MNN. June 28, 2024. Everyone in the world knows that we onkwehonwe are turtle island. The colonists took up residence, and stole the land, forests, waters, resources from the natural people placed here by kasastensera kowa saoiera, creation.  What they are doing to us is not fair, just or reasonable. They know we can never give up our mother earth. The kanienkehaka of akwesasne are carrying out their duties according to the kaianerekowa, the great peace.

Land Back at Barnhart

Contextualizing the Re-occupation of Barnhart Island in Shared Legacies of Struggle

By Jennifer Lee

Views expressed in this opinion editorial do not represent those of any of the eight individuals arrested at Barnhart Island.

On May 21, 2024, a group of eight Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community members from Akwesasne were arrested at Niionenhiasekowa:ne (Barnhart Island). Certain individuals among the “Akwesasne 8” had originally gone to Barnhart to exercise their right to build a hunting and gathering shelter on their own territory, in part to protest an ongoing land claim settlement that threatens to hand over Kanien’kehá:ka title to this island, among other traditionally held territories, to New York State. The settlement is being negotiated between New York entities and three Akwesasne government councils.¹ Presently, the settlement negotiations would require the extinguishment of Mohawk title to Barnhart Island, which would be effectuated through an act of Congress.² By asserting their right to the land, the Akwesasne 8 have sent a clear message to both negotiating parties. Barnhart Island, like all other territories illegally stolen and swindled from their community, is not for sale—particularly not by collaborationist band and tribal council entities that purport to represent the full community but that were in fact historically imposed upon it at gunpoint.

READ THE STORY:

https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/land-back-at-barnhart/#easy-footnote-15-16285

By Marina Johnson-Zafiris

“[This] is not a story of triumphs of engineering over nature, nor is it a story of masterpiece on international diplomacy, nor even a story about change. It is rather a story about the intimate relationship that the Mohawks of Akwesasne had with the environment in which they lived from time immemorial and how change was forced upon them, through really no choice of their own. It is the story of how the forces of outside government and corporate America seemingly conspired to break the identity of the Mohawk in a manner that no residential school had ever successfully accomplished—by changing the environment in which Mohawk survived . . .” (Elders Study, 1995)

READ THE BACKGROUND TO THIS ISSUE:

https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/akwesasne-and-the-history-of-hydropower/

Our minds and hearts are chained to that island for thousands of years. There is nothing that can break that chain, as Joe Cocker sings to our intruders: 

Continue reading →