Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Land is Made, Not Given

Fall has arrived within Kanienkeh, the homeland of the People of the Land of the Flint, also called the Mohawks by some. The damp northeastern weather was punctuated in Akwesasne though, by a procedural ruling on a twenty-year plus lawsuit from federal Magistrate Judge Therese Wiley Dancks, concerning New York State land claims.

Although explained to me by a legal mind as “(both) a report and recommendation of how to proceed by the U.S. Magistrate Judge to the federal U.S. District Court judge to whom the case was assigned,” the ruling had a chilling effect on all those I spoke with.

“Why can’t they see what has taken place on this reservation?” stated one young Kanienkehaka man to me, “We have grown up waiting to hear about these supposed land claims, and now we are told that since we do not live in the land claims, our land is no longer ours…that is ridiculous.” he told me.

The controversial ruling, from the United States District Court Northern District of New York, drew heavily on the three Oneida Indian Nation lawsuits, which were argued before the United States Supreme Court, most recently in 2005.

The legal doctrine of laches is drawn upon in this ruling. Laches, according to the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, may be considered as “A doctrine in equity that those who delay too long in asserting an equitable right will not be entitled to bring an action.”

This concept may predictably affect any historical land claim brought by Onkwehonweh, anywhere on Turtle Island, in the foreseeable future. To be blunt, the decks have been stacked against pre-colonial land holdings. With a stroke of a pen, the specter of Indian Title has seemingly been removed from the arsenal of righteousness available to activists, intent on the return of Indian land.

Certain factors are omitted in the ruling. For one, the measurement of the United States Census has always been more arbitrary within Indian Country in general, and within Akwesasne in particular. With no disrespect intended for that necessary federal apportionment process, the spirit of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum of the Haudenosaunee has been invoked by opting out of that consistently each ten years during the head-counting. At times, the Census-takers have been asked by some in Akwesasne, to take their efforts down the road to their own people. So, the numbers submitted to the Commerce Department’s US Census Bureau are inherently skewed. Voter participation in the Hogansburg zip code of 13655 would be a more telling statistic.

Also, the description in the court filing of the land improvements in some of the disqualified cited land claims areas since the land became depopulated by reservation residents seems exaggerated. The Fort Covington parcel is located within an economically depressed hamlet that was mostly known for collaborating with the British Army during the War of 1812, and only recently has seen economic improvement after St. Regis Mohawk tribal members developed two commercial properties there. The fixture IGA grocery store in the sparsely appointed community was abandoned within the past year and the rotting food stores attracted an infestation of rats that was only recently addressed. There was not a lot of reason for Akwesasne Mohawks to live there, to be honest, in refuting a cited lack of Mohawk inhabitant population density in the community from US Census data.

How many Akwesasronon can afford to live in the Grasse River pastures, across from the St. Lawrence Centre Mall?

This “recommendation” may or may not be what is needed to help in uniting the diverse Akwesasne community. This approach from the “what does not kill you makes you stronger” playbook.

Whether called Mohawk or Kanienkehaka, the Kanienkeh homelands were not afforded by way of treaty or endowment. The United States government cannot take away what it did not grant. The egress of the federal government upon Turtle Island is indisputable. No other nation state has set off nuclear bombs on it, or corporately poisoned it with dioxins and mercury. No one else hunted down and killed off the free-willed Onkwehonweh, to fulfill the flawed manifest destiny of the American economy.

The arrogance of superiority always ends with loss. Time and gravity have spared none to date. The rain will always fall.

Charles Kader