Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

If you haven't already planned the next few weeks of summer, here are three great places to check out. Two involve travel and one is considered rather local. So if you're out and about visiting family, shopping for school clothes out of town, or finishing up those last few weeks of summers at fairs.

Consider extending your route to Rochester and the Museum & Science Center (RMSC) where you can discover three floors filled with over 200 interactive science and history themed exhibits and science demonstrations.

The RMSC also features the Strasenburgh Planetarium to take a trip across the universe in their 65ft domed theater to explore star shows, laser shows, and featured giant screen films.

The RMSC' Cummin Nature Center has 15 miles to explore hiking and ski trails, a visitor center, and year-round events and environmental education programs.

The RMSC sits on the unceded land of the Onöndowa'ga:' (Seneca) people of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Gasgo'sagö:h, In the Waterfall, is the Seneca placename for Rochester, NY. The RMSC acknowledge that it was 'founded on the displacement, exclusion, and erasure of Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this institution is located.'

The RMSC acknowledgement is one small step in the 'process of dismantling the unjust legacies of colonialism and honoring Seneca and Haudenosaunee communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations.'

Jamie Jacobs, along with Laticia McNaughton (Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan), and Felicia Garcia (Chumash) crafted the RMSC land acknowledgement.

The standout of the RMSC is Jamie Jacobs, (Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Turtle Clan) who with a little planning – will give you a 'hands on' tour – hands on as in holding our own pottery, weapons, combs, basketry, with some dating back as far as the 1500's.

Starting at 'precontact' Jacobs' weaves you through a visual, tactile, oral narrative to our modern day. With the introduction of each object, Jacobs tells you how pottery, metal, a piece of clothing or jewelry forever changed our relationship with mother earth, our relationship with each other and the fundamental structure of the Haudenosaunee – directly impacting on our roles and responsibilities.

While holding an intact pottery dating to the early 1500's Jacobs said, "Different things had different properties. And it was the women who had that knowledge and to perfect it over time and to start handing down this knowledge to young people and the young people start carrying it on. They used different tools to make different types of designs. By 1650 clay pot making.is a thing of the past. No one is making clay pots regularly.

When you make a clay pot – it represents more than just cooking food. It represents women voices – because they made the decision where to settle the village. Is there enough clay, how close are we to the water, do we have enough elm trees in the area? In collaboration, young people are helping you and they are learning skills with each step taken. Eventually they graduate as they get older, partaking from start to finish of making a clay pot. Learning all of these skills from a very young age and eventually gaining the mental capacity to make decisions for the entirety pf the village. That's why older women are usually put into positions of authority. Not just because they lived longer, but because in the olden days, they would have gone through all different levels of exposure, and training and learning.

When women decided where the village would be moved to, they had to take into account a number of variables. Not only needing clay and a good water source, they needed elm trees and plenty of them for their longhouses, elm bark dishes, cordage and more. And elm trees can only be peeled in the spring, so you're not going to move the village in the middle of the summer.

Jacobs said, "Besides having clay, a good source of water you need a good grove of elm trees to peel to cover all your long houses. You can only peel in the spring. Planning to move starts the year before. It states in the Great Law there's these mats – and a saying when times get tough, go to an elm tree and that's what you'll use to call me back.

For young boys and men, it was the same, learning skills, methods and practices from their uncles and fathers to make everyday items for not just for survival, but to thrive.

This is a spear tip for hunting bear. Before the musket, iron arrowheads were used, arrow and spears. One had to be very skilled to hunt bears with spears and arrows, learning from your uncles. Again, the musket does to the culture what the brass pot did.

Men hunted, but often it was the women who made many of the tools to hunt or fish. Fishhooks came from animals' bones, and for young boys it wasn't something they already knew – it was something he needed to be exposed to over time. He's not just learning how to make a fishhook. He's learning how to flint nap. He's learning how to make bows and arrows. And he's learning all of this from his uncles and father. Eventually, he learns how to hunt and brings the animal back.

When you introduce one thing, one item, the cycle becomes interrupted. Roles and responsibilities change. Young men no longer need uncles and father to tell them how to make weapons to hunt. The introduction of the brass kettle and the gun was very detrimental. It made life easier, but it also made life different.

Jacobs said, "The influx of brass kettles... what the clay pot does to the women, the brass pot does to the man – young boys no longer need to learn how to flint to make arrowheads. Roles and responsibilities changed."