MNN. Feb. 1, 2007. Rumor mongering by non-natives that Onkwehonwe are barbarians, still running around in loin cloths, carrying tomahawks, sneaky, untrustworthy and drunk is the culturally entrenched way of looking at us. This is fiction. This false image is a reality we face all the time.

Today when our Onkwehonwe youth try to get a job, they have a lot to overcome. The mainstream stereotypes of our people as “drunken”, “lazy” and “won’t show up for work” keeps us from getting jobs. Our women and men are seen as lascivious and easy marks. There is a presumption that social services has to intervene in our homes because we don?t know how to take care of our kids, or that we let them hang out on the streets in druggie gangs. Where did all this come from?

Someone wants to make sure our Onkwehonwe youth won’t achieve anything. What are they afraid of? The film “Apocalypto” by Mel Gibson gives us some clues. It is stereotyping at its most vicious. It melds together the colonizers’ fantasies of letting loose according to their false sense of what’s natural and their simultaneous disgust and fear of their own lusts and base desires that they project on us. They are so subject to hierarchical control that they believe if there wasn’t someone lording it over them, they would behave badly. This means they don’t believe in their own ability to control themselves. it’s not our nightmare, it’s theirs. They want to see us as barely civilized barbarians. It gives them a false feeling of superiority. At a visceral level they’re still desperately seeking justification. Or maybe they’re trying to avoid responsibility for the genocide they committed and for their destruction of the environment of Turtle Island. They know their own ability to commit atrocities and fear those who restrain themselves when attacked. They are assuming that the ax is going to fall when they least expect it.

Colonial society creates hopelessness. This way we will have no leadership and they can continue to be the “great white fadder”. Waneek Horn Miller described recently on APTN how the coach of the National Women’s Water Polo Team asked her if she was going to be like all the other “Indians” by not showing up for practice and being irresponsible. The interviewer commented, “The usual stereotypes were pinned on you?” For 15 years she got up at 5:00 am to train and in 2000 went on to compete in the Olympics in Australia.

There are many like her. Ted Nolan is now a coach of the New York Islanders hockey team in one of the most competitive areas in the world. He was fired after a sensational year. He had brought the Buffalo Sabres up from nothing to the pinnacle of success. For 9 years no NHL team would hire him. Why? They thought he was too independent minded. They were afraid he was going to poison the minds of the other players against management, which was untrue. Nolan, just prior to being rehired, took a Nova Scotia junior team to the Memorial Cup and almost won it. This proves that his Onkwehonwe methods of coaching work. One year after taking over the Islanders they are at the top.

Because of this stereotype being flung at us universities have to hire Onkwehonwe ombudsmen to bring our people into these mainstream institutions.

What are some of positive traits of our young people? For one, they show tremendous self-restraint in the face of adversity. Otherwise we would never have survived. We do not react instantly. We think about what we are going to do.

So why can’t we get jobs. Nobody will hire us. Some of us go into cigarette manufacturing and sales. For this we are criminalized. If our businesses are successful, we are pursued to pay taxes to the very corporate colonial governments that stole our lands and resources and work to keep us down. If we get any kind of money into the community, Indian Affairs sends in their “handlers” so that we never know what’s happening to our funds. Businesses are set up in our communities by non-natives using us as fronts to take advantage of our sovereignty and tax-free status and jeopardizing our rights. This is creating hatred by Canadian taxpayers against Onkwehonwe.

Creating apathy among our young people is a product of the colonial society. The idea has always been to keep us as an uneducated working class who can be used for low paying jobs that no one else will do. It did not work. Onkwehonwe have a way of expressing very deep meaningful ideas. If trained they can do this publicly. Some of the greatest natural orators in history were Onkwehonwe who came from among people who were totally uneducated in the colonial system. Statements of Cornplanter, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Seattle and many others have stood the test of time.

So what do we do? We take our positive traits, our knowledge of our rights and create our own way. There has to be encouragement of entrepreneurial skills among our youth. Many are already doing that.

The public is made to think that we don’t care about our youth. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Last weekend the Kahnawake Youth Center had a “Radiothon” to raise money to cover a deficit of $40,000. In the end the community and our supporters raised $200,000. What’s the message? The people will back up our youth and a good idea.

What about our youth? Their minds are open and sharp. They are not brainwashed to bend down to non-natives. The old methods of attacking their self-esteem just doesn’t work with this generation. They walk with their heads up and chests out. They know their rights and history. At the same time they have an uphill battle to take off the iron cloak of “stereotypism” that has been and continues to be strewn over us.

Remember, whatever we believe we are is what we become. If our youth are convinced they are victims, they will become victims. The residential school system was one of the most successful brainwashing strategies devised by the colonists. They destroyed generations with this “victim mentality”. The Onkwehonwe are no longer victims. Now we are conquerors. We are going to be in charge. No one is going to abuse us anymore.

Unfortunately the surrounding mainstream society hasn’t caught up with us or accepted our new attitude. What’s the reaction? Today the police and predators are gathering our youth and killing them. Our young men in Saskatoon and Edmonton were left outside of town to freeze to death. Hundreds of our young women are “disappearing” without a trace and they don’t think its worth looking into.

On the other hand, many see ourselves as being more capable than the colonizers we deal with. Our innate talents have yet to be utilized. The natural ability of Onkwehonwe has never changed. Thinking back about 50 years ago the big corporations and banks in Montreal used to recruit our Onkwehonwe women to be their executive assistants to help them run their corporations. They knew they were the best administrators. Some of them were my cousins. It was common back then.

Our men were able to do construction work that others could not do. In the U.S. it was known if you want to put up a skyscraper you had to call up the Mohawks who will make sure it gets done. Our men were top iron workers running big projects in the U.S. They came home and started successful businesses by translating their abilities into other directions.

How are the colonial government, their agents and mainstream society going to deal with us now? May we suggest that they talk to us? Threats won’t work anymore. Our ancestors and our older people proved that in Oka, Ipperwash, Gustafssen Lake, Six Nations and elsewhere. In the past we were necessary in their battles. They had to negotiate with us because of our positions of strength.

We can’t be ignored anymore. We want control over what is ours and benefits from anything that is happening to us and our land.

Yes, it’s hard to deal with all our educated people. The colonists don’t like it because they have to come to terms with us. They have to govern themselves according to the laws, past accords and solutions that benefit us on a long term basis. Trust funds, education, guarantees and benefits to us and our goals have to be all written down and dealt with fairly. They can’t keep closing the doors on the title holders of Turtle Island anymore.

Our youth is an important part of all this. They don’t have any of the fear that was built into the older generations. We have raised them in an atmosphere where fear wasn’t put into them. We stopped whining on and on about “doom and gloom” and how bad everything is. Indian Affairs promotes this in their ‘kneeling and healing circle” programs to push hopelessness among our people.

The powers that think they are know that if we are afraid then we are inviting people to attack us. They will get away with it if we are running scared. This is how we invite trouble onto ourselves. Canada and the U.S. raised a whole nation of terrified people that was supposed to be scared of everything. Now that’s over. We buried it. Our kids are bold, brave and talented. They want to be Onkwehonwe, not citizens of the colonial societies that are occupying our land. They’re going to find a way around these obstructions. So watch out, world!

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com katenies20@yahoo.com
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