A sign of the times
My entire life I have always been interested in the history of the First Nations of North America and have been a strong supporter of them.
With that in mind, recently I was driving along interstates 90 and 86 in New York state. On both highways I passed signs indicating “Entering Seneca Nation Territory, o notawa’ ke ono’ ohlyo no.” When I was visiting the town of Salamanca, in the southern part of the state, there were many signs in the community in English and Seneca. This area of New York is the traditional home of the Seneca, who are one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. (The other five are the Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, Cayuga and Onondaga.)
Looking at this, I recalled seeing similar signage along Interstate 90 in South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana (for the local Lakota and Crow nations) as well as signs in the Indigenous languages in those communities.
This all made me wonder why we don’t see something similar here in our area.
Just next door to Hamilton is the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. Population wise it is the largest reserve in Canada, with over 12,000 residents and the only reserve where all six nations of the Haudenosaunee live together.
We see many road signs along the major highways here in English and French. I will go out on a limb here and suggest there are probably few drivers in this area that cannot read English and must rely on the French signs. However, the French signage is important symbolically as it reinforces that we are a bilingual nation. As our region is the traditional home of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, why is that not indicated via roadside signs in English and say Mohawk/Cayuga? Our Constitution states the founding races of Canada are the First Nations, English and French. We post signs to tell drivers what communities they are entering. Shouldn’t we also do this for First Nations’ territories?
Another area that requires improvement is education. One of my friends is a schoolteacher in a local public board. Remembering my own educational experiences in the 1970s and ’80s, where we learned next to nothing about First Nations’ history, I asked her if that has improved. Her answer was very discouraging.
“In elementary schools there is no separate class for Indigenous education, it’s just supposed to be woven into the rest of the subjects, as the individual teacher chooses to do. Most schools don’t have textbooks anymore, so the teacher has to find or choose their own resources that may place a greater or lesser emphasis on Indigenous content. In regular public schools there are no Native languages taught at all. In schools on the Six Nations reserve they learn Mohawk or Cayuga, but that’s instead of French.”
Shouldn’t students learn that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was a thriving democracy, and women had a dominant voice in that democracy for at least 1,000 years? When Europeans arrived, they brought a male-dominated, patriarchal society with them, which was totally alien to the Haudenosaunee.
In Haudenosaunee culture the clan mothers appoint the chiefs, and those chiefs carry out the wishes and directives of the clan mothers. The clan mothers can remove chiefs from power. And they will use that power.
Considering women didn’t gain the vote federally in Canada until 1918, it is remarkable how much more progressive the Haudenosaunee were. Benjamin Franklin used the Haudenosaunee democracy as an inspiration to assist in writing the American constitution. But our schools apparently don’t teach that.
We have come a long way in our relationships with the First Nations. But we have far more to do. Symbolically, signs indicating what First Nations’ territory one is in would be important and all Canadians must learn that our history didn’t start with the arrival of Europeans. Let’s teach the full history of Canada in our schools.