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TRAFFICKING OF “INDIGENOUS CULTURAL HERITAGE”

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MCGILL/MCCCORD & MOHAWK MOTHERS DISCUSSION, JUNE 3. 2024 

“TRAFFICKING OF INDIGENOUS CULTURAL HERITAGE “-

Six Nations chiefs explaining wampum belts 1871.

MNN. June 15, 2024. This message was delivered to McGill McCord Museum on behalf of Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers:

“Wampum belts have been trafficked across international borders not recognized by us. Trafficking of cultural goods is the illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property. In 2011, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security announced that the illicit sale of cultural property is the third most profitable black market industries in the world, following weapons and narcotics trafficking! Wampums were stolen from indigenous communities on Turtle Island, often by using coercive strategies or middlemen who profitted from the misery and chaos of colonialism.

Band Councils do not represent us. They are an incorporated entity of Parliament and represent Canada, not the original indigenous peoples.   

One dish one spoon Agreement: Natural resources such as animals, fish and medicinal plant should be shared in a respectful manner amongst  onkwehonweh people. 

Wampum cannot be sold by an individual. They are stewarded by specific families to conserve them for the future generations. Individuals cannot sell Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage, like a piece of merchandise. They are historical agreements that are recorded for the future generations. For a century, McGill’s McCord Museum has possessed Kanien’keha:ka wampum that were acquired when our people were experiencing great duress on financial, social and physical levels, which Canada has recently acknowledged as genocidal. This history was not communicated to the public at the recent display of wampum. Today we are here to renew our relationship on better terms, based on collaboration, justice and truth-telling. We offer the McCord Museum an opportunity to return Kanien’keha:ka belongings to our communities, where they belong.

McGill and McCord squat on unceded Onkwehonkwe land and retain possession of and control over immensely valuable cultural heritage which forms the backbone of our identity, governance structures and nationhood. We traditional Kanien’keha:ka Longhouse people live in accordance with our precolonial constitution which our ancestors helped us to develop from time immemorial, the Kaianerehkowa. Wampum form the very basis of our cultural identity. Our right to live, possess and control our heritage is the basis of our culture, which is acknowledged by Section 35 of the Constitution Act of Canada 1982, which states: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed”, as well as by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which is the Federal repatriation of the UNDRIP protocols outlined by the United Nations.

In the United States, these conversations have led to the creation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which currently requires museums to collaborate on projects with Indigenous peoples to  repatriate all Indigenous heritage to Indigenous communities. The historic, traditional and artistic materials created by a people as an expression of themselves belongs to us, the original people from whom the objects were stolen and separated from the historical settings of these objects.

The UNDRIP Act in Canada states in Article 31 that: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.” Article 25 says: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.”

Regarding Indigenous peoples, all states and publicly-funded corporations such as McGill are expected to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights. Every living being on earth has a spirit, including wampum that were handmade by our ancestors which carried forth our knowledge and instructions for future generations of Onkwehonweh. The spirit placed into the wampum was for the future generations of our people, not for the enjoyment and entertainment of tourists and academics. We feel the spirit of these teachings from our ancestors in our whole being. An object having an historical, traditional or cultural importance central to the indigenous people or culture itself, are not property owned by an individual. They cannot be alienated, appropriated or conveyed by any individual, corporation or organization. Such objects are inalienable by all parties at the time the object was created.

According to the Two Row Tehiohate philosophy, our society knows how to govern ourselves from birth. We had no jails, police, weapons or threats of death to manage our relationships. We are a true free self-determining people, with a “constitution” that is a true world heritage that has influenced what came to be called “democracy” all over the planet. For example, the United States’ decentralized semi-autonomous state system was appropriated from our traditional governance structures by Benjamin Franklin and the League of Nations. Wampum is the promise of the Kanien’keha:ka to pass our knowledge and traditions to future generations and to carry out the agreements made between the parties involved. As colonialist Cadwallader Colden described, “Wampum is a system of memory and recall far more advanced than anything they have seen in Europe.” The wampum was taken out regularly from the basket in the general council and the words were repeated to remind the people of the promise. The white people were invited to the wampum recitals, though their memory was faulty and many promises were broken.

Teiohateh Two Row, is the universal relationship of non-domination, balance and harmony between different people.

Wampum belts are promises of peace. To us it is not right to display our cultural heritage in museums as dead objects that no longer matter. We will not accept being put on display any longer. Wampum are living heritage that we are still using as the basis of our agreements, traditions, protocols and relationships. The fact that the McCord Museum of McGill University hold these items and put them on display remind us of how these agreements were violated by Europeans and transformed into entertainment items, stripped of their social, spiritual and political meaning. The essence of our agreements is in our minds. Wampum only work if we entertain a living relationship with them. Our honesty brings back our words and thoughts from these discussions. Our message based on the kaianerekowa, the great peace, has never been diminished. We must regularly review the original meanings.

We indigenous people belong to the land. The women made the belts because they have the duty of peace. The McCord exhibit misinterpreted certain meanings, for example stating that the straight line in the middle of the wampum represents the rule to govern. This improper representation must be corrected by our Elders and Knowledge Keepers. A gross misrepresentation in the exhibit suggested that we used wampum as money. It is Europeans who turned our wampum into a form of money, an idea that did not exist in our way.

The museum overlooked the original cultural meanings of the wampum. We offer to work together to correct this so that such violations, abuses, and misunderstandings can be made right. We will begin by discussing proper arrangements for the return to our communities of our heritage. We pledge to inform everyone of the true power, spirit and meanings of the wampum which is the basis of our relationship with all peoples and all life. We wish to remove the misleading narratives devised by European scholars and other foreigners by putting our wampum back in our hands. The way that these wampums were lost to our communities is very dark and troubling.

For many invading colonists all over the world our wampum were valuable objects of fashion that they stole and used as symbols of status. Some were taken right off the dead bodies of murdered Indigenous people throughout turtle island and then sold. Some wanted souvenirs to hang on their wall to remind them of having murdered us. Colonial institutions, especially museums, and their funders, such as the Bank of Canada, are pervaded by the continuation of a deep historical legacy of racism and genocide which must now stop. The general lack of information stems from the horrific conditions under which wampum were taken away from us. McCord did not provide meaningful and truthful explanations of the wampum and of how they ended up in McCord’s storage rooms. Somewhere the trail of information leading to their origins has been suppressed. We come to state without any ambiguity that it is time to return all our heritage to us for us to determine how our past, present and future will be used and interpreted. 

Wiskniontsakeh signifies the alliance of five different peoples

who pledge to live by the great peace.  

We hereby propose the following agreement: McCord Museum shall:

1. Relinquish all claims of ownership to Indigenous cultural heritage. 

2. Negotiate the transfer of Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage to the Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers, who will coordinate their rematriation to Indigenous communities. McCord may hold the material on our behalf until arrangements are made to move them.

3. Understand that Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage, including but not limited to wampum, is on temporary loan to the McCord Museum from the Kanien’keha:ka, contingent on proper care of the material culture and in good faith to facilitate the rematriation of Kanien’keha:ka belongings held by the McCord Museum.

4. Provide the Kahnistensera and Indigenous communities with a complete inventory of wampum, including all related documents and data that McCord may possess or have access to.

5. Fund Indigenous-led research into the meaning and historical movements and displacements of each wampum, to share correct information with the public. This includes funding a Kahnistensera-led program with Kanien’keha:ka elders, knowledge keepers and youth to correct the record.

6. Fund the safe and secure storage of Kanien’keha:ka cultural heritage until Indigenous communities are able to properly take on the care of these belongings.

[a] The Kanien’keha:ka belongings contained within the inventory will be completely under the ownership and control of Kanien’keha:ka traditional people. [b]  During McCord’s temporary stewardship pending rematriation, McCord shall grant any Indigenous community or persons’ requests to access and use Indigenous cultural heritage, including wampum belts, for their own purposes.

7. Assist with curation expertise and resources, including securing sufficient funding, to ensure, in a timely manner, safe storage of the cultural artifacts in facilities controlled by traditional Indigenous governance systems. McCord shall provide free access to said belongings to all Onkwehonweh of any Indigenous communities to learn, physically handle, and use them for social, educational and ceremonial purposes.

8. Assist in the funding of the Kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers in order to arrange with Kanien’keha:ka communities for the creation, maintenance, and curatorial protocol to build the proper facilities for the transfer of the belts and articles to traditional Indigenous communities.

8. All historical agreements with other parties that allowed our wampum to be taken away and placed in colonial institutions shall be superseded by this agreement, because the original community ownership was never, and could never be, relinquished.

Robbie Robertson sings about the “Ghost Dance” to remind everybody “we shall live again, we shall live again” because of our love for our mother earth and all life.

Crow’s brought the message
To the children of the sun
For the return of the buffalo
And for a better day to come

You can kill my body
You can damn my soul
For not believing in your God
And some world down below

You don’t stand a chance against my prayers
You don’t stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again

My sister above
But she has red paint
She died at Wounded Knee
Like a Latter-day Saint

You got the big drum in the distance
The blackbird’s in the sky
That’s a sound that you hear
When the buffalo cry

You don’t stand a chance against my prayers
You don’t stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again
We shall live again

Crazy Horse was a mystic (yeah)
He knew the secret of the trance
And Sitting Bull, the great apostle
Of the Ghost Dance

Come on Comanche
Come on Blackfoot
Come on Shoshone
Come on Cheyenne

We shall live again (we shall live again)
We shall live again (we shall live again)

Come on Arapaho
Come on Cherokee
Come on Paiute
Come on Sioux

We shall live again (we shall live again)

You used to do the Ghost Dance
Used to do the Ghost Dance
But we don’t sing them kinda songs no more

 

 

MCGILL/SQI & MOHAWK MOTHERS CLASH IN APPEAL COURT

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Submission by Kahnistensera Mohawk mothers

Shé:kon Sewakwekon, Justices,

The Kahnisrtensera Mohawk Mothers stood before the three justices of the Quebec Appeals Court in Montreal. All kanienkehaka women are Kahnistensera, “life-givers”, with a privileged relationship to the children and the earth which lies at the heart of this court case. Kahnistensera contains the word Onerits’ta, which is the umbilical cord and the stem of a fruit. As a tree bears fruit, of which they are caretakers. Their precolonial constitution, Kaianerehkowa, comes from time immemorial and is translated as the  path of the “Great Law of Peace.” 

The Women’s Nomination Belt, which was presented to the judges, is a reminder of women’s duties. Section 44 of the first written translation of the Great Law of Peace, published in 1916 states “The lineal descent of the people of the Five Nations shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men and women shall follow the status of the mother”. They are the stewards and caretakers of the land for the coming faces, “Tahatikonhsontóntie.” Furthermore, they hold the titles of the 49 families that make up the Confederacy and depose those who stray from the great peace.

It is the women’s duty to search for the missing and murdered children following the colonial genocide program inflicted on indigenous people. They must find, protect and return the remains of the relatives to their families and communities, one of the most important exercises of their inherent duties.

They self-represent in these colonial legal proceedings because the Kaianerehkó:wa and their cultural practices, customs and traditions provide that they do so. Their position is based on the clan-based consensual decision-making protocols from time immemorial. They are now carrying out their duty to represent themselves before the Superior Court beginning almost two years ago. Justice Gregory Moore of the Superior Court Montreal recognized their public interest standing and their right to represent themselves in his judgement of September 20th, 2022; that they can legitimately represent themselves and the public interest of their people by  upholding their individual responsibilities as caretakers of the land and children.

This judgement was never appealed. The Attorney General of Quebec now submits that they aren’t worthy of the honour of the Crown because they are individuals and not an incorporated group. First, they are carrying out their obligations towards their children of the past, present, and future. Second, Incorporation is a feature of colonial society, not theirs. Their society has organized councils, fires, traditions and families. They condemn the Attorney General’s attempt to undermine their standing as the original people on onowarekeh, turtle island, their collateral attack on Justice Moore’s decision; and their attempt to relitigate what was already adjudicated, which constitutes sharp dealing and an abuse of process.

The House of Commons ratified the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the UNDRIP Act, 2021; the provinces are encouraged to implement the Act and the Declaration as a basic source in interpreting Canadian law. Articles 3 and 5 protects their right and duty to represent the interests of coming generations; Articles 11 and 12 asserts the rights of cultural manifestation, traditions, ceremonies, and laws; and Article 18 provides that “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which affect their rights, through representatives chosen by them according to their own procedures”, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.

The rights in this case fall under a larger nation-to-nation relationship with the Crown as sovereign allies for centuries. “Canada” is a Mohawk word. They are bound by shared histories and original agreements, the Tehiohate Two Row Wampum and the Silver Covenant Chain. These processes uphold mutual respect and dialogue on onowarekeh. 

Yet the Attorney General of Quebec claims that the Honour of the Crown is not at stake in this issue. They beg to differ. Kahnistensera brought these claims as mothers, in their traditional and official capacities, as custodians of the soil and of everything it contains, and of the children of the past, present and future. They are born into their lifetime of duties, bound to uphold them forever according to the kasahtsensera kowa sahoiera, the Great Natural Power, which is creation.

No one can represent okwehonweh, the original people placed here by creation. Each has a final say. Quebec Crown agents can only act with Band Councils which are Canada’s corporate bodiies imposed on indigenous people by the colonial Indian Act, not by a traditional indigenous governance system. This contradicts the spirit of reconciliation. The Attorney General of Quebec quotes the Manitoba Metis Federation decision which states that “It must be explicit that the obligee of the obligation is an indigenous group,”so that a group can’t be partially composed of Indigenous people.” The Attorney General cherry-picks which parts of that decision are relevant so as to claim that the kahnistensera cannot invoke the Honor of the Crown. To exclude kahnistensera, especially in a case that involves abused and murdered children who were in their care, contradict the principles of Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act 1982 and the spirit of Reconciliation. These women are definitely not a group of opportunists with a few token Indigenous members. THEY ARE ALL REAL LIVE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. The honour of the Crown applies FIRST AND FOREMOST to them, rather than to any corporation represented by attorneys who have sworn allegiance to the Crown who are strangers to indigenous ways.

Finally, the Attorney General suggests that the Honor of the Crown cannot be engaged through litigation! They submit that the kahnistensera brought dishonour to the Crown outside of court through their faulty execution of the Settlement Agreement!! The Appellants almost immediately breached the jointly-drafted agreement in several ways. They tried to find a common ground and deal with these issues with the Appellants outside of court, but to no avail.

The ruling now under appeal addresses the urgent breaches of the Agreement because of the Appellants’ failure to abide by the Agreement. These breaches are: First, the refusal to implement recommendations from the expert Panel regarding forensic precautions and the sharing of data. They infer that the term “guided” in section 13 of the agreement does not make the panel’s recommendations binding. But what does “guided” mean if recommendations can simply be unilaterally dismissed without any credible explanation or discussion? The kahnistensera would never have agreed to such a clause. 

Second, the Appellants unilaterally decided to fire the expert third party Panel mandated by all parties to the agreement, essentially electing themselves as sole decision-makers. Kahnistensera did not and would not have agreed to such a short and limited mandate for the Panel.

Third, the Panel insisted that it was their professional and ethical duty to access the data of the Appellant’s service providers and to oversee the implementation of the techniques they recommended. Section 13 of the Agreement binds all parties to the Panel’s recommendations, which techniques were to be used and how. The Appellants’ alternative interpretation is absurd. 

Fourth, Section 17 of the Agreement states that the Panel must be involved in case of any “unexpected discoveries”. In a letter which McGill’s attorney Doug Mitchell addressed to Justice Moore on June 14, 2023, McGill posed that what the Historic Human Remains Detection Dogs first alert was dequalified as an “unexpected discovery” and therefore triggered Section 17 of the Agreement. The Appellant’s agreed with the women’s request for a Case Management Conference following the discovery. Then the SQI later argued that Section 17 is only triggered after an actual burial is discovered. They stressed that if bodies were found the police and coroner would take over, explicitly stating that neither the Kahnistensera nor the Panel would be involved. Thus, Section 17 is either meaningless, or blatantly deceptive.

Fifth, the women submit that Section 17, and the spirit of the Agreement as a whole, necessarily involves the Panel to disentangle conflicting opinions about the techniques and how they are implemented as soon as problems are encountered. McGill and the SQI are not archeologists, and nor are the women. That’s why the Panel was jointly selected to replace the injunction that was not appealed. It was to allow, on one hand, the Appellants’ construction to continue while giving the women the assurance that a thorough and credible archeological investigation would come first.

This is the crux of the matter: The Kahnistensera would never have signed an agreement which would cause irreparable harm to them, to survivors and to their communities. This irreparable harm is in the SQI’s submissions, which state that the settlement agreement provided for the SQI and McGill to investigate unmarked graves by excluding the Kahnistensera from the process that they initiated at great pain and effort.

The Agreement replaced the injunction, which no party contested, and that the investigation should be Indigenous-led, which halted all excavation work on the site. By signing the agreement, the Kahnistensera made a considerable compromise, giving up Indigenous control of the investigation in exchange for the oversight by an independent and jointly-appointed third party Panel of experts to search for unmarked graves. The Agreement bound all parties. Due to this compromise, McGill and SQI were able to proceed with their construction work. By using the way of the kaianerekowa, such as the consensual decision-making protocols and wampum-based diplomacy, an agreement must be based on “being of one mind,” which is a true shared understanding.

There are some parallels between our ancestral ways and Canadian contract law. We have to make sure that we signed the same contract with the same meaning and that both parties understand it the same way. In this case, the Panel was meant to act as an independent third-party capable of resolving disagreements on best practices and techniques throughout the investigation. The Appellants dismissed these. We saw the irreparable harm that occurs when the Appellants are not under the supervision of the independant Panel: For instance, the Appellants excluded the investigation of the portion inside the Hersey building which was part of the 10-metre radius zone. The Panel recommended excavation around the target where search dogs alerted, which was next to the wall. Our cultural monitors then witnessed the Appellants’ contractors doing demolition work on the flooring on the other side of the wall. They never responded when asked what was happening. The Appellants barred access to the inside of the building even though the dog handlers said the dogs can smell through stone walls. •

The Kahnistensera cultural monitor Lloyd Benedict states in his affidavit that he found a century old child’s shoe left on the sidewalk in zone 11, the absence of care in handling potential evidence, and reported that excavation happened there without any archaeological monitoring, though monitoring was mandated by the Panel. Thirdly, the Panel’s recommendation to immediately and manually sift the soil where the dogs alerted were ignored, and the soil was left to the elements for several months before being inappropriately passed through a mechanical sifter made for mining, not archaeology. According to Mohawk archaeologist Benedict’s affidavit, this most likely would destroy the fragile bones of children. The Appellants’ contractors then concluded that the bone fragments were now too small to identify. This is the irreparable harm we have to prevent: the destruction of the very evidence this whole investigation is about!

We now fear that the same will happen with the TWO OTHER targets the dogs identified since then, including one next to the Allan Memorial Institute, where a S4 probe also confirmed compounds in the soil consistent with human decomposition. These will be destroyed if the Appellants proceed without the Panel’s oversight. The purpose of this investigation is to find the truth. Every archeological scholar we talked to was appalled at the details of the archeological investigation which proceeded unilaterally under the Appellants. They fell so drastically short of best practices. In fact, they’ve never seen anything like it.

McGill and the SQI misinterpreted the Agreement in every way to resume construction, while disregarding their responsibilities by depriving the Kahnistensera of the guidance of independent experts. By excluding both the Panel and the Kahnistensera – except for periodic email updates and a few tokenized cultural monitors whose only power, it seems, is to burn sage and tobacco , the Appellants have determined that they will investigate the crimes allegedly committed by their own employees in their own institutions in the past. Sincerely, Justices, this cannot be what Reconciliation looks like. When the women signed it, it was clear that all parties wanted to replace any unilateral endeavour by any party with a jointly-appointed independent body, the Panel.

Justice Moore read the entire Agreement. He decided to homologate it within the Superior Court, giving it the force of a Judgement. The SQI then tried to object. Justice Moore’s Judgement is now under appeal. The Appellants’ interpreted that it  was too narrow and did not make sense. We applied to enforce the homologated agreement as the Appellants found the whole investigation was seriously compromised, which created a situation of utter helplessness for the survivors of the crimes and our communities. Justice Moore simply tried to enforce the implementation of the Agreement as it stands, to prevent further irreparable harm. His ruling was to preserve the status quo and to allow the investigation to continue so it minimizes the harm done to all the parties. Once human remains are destroyed, they cannot be repaired. Once land is excavated, the soil cannot be put back. The Judgment now seems moot given the several months that have passed,. The situation is just as urgent now as it has ever been. The urgency is to restore human dignity after so much dispossession and neglect. Reconciliation, if it means anything, must mean this much.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mcgill-quebec-clash-with-mohawks-over-possible-buried-bodies

Tommy Tucker’s song “Hi Heel Sneakers” could be about some of the ‘clashes’ that go on in the courts of law that indigenous people are forced into: 
  
Put on your red dress, babyLord, we goin’ out tonightPut on your red dress, babyLord, we goin’ out tonightAnd then wear some boxin’ glovesIn case some fool might wanna fight
Put on your hi-heel sneakersWear your wig hat on your headPut on your hi-heel sneakersWear your wig hat on your headAnd I’m pretty sure now, babyDon’t you know, you know you gonna knock ’em dead?

Court Reporter Thahoketoteh@ntk.com

MohawkMothers.ca

Kahnistensera@sunrise.org

mohawknationnews.com

box 991, kahnawake que. canada J0L 1B0

kahentinetha2@protonmail.com