Mohawk people
The Mohawk people (Mohawk: Kanienʼkehá꞉ka) are the most easterly section of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. They are an Iroquoian-speaking Indigenous people of North America, with communities in southeastern Canada and northern New York State, primarily around Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. As one of the five original members of the Iroquois League, the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka are known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door – the traditional guardians of the Iroquois Confederation against invasions from the east.
Historically, the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka people were originally based in the valley of the Mohawk River in present-day upstate New York, west of the Hudson River. Their territory ranged north to the St. Lawrence River, southern Quebec and eastern Ontario; south to greater New Jersey and into Pennsylvania; eastward to the Green Mountains of Vermont; and westward to the border with the Iroquoian Oneida Nation's traditional homeland territory.
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Quotes
[edit]- Mohawk language and culture didn’t disappear on their own. Forced assimilation, the government policy to deal with the so-called Indian problem, shipped Mohawk children to the barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the school's avowed mission was "Kill the Indian to Save the Man." [...] Despite Carlisle, despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not surrender. I don't know just what sustained the people, but I believe it was carried in words. Pockets of the language survived among those who stayed rooted to place. Among those remaining, the Thanksgiving Address was spoken to greet the day: "Let us put our minds together as one and send greetings and thanks to our Mother Earth, who sustains our lives with her many gifts." Grateful reciprocity with the world, as solid as a stone, sustained them when all else was stripped away.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. pp. 255-256. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
External links
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- Culture of the Haudenosaunee on the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte website
- Akwesasne News at the Akwesasne website
- The Wampum Chronicles: Mohawk Territory articles on history and culture
- "Mohawk Institute", Geronimo Henry archived site
- Mohawk skyscraper builders and construction workers in New York City?
- The Iroquois Book of Rites by Horatio Hale, at Project Gutenberg