LAST WEEK I WAS interviewed for a CBC program on the topic of Bill C-33, the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act. The name of the program is immaterial. If you look it up, you won’t find me…. Read More ›
Haudenosaunee
FNCFNEA: An Interview with Grand Chief Gordon Peters
Download entire interview (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook. Grand Chief Gordon Peters is a citizen of the Delaware First Nation, near Chatham, Ontario, and the Chair of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians Chiefs Council…. Read More ›
On Going to the Pow Wow
IN ALL CULTURES, social dance figures. The pow wow has, as is the case with so many things indigenous, both its historic (which is to say “pre-contact”) and contemporary manifestation. Without doubt, the pow wow is today an expression of… Read More ›
The Richard Smoke Trial
ON DECEMBER 23, 2011, Ontario Superior Court Justice the Honourable Alan C. R. Whitten rendered his verdict in the case of a vicious beating in Caledonia of builder Sam Gualtieri, by defendant and Six Nations resident Richard Smoke. The judgement… Read More ›
Onkwehonwe-Neha: A Guide to Integrating into Turtle Island
Editor’s Note: We have noticed a great deal of controversy following the release of “Énoncé de valeurs: Des clés pour mon intégration à Gatineau.” This strikes us as curious, since documents of this sort have existed for centuries, without causing… Read More ›
Commemorating The War of 1812
THERE IS a debate these days in the Canadian media over the Harper Government decision to spend a yet-undetermined sum (I’ve come across an amount of twelve or-so million dollars) commemorating the War of 1812. I expect the Americans will… Read More ›
In Which I Lose My Passport and Very Nearly Also My Mind
I discovered some days ago that my passport wasn’t where I was certain I’d put it. I had just moved one and-a-half miles, crossing the border between Hull, Quebec and Ottawa, Ontario. I needed that passport to transfer my life… Read More ›
The Haudenosaunee | Part Three, That Which Divides Us
The history of the Haudenosaunee (the people who are building a longhouse) is one of unceasing challenges, from without but often also from within. It was no foregone conclusion that the eventual five constituting nations of the “Iroquois League” would… Read More ›
The Haudenosaunee | Part Two, Ohentonkariwatehkwen
I suggested in the previous instalment of this series that the improbable unity of the Rotinonsion:ni (Iroquois) arrived as a matter of extraordinary good fortune, in combination with great effort and practical necessity. One is well advised not to take… Read More ›
The Haudenosaunee | Part One, Origins
The five nations dug an enormous hole, threw in all their weapons, and planted a pine tree, the Tree of Peace. Thus began the Haudenosaunee.
The Haudenosaunee
Over the coming weeks, I shall be writing a series of articles concerning the Haudenosaunee, known also by the English renderings, “People of the Longhouse” or the “Six Nations Confederacy,” and by the derogatory Huron term rendered in French as… Read More ›
Jake Swamp, A Man of Roots
Jake Swamp, 1941-2010 I didn’t know Jake Swamp, but as the saying goes I knew of him. Few are the Kanienkehaka who don’t. Or rather — I must get used to this now — didn’t. This morning I was informed… Read More ›
Canadian History if Necessary, But Not Necessarily Canadian History
THE CHIEF THING that I remember of high school Canadian history is that it was boring. I suspect the same is true in your case. Here is my summary of high school Canadian history, roughly as I recall it: Canada… Read More ›
