of blood quantum limits, in the passport/ID process is colonialism because it ''treats us as bodies with a percentage of blood in order exercise our rights to move,'' she said.
''We're not Canadian and we're not American,'' Simpson said. ''They [the border guards] just don't get it.''
Jolene Rickard, Tuscarora, spoke of the Indian Defense League of America, which has fought for eight decades to uphold Native border crossing rights granted under the Jay Treaty of 1794 and the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. Her grandfather, Chief Clinton Rickard, founded IDLA in 1926.
''My grandfather and his contemporaries had courage to continue to be Indian, while others said he was 'returning to the blanket,''' Rickard said, adding that exercising sovereign rights was ''a real experience, not just rhetoric'' for many Tuscarora. Chief Rickard and others believed it was their responsibility to preserve indigenous rights to cross the ''medicine line,'' as they referred to the border.
''The IDLA was established to guarantee unrestricted passage on the continent of North America for Indian people,'' according to a statement on the group's Web site. ''Unrestricted passage is considered an inherent right for indigenous people.''
The group takes its inspiration from Deskaheh, or Levi General, a Caygua sachem from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario. In 1923, Deskaheh traveled to Geneva to address the League of Nations regarding Canadian interference in treaty rights guaranteed to Native peoples. Although he gained an enthusiastic following in Europe, Deskaheh was unable to address the league directly and he returned, discouraged, in 1924.
Every year, on the third Sunday in July, IDLA leads the ''Border Crossing Celebration,'' a march across the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge that spans the Niagara River downstream from the famous waterfalls.
Rickard said that IDLA maintains dialogues and is ''constantly negotiating'' with four commissions that govern the various bridges between New York and Canada. In July 2004, approximately 300 people participated in the march across the border.
''The march is important,'' Rickard said. ''The more people that come out, the easier it is to maintain the dialogue.''