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NA Spirituality: Origins Figures and Texts

Page history last edited by Stephanie 15 years, 6 months ago

NA Spirituality: Historical Development

 

Iroquois Confederacy

  • Was the political group formed by six nations
  • The members of the confederacy saw themselves as a family with ‘one body, one mind, one heart’
  • They shared religious and culture beliefs and they acted as a single group in trade, war, peace and treaties.
  • By 1600 it comprised five separate nations: the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Cayuga
  • By 1720, Tuscarara had joined the five nations, forced in defeat by Southern colonists and other Indians to migrate from North Carolina
  • In 1799, a Seneca prophet traveled through the Iroquois territory in an attempt to restore traditional religious practice and encourage the leaders to work together to replace violence with positive actions
  • The nations came together and structured themselves like the upper and lower house of some parliamentary systems
  • The Confederacy supported trade negotiated agreements and settled disputes among the six nations as well as with European colonists and other Indian nations.
  • Some thought that the Confederacy might be partial model for the new US government
  • After the war, the state of New York took most of the Iroquois land.
  • In the 1840s, the Oneida were resettled to land in Wisconsin and in Ontario, Canada.
  • On many occasions the US and Canadian governments tried to break the power of the traditional Confederacy Council and install an elected system. In 1924 on the Grand River, Six Nation Reserve, the Canadian Royal Mounted Police arrested all the Confederacy chiefs and arranged elections.
  • In 1959 the chiefs attempted to overthrow the elected government, but were arrested.
  • In the 1920s, the Six nations Reserve issued its own passport and currently competes internationally in lacrosse.

 

Jay Treaty of 1794

 

That Jay Treaty granted Indians free passage between Canada and the United States. This was important to the Iroquois because their people were split across the borders. Both nations had difficulty respecting the Treaty. For year, the Iroquois Confederacy held annual border crossing events in defiance of the violations of their sovereignty, thus forcing the US government to honor the Treaty in 1928.

 

 

Land Claims

  • Established in 1946
  • Could award only a limited amount of money to tribes whose claims were successful
  • 1978, it came to be seen as a way of extinguishing aboriginal title
  • The Bureau of Indian Affairs leased much of the remaining land held by Indians for 99 years at favorable lease rates to non-Indian businesses, ranchers, hoteliers and domestic residents.
  • Government, states, and businesses have tried to resolve land claim cases by making compensation payments to tribes, although some tribes have refused to accept money in return for land.
  • Comprehensive claims- based on aboriginal title, where the title to the land has never been removed.
  • Specific claims- where the titles is in dispute.
  • In 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed that aboriginal rights did exist, and the long, slow process of negotiating settlements began.
  • Before the 20th century, about half of Canada’s Native bands had signed treaties that surrendered certain rights in exchange for promised lands, money and other guarantees.
  • The most dramatic confrontation over a land claim was near the town Oka in Quebec in 1990. Heavily armed Mohawks blockaded the town in protest over a proposed golf course that would disrupt some of the sacred lands.

Bibilography

 

Green, Rayna, and Melanie Fernandez. The Encyclopaedia of the First Peoples of North America. Toronto, Ontario: Groundwood Books/Douglas & Mclntyre, 1999.

 

 

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