Category Archives: Indigenous Issues

Hodenosaunee (People of the Longhouse)

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

 

The Five Nations (Iroquois) that straddled what eventually became the border between Canada and United States liked to call themselves the Hodenosaunee or People of the Longhouse. Iroquois is the name the French gave to them. Their territory was much larger than that of the Huron, but their population was much smaller. They made up for their smaller numbers with political savvy and a reputation for fierceness. That and their location gave them a critical advantage that came strongly into play when the Indigenous Nations started to form alliances with European powers, for that location gave them control of the major trading routes from the east coast to the interior of North America.

As a result of their larger territory the Iroquois villages were much more spread out than those of their rivals, the Huron. As a result their languages became more distinct as well. Interestingly, while the men cleared the fields for agriculture the women did the farming. Each village had its own cornfield surrounding it. The Hodenosaunee and the tribes of the west coast had the most substantial agricultural systems. Some had some farming however. For example, the Ojibwa or Anishinabe relied on an uncultivated crop—wild rice. They were not as dependent on farming however as ordinary crop farmers. According to Dickason and Newbigging, in their book A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations, “Iroquoians grew 80% of their food requirements.”

Each village had its own fledgling democracy as a result of establishing their own councils. These democracies were very influential later on the Founding Fathers of the United States who borrowed from ideas of the Hodenosaunee.  Each nation also had its won council and nation’s council would meet in one of the villages.

I was startled to learn that the leaders were chosen by women! Isn’t that heresy? It was heresy to the Europeans, but not to the Hodenosaunee. Women chose and disbarred the leaders.

Hodenosaunee (Iroquois) society was divided into clans or families similar to nations n the west coast. I wonder how that happened.

The Iroquois formed a Confederacy known as “The Great League of Peace.” A Council of 50 chiefs representing participating tribes governed the League. The League also managed the problem of giving authority to the various tribes. As a result centralization was not perfect. Member tribes often had a significant amount of autonomy. Their aim was to maintain peace and one of the main ways of doing this was through the exchange of condolences and gifts. I am constantly amazed at how often in Indigenous cultures gift giving was important.  The one who gave the most often had the most prestige. Very different from European culture where prestige went to the person who acquired the most. Again this was similar to civilization on the west coast of Canada. I use that word “civilization” advisedly.

Once more this leads me to ask who was more civilized The European invaders or Indigenous People? My point is not that Indigenous people were always better. It simply that it is far from obvious as Europeans believed, that Indigenous People were always inferior.

Hurons

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

The Huron Confederacy was mainly found in Ontario, as it is now called, between Lake Simcoe and the southeastern corner of Georgian Bay. This was about as far north as agriculture could succeed with Stone Age technology, but the Hurons managed it.  According to Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging in their book A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations, “The Huron had about 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres) under cultivation.”

It was also said, by Gabriel Sagard,  “In Huronia, it was easier to get lost in a cornfield than in a forest.”  This was not a civilizational backwater, The Huron traded with Indigenous Nations to the north by supplying them with corn, beans, squash, and good old tobacco, in return for furs and hides. Both sides benefited from the trades as it is supposed to work. According to Dickason and Newbigging, “The beauty and bounty of the land were such that when the French first came to their country, the Huron assumed it was because France was poor by comparison.” That might actually have been true. Unfortunately for the Huron, their trading system ultimately disintegrated before the onslaught of European traders. That was not uncommon after contact, but before then trade was very successful. That does not mean there were no conflicts between the Indigenous Nations.

Europeans destroyed much in their haste to impose their own system. They were guests in the country, but that did not stop them from taking over. That was a pity because they had a pretty good system up to then.

Egalitarian Societies

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Just like everything else, social development varied widely throughout the Americas. Diversity was the key to everything. That meant that some hunter-gatherer societies continued in the traditional ways. At the same time others picked up and adopted traits from farming communities. As an example, through trade in many areas bothtrading partners gained from the trade and promoted richer societies. As Dickason and Newbigging explained in their book A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations, “The way of life of each was richer for their interchange, yet each retained its specific character. Similarly, there were farming peoples who retained the hunting-gathering mode even as some of their neighbours developed into –city-states, and, in one or two cases, empires. And while most Amerindian societies operated on an egalitarian basis, some societies, especially those that were more sedentary and had rich resource base, such as on the west coast, developed complex hierarchies based on kinship.”

Some societies eschewed hierarchies. As Dickason and Newbigging reported, “Egalitarian societies did not separate authority from the group as a whole…In those societies, available resources were open to all, and their leaders used influence rather than force. Free sharing ensured that the superior skills of, say, a hunter benefited the group rather than just the individual hunter.

The power of chiefs depended on their ability to provide for their followers. The leader’s role was to represent the common will. They did not use force and they would have quickly lost their position if they had tried. This lent extreme importance to eloquence, the power to persuade. A chief’s authority was ‘in his tongue’s end;’ for he was powerful in so far as he is eloquent. Failure in this regard meant loss of position. Among the Mi’kmaq, a chief could attract followers, but they were not subordinated to their leader’s will, except perhaps in time of war. Even in warfare however, among many groups the individual was essentially his own leader. Perhaps most important of all, chiefs were expected to set an example for their people, in particular by being generous. Instead of gaining wealth through their positions, they could end up the poorest of the group because of the continual demands made upon their resources. ”

Donald Trump would not have stood a chance of becoming a leader. Now who is civilized again?  I wish someone would explain to me again why I should think Europeans were less savage, more civilized, or more superior than indigenous people.

In addition to having established leaders, some individuals were selected because of their particular skills or spiritual powers. They were chosen by consensus. For example, leaders of a buffalo hunt might be chosen that way. Or for a raid. Or for gathering food.

Some groups like the Anishinabek (Anishinabe or Ojibwa) of the Great Lakes region maintained both hereditary chiefs as well as chiefs chosen by consensus. This system often worked surprisingly well. Certainly the European system was no clear improvement.

As Dickason and Newbigging said, “The general lack of quarreling or interpersonal conflicts in Amerindian communities impressed Europeans, who wondered how peaceful relations could prevail without the threat of force in the background.” That does not mean things were perfect. They had problems of leadership just like Europeans did.

According to Dickason and Newbigging chiefdoms only developed in the Northwest Coast of Canada (as it is now called) did.  Only there did the Indigenous people have “clearly marked class divisions between chiefs, nobles, and commoners based on wealth and heredity.”

In some respect the Indigenous people of the Americas had superior political systems than the Europeans to whom they were presumed inferior.  That does not mean they were perfect or better in all respects. But Europeans could have learned things from them if they had been inclined to listen and check their prejudice.  Sometimes it really is difficult to find much superiority in the invaders of the New World.

Farming in the New World

Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

At the time of first contact between Indigenous peoples in North America about AD 1,000 most of the people in the New World were hunter-gatherers, but they were just starting to use a new technology—farming.

As Dickason and Newbigging explained in their wonderful book A Conservative History of Canada’s First Nations, “Agriculture seems to have developed independently, within a span of few years at the end of the last Ice Age, in several widely separated regions of the globe: the Near East, the monsoon lands of Southeast Asia, China, Mesoamerica, Peru, and the Amazon.” The reasons are not yet clear, but an increase in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide that occurred about 15,000 years ago may have played a role in this important development.  This increase made photosynthesis more robust and increased the growth rate in plants and this might have triggered the emergence of farming around the world. I think it is significant that this important achievement was widely shared.

It did not start in all areas however. Logically, farming developed first in warmer areas where the great variety of plants made experimentation more viable. From those areas the farming skills spread out across the continents. “New World domesticated plants that made the largest contribution to world agriculture were all of undisputed American origin, developed by Amerindian[1]farmers. Corn (maize) and potatoes were the best known, although tomatoes, peanuts, pineapples, and cacao (from which chocolate is made) are not far behind. Amerindians originally grew more than a hundred species of plants that are still farmed today. Amerindians grew the most famous of all Amerindian crops, tobacco, for diplomatic, ritual, and some medical uses.”

In the Northeastern part of what came be called North America agriculture was introduced with the cultivation of squash at about 4,300 BP probably as a result of trading from the south. The first plant that was local to the northeast that was cultivated was probably sunflower in about 3,000 BP. This should make Mennonites happy. Knackzoot came first!  When the Huron in the Great Lakes region first contacted Europeans they were already growing 17 varieties of maize and 8 types of squash. As well they gathered more than 30 varieties of wild fruit and 10 kinds of nuts. Corn was the first cultivated crop to reach southern Ontario in about AD 500. For 500 years it was the only crop raised there. Tobacco showed up about AD 1,000. When squash arrived in about the 1300s this completed the famous triad of the 3 Sisters—Beans, Squash, and Maize. By the 16th  century the 3 Sisters were being grown around the western continent.

The technology behind the 3 sisters was amazing and showed how smart the Indigenous people of the Americans were. “As crops, the three sisters benefitted the soil when grown together: beans capture nitrogen in the air and release it into the soil; squash roots are extensive and help prevent soil erosion; and the tall corn stalks provide the other plants with some protection from hail, damaging wind; and excessive sunlight. This gave the ‘three sisters’ a sustainability and permanence lacking in modern agriculture. As food they reinforced each other nutritionally when combined in diets.”

Of course the switch to agriculture was not entirely an unmixed blessing. Wendell Berry called it the worst disaster ever! For example the over reliance on starchy foods has led to nasty dental problems. Even worse, agriculture has led to some of the monstrosities of modern industrial agriculture.

[1]“Amerindians” is the expression that Dickason and Newbigging settled upon to describe Native Americans (of both western hemispheres)

Pueblo Bonito in the Chaco

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

Time was important to the people at Chaco. Again, this is not that different from the Maya who were obsessed with time. It is was extremely useful to the people of Chaco to determine when they should gather seeds and plant crops. They also used it to decide when certain ceremonies should happen.  As Robbie Robertson, the narrator of Native America said, “At the very center of Chaco, builders built a sacred space to unify time and place. Pueblo Bonito. It is the largest of the city’s 12 great houses with over 800 rooms and 30 ceremonial kivas.”

G.B. Cornucopia, a Park Ranger at the Chaco Culture National Park, said the structure could be interpreted as a large storage facility or a ceremonial center or as a clock! “To GB Cornucopia Pueblo Bonito and the sky are intricately linked The Great House is aligned to the 6 directions. One wall runs east-west and another north-south. Each day as the sun gets higher in the sky its shadow creeps closer to the north-south wall.” As Cornucopia pointed out, at solar noon when the sun is at its highest point in the sky is directly on the wall.

Pueblo Bonito is a clock that tracks the sun during the day. It’s also a calendar that tracks it during the year. Every day the sun sets on a different place on the horizon. The solar year starts out on the winter solstice when it sets in the south. On the summer solstice it sets in the north the two days half way in between are called equinoxes. And today on the fall equinox the suns lines up with the east-west wall. The north wall tracks the day; the west wall tracks the year. Built to the 6 directions Pueblo Bonito unites place and time.”

People naturally tell time by their relationship with the sky. Most of us have forgotten this because we have innumerable devices that tell us what the time. Devices such as watches, computers, and smart phones. Before the ages of these devices people would look at markers on the horizon and the place of the sun in relationship to those markers and they could tell the time and the season.

Native American people like those who lived at Chaco, looked at the sky to tell them when to plant and when to harvest. They also looked at the sky to determine when their various ceremonies ought to take place. This gave it spiritual significance. “Their city is the physical embodiment of their world view. It is a way of living that is both scientific understanding of the cycles of the earth, sun, and the stars and a spiritual quest to find their place within it.” In my view that is what religion is all about. It is a means of healing the alienation we feel towards the world, and replacing that feeling with a feeling of connection to the world. That is what finding our place within that world means. It tells us how we are connected and that we are not alienated or severed from that world.

It is of great interest to me that this belief is found in so many different spiritual belief systems. So many belief systems fundamentally seem to have the same beliefs. I think that shows how we are all one.

 

Native America

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

I thought I should let people know where I am headed with series of blog posts about Native Americans. I probably should have done that sooner. I hope some of you are interested in the subject. I think it is important. In fact it is one of the most important issues and is complicated by the great variety of Indigenous groups and the long a complicated history between colonizers and colonized.

The more I learn about Native Americans the more I am surprised by them. By Native Americans I mean the people of North, Central, and South America that lived in what we call the Western Hemisphere and they call Turtle Island when the Europeans officially arrived in 1492. Like Europeans, there were an astonishing variety of peoples in the Americas. They did not think and act alike anymore than humans from Europe, Asia or Africa did. Diversity is the most important key to understanding Indigenous people. And that diversity is their greatest asset.

We can learn a lot from them. But to do that we have to ditch our inbred sense of superiority. We  have to look at them without bias and with empathy. If we can to that we will be blessed.

I want to look at some specific Indigenous groups, both Canadian and American from a historical perspective before contact with Europeans and then look at the effects of European colonization and finally some modern issues. Of courses, as always I will be meandering and even switch to other topics as I see fit.

I hope some of you accompany on these meanderings.

 

Pueblo Traditions

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

I am still exploring what the Americas are like before Europeans arrived. Until fairly recently we did not know much about those societies. Partly that was because by and large the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (North and South) often did not keep written records.  And partly that was because the Europeans and their descendants believed they had nothing useful to learn from Indigenous People. This is part of what I have called the original sin. This attitude had a profound effect on subsequent relations between the Europeans and their descendants and the Indigenous people. Attitudes of superiority stood in the way of learning of Indigenous people and as I am trying to show, there was much of value to be learned from the Indigenous people. They had lived in the Americas for thousands of years and had gain vast important knowledge about how to live there. had Europeans not been so blinded by feelings of superiority things could have been very different.

There are about 20 tribes of Pueblo people in the American southwest. They include, among others, the Zuni and Hopi in Arizona . Pueblo people share many (but not all) religious beliefs but have different languages. Most modern Pueblo tribes trace their ancestry to the Ancestral Puebloans who lived in the American Southwest.

Pueblo traditions are different from some Christian traditions. Their traditions tell the Pueblo people that they must honor Mother Earth by taking care of her. Would you not take care of your ultimate reference? In the film series Native Americaa a Hopi woman who was not shown, recounted in Hopi the following myth (and I use this word carefully not to reference something that is not true, but rather something that is important, very important):

 

“Massaw told us this world is a gift to us

And we must care for this place

He said, ‘To find your home you must find the center place,’

So we made a covenant to walk to the world’s farthest corners

To learn the earth with our feet

And to become one with this new world

And to find our center place”

 

In the origin story of the Pueblo people they were given a sacred quest after they emerged from the earth. They were told to find the center place. Some went clockwise and some counter clockwise. They built an image in the rock to show where they were. It was a spiral around a center spot. “Finding the right place–the center place–lies at the heart of Pueblo belief. It is more than a physical location. It is about living in balance with the natural world.”

For example, as Robbie Robertson said in the television series,  “The search for the center place is built right in to the kivas.  Every kiva is aligned to the 4 compass directions.” Of course there are 2 more sacred directions, namely up and down. When the people climb out of a ladder in a kiva it is symbolic of their journey where they emerged from the earth. The Hopi believe the 6 directions give the Kivas great power.

I believe that this belief played an important role in life of ancient people in the America southwest (and elsewhere). At the same time, the fact that it was largely ignored by Europeans when they arrived was also important. Things could have been different.

Tohono O’odham/Hohokam

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

San Tan Mountain Regional Park on the edge of Tohono O’odham territory

According to their own website Hohokam origins are linked to their homeland in the Sonoran Desert. Thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the Hohokam, settled along the Salt, Gila, and Santa Cruz Rivers in southern Arizona.

In the 1990s, archaeologists identified a culture and people that were ancestors of the Hohokam. They grew corn and lived sedentary lives in villages all year round. It is now believed that they might have occupied the territory now known as Arizona as early 2000 BC! They originated as archaic hunters and gatherers who lived on wild plants and animals, and eventually settled in permanent communities and produced their own food instead of living a more mobile life and gathering what nature provided.

The Hohokam culture included  an astonishing skill to build very sophisticated water storage systems and irrigation systems to water their crops.

The Hohokam were master dwellers of the desert, creating sophisticated canal systems to irrigate their crops of cotton, tobacco, corn, beans, and squash. They built vast ball courts and huge ceremonial mounds and left behind fine red-on-buff pottery and exquisite jewellery of stone, shell, and clay.

Following their ancestral heritage, they became what they call “scientists of our environment.”  Like other nations in the Americas they used and continue to use meteorological principles to establish planting, harvesting, ceremonial cycles and they developed complex water storage and delivery systems. Those principles also continue to have spiritual resonance.

They learned to make the best of their environment, migrating with the seasons from their homes in the valleys to cooler mountain dwellings. Over time they learned to raise a wide variety of crops including tepary beans, squash, melon, and sugar cane. They also gathered wild plants such as saguaro fruit, cholla buds, and mesquite bean pods, and we hunted for only the meat that they needed from the plentiful wildlife, including deer, rabbit, and javelina. They continue to live this proud heritage today as 21st century Tohono O’odham.

The Hohokam were the only culture in North America to rely on irrigation canals to supply water to their crops. In the arid desert environment of the Salt and Gila River Valleys, the homeland of the Hohokam, there was not enough rainfall to grow crops. To meet their needs, the Hohokam engineered the largest and most sophisticated irrigation system in the Americas.

The canals were perfectly laid out on the landscape to achieve a downhill drop (or gradient) of 1 to 2 feet per mile. Many of the canals were massive in size. The Arizona Museum of Natural History discovered a prehistoric canal in the Phoenix Valley that measured 15 feet deep and 45 feet wide. As a result of irrigating up to 110,000 acres by AD 1300, the Hohokam irrigation systems supported the largest population in the prehistoric Southwest, and until I came to visit Arizona I had never heard of them before. My ignorance was profound.

The Hohokam traded goods widely across the American Southwest and even into Mesoamerica (what is now called Mexico).  The Hohokam produced cotton and woven goods that were highly desired by other Indigenous nation Hohokam cotton and woven goods from which they made things like blankets could be traded for very good prices

There continues to be a significant and thriving O’odham population living in the region. The members of the Salt and Gila River communities celebrate their heritage as descendants of the ancient Hohokam.

 

When we are in the San Tan Valley we often go to San Tan Mountain Regional Park for hikes and outings.  Although not in Maricopa County it is administered by them as part of that marvellous County Park system, the finest in the United States, they claim.  It is beautiful country and it is on the edge of current territory of the O’odham nation and inside the historic territory of the Hohokam Nation. All who go there should respect that.