Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

By Jim Poling, Sr.

Dundurn Press Toronto, Canada

http://www.Dundurn.com

 Reviewed by Doug George-Kanentiio

 Smoke Signals is a compelling book, one in which the history and contemporary use of tobacco as a primary trade commodity is explained in detail and with a strong narrative. The book is a summation of tobacco as used by aboriginal people prior to contact by the Europeans and its subsequent use throughout the world. The author explains how this product and its many varieties were slowly developed by Native botanists over many centuries.

 The plant itself came from the Andean region of South America. It is a part of the otherwise deadly nightshade family that also includes tomatoes. It is not known as to when tobacco was first smoked but it was used as an insecticide and as a medicine to relieve pain, curtail hunger, as a poultice for wounds, for urinary ailments and to expel worms.

 Sacred tobacco (nicotiana rustica) is called “onyonkwehonweh” in Mohawk comes from the same root word as human being or onkweh.  It is taught by the Iroquois that the plant originated from the skyworld, a place of conscious light in the Seven Dancers or Pleiades star cluster system.

 A being called Skywoman brought tobacco along with strawberries. Upon her death other plants grew: beans from her lower abdomen, corn from her chest, potatoes from her feet and tobacco sprouted from her head.

 Tobacco, like potatoes, corn and squash, were cultivated first in the Andes region in South America, spreading north over many centuries. The path of tobacco followed that of Iroquois as they migrated from the southwest to the northeast, beginning in the Rio Grande region before crossing the Great Plains and into the forests around Lake Ontario.

 Tobacco of the sacred variety took hold in southern Ontario. One Iroquoian group became so proficient at cultivating the crop that they became known as the “Tobacco Nation” with their communities in southern Ontario.  Their product was a staple of aboriginal trade throughout the northeast.

 In his telling Poling describes how tobacco may have been first used and how it became a means of communicating with the spiritual world. No other substance played such a vital role among Natives in the northeast, a tradition that continues on to the present day.

 There are 23 chapters in the book divided into such categories as “Pandora’s Box”, “Tobacco and Bullets”, ‘Guns and Taxes” and “Rolling Their Own”.

 Poling gives the reader remarkable insights into how the marketing of tobacco has evolved into a massive billion dollar a year business that has come to dominate the economy of the Iroquois, the Mohawks in particular. He traces the background of this activity, concentrating on Akwesasne, my home community, as the linchpin for tobacco sales.

 In 1987 I was part of a committee that drafted laws to control tobacco sales on Mohawk territory.  We knew then that without such regulations the tobacco retailers would come to control not only the economic lives of the Mohawk people but inevitably our political lives. It would, unchecked, corrupt Akwesasne and introduce organized crime to the community.  We also knew the money made from tobacco would come to include narcotics and weapons as the retailers sought not only to protect their money but to undermine any movement towards the consolidation of the factionalized Mohawks into a single governing entity.

 So much money was being made by 1988-89 that the tobacco retailers were able to expand their markets from Akwesasne to Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Ohsweken and elsewhere. They used the profits to construct unregulated casinos, making Akwesasne the fourth largest gambling centre in North America.

 There was resistance that degenerated into outright civil war. Mr. Poling does not refrain from describing the terror and violence connected with the tobacco business. He affirms the fears of the traditional Mohawks that the abuse of tobacco would have terrible ramifications. This has come to pass.

 Mr. Poling describes how the national, state and provincial governments all played a role in the creation of the vast smuggling cartels now operating in Iroquois territory. He shows how taxes and the refusal to work in partnership favoured the retailers and that when external taxes were assessed on brand names the retailers countered by buying cigarette manufacturing machines and made their own. All of this was, and is, known to policing authorities that have the dangerous task of investigating tobacco smuggling. To enhance his research Mr. Poling uses a series of charts and maps showing tobacco prices, arrest rates and seizures by Canadian police.

 At the conclusion of the book Mr. Poling makes a number of well reasoned suggestions.  He cites a report by the Harvard Project on American Indian Development which stresses nation building as an essential part of creating aboriginal economies apart from tobacco. He argues that nationalization by Native governments of the tobacco trade is also necessary to curtail smuggling and corruption.

 “Smoke Signals” is the first, most comprehensive, well researched and very well written book on tobacco marketing among Natives in North America. It should be required reading by all government officials and police agencies who monitor this activity. For journalists, social scientists and teachers searching for information about the current status of the Iroquois, and particularly the Mohawks, “Smoke Signals” needs to be read.  Mr. Poling has, in this book, done a great service in reporting on one of the most significant factors in contemporary aboriginal society.

Doug George-Kanentiio, Akwesasne Mohawk, is the former editor of the news journal Akwesasne Notes. A co-founder of the Native American Journalists Association he is the author of “Iroquois on Fire” among other books. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the National Museum of the American Indian.