Jim Remsen's Blog: The Slave as "Crushed Vegetable'' - Posts Tagged "seneca"

The blow-by-blow of how our Eastern Woodlands Indians were dispossessed gets sorely limited treatment in history classes, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. This weekend, a painful chapter in that history will be commemorated by the Seneca Nation along the New York-Pennsylvania border.

The events of “Remembering the Removal, 50 Years Later” will mark the Army Corps of Engineers’ ouster of the Senecas from their very last toehold of ancestral land in Pennsylvania. In the late 1950s, the Corps set out to build a hydroelectric dam that would effectively flood 10,000 acres of the tribe’s so-called Cornplanter Tract, which is about 70 miles east of Erie Pa. The Supreme Court cleared the way, allowing a treaty to be broken and forcing the relocation of more than 600 Seneca families north to New York.

Not familiar with the story? You’re hardly alone.

The Seneca Nation wants to raise public awareness about the Kinzua removal. It aims to achieve a comprehensive curriculum for use by education systems, as well as a traveling exhibit that can be displayed at museums, local chambers and visitor centers, event chair Tracie Brown told the Salamanca Press newspaper.

Salamanca is a small town in the Southern Tier of New York that’s the headquarters of the Seneca tribal government. I visited there during a road trip eight years ago, and cruised south to see the remote Kinzua Dam. The experience sent me back to read its history.

Here are the basics: Although Pennsylvania authorities claimed all of the state’s remaining Indian land in the so-called Last Purchase of 1784 – as recounted in my historical novel Visions of Teaoga – an exception was granted for the Senecas. This was to reward their Chief Cornplanter.

After the Revolutionary War, Cornplanter had worked to keep peace between his people and the new Unites States, even helping to negotiate large Iroquois land cessions to the whites. Here’s how the site explorepahistory.com tells it: “The Americans respected Cornplanter for his honesty, principles, and ability as a negotiator. He made many personal allies including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Mifflin. He would later be rewarded with land in Pennsylvania that was to remain in his family for ‘perpetuity.’ As time unfolded, however, this was not to be.”

Indeed. The Corps of Engineers moved in, and the U.S. Supreme Court gave the dam project the green light based on “the right of eminent domain.”

Aas Tracie Brown says, “This year marks the 50th year since the construction of the Kinzua Dam turned the peaceful Allegany River Valley into the ‘valley of smoke’ where flames engulfed family homes and the ever rising waters inundated the small villages that dotted the river banks. In 1964, after years of struggling with the Army Corps of Engineers to consider better alternatives and insisting on the U.S. Congress to honor the 1794 Canandaigua Treaty, the Kinzua Dam was built. The lands that were promised to the Senecas were flooded, but we remember by passing down this legacy to our future generations.”

The Seneca Nation has held a series of commemorative events this year seeking, as Brown says, “some closure over the wounds that are still open, so that our future generations don’t carry the burden of those unhealed wounds.”

The events, which culminate this weekend, have included a musical performance featuring Johnny Cash’s song “As Long as the Grass Shall Grow,” about the Kinzua Dam removal. Friday evening, Sept. 27, there will be a bonfire and healing ceremony led by an elder who is a “removal survivor.”

On Saturday in Salamanca, there will be a commemorate walk in the afternoon, followed by a dinner and panel discussion about the past, present and future of the situation.

“We’re trying to mend our community from being relocated 50 years ago,” Brown told the Salamanca Press. “So much was lost back then — not only 10,000 acres of land — but a lot of family and community that was lost then, too. We’re trying to find a way by healing and trying to look out for more than just the Seneca Nation but also for the city” of Salamanca.

The commemoration has an added sadness for me, a retired Philadelphia Inquirer newsman. Back in the Inquirer’s heyday a generation ago, when we had robust resources and believed all the world to be in our coverage beat, we would have locked on to the Kinzua event and sent a reporter and photographer to cover it. Today, not a prayer.

This weekend I’ll be heading off on a book tour along the New York-Pennsylvania border. Being on the fringe of Iroquois country, it’s the very territory that’s featured in my historical novel Visions of Teaoga. It’s also an area touched by a hot national debate – about the term “redskin” and its use as a sports nickname.

You no doubt know about the pressure on the pro football Washington Redskins to change its name, and the organization’s refusal to do so. Critics call the term an anachronistic slur, while the other side regards it as benign, even respectful.

Slur or not, the Redskins name is still in use by several dozen high schools around the country, most of them majority-white. And one of them is Sayre High School, located just four miles north of Tioga Point, the epicenter of the Indian-settler conflict zone that Visions of Teaoga captures.

North of Sayre, in upstate and western New York, seven other schools have mascots with Indian references: the Watkins Glen Senecas, the Southern Cayuga Chiefs, and the Indians of Candor, Groton, Odessa-Montour, Owego Free Academy and Stamford. This is according to an article two weeks ago in the Elmira Star-Gazette. Only one school in the region, Sayre High, keeps the R-word.

The Redskins nickname is a thing of the past now on the collegiate scene since the last two schools gave it up a few years. This followed an NCAA policy that bans the use of Indian mascots during its tournaments unless a team gets the consent of local Native American tribes, as the Florida State Seminoles did.

Tom Phillips, superintendent of the Watkins Glen School District, told Star-Gazette reporter Andrew Legare that he believes the use of Indian mascots in his region’s high schools conveys respect: “Being Senecas honors those who founded this place."

Not all would agree.

"There's a lot of research that shows the demeaning impact a Native American mascot can have," Oneida Indian Nation official Joel Barkin told Legare. "If we're trying to teach our kids to be well-rounded, thoughtful people, and that's the role of the school, there needs to be a larger discussion about whether we're accomplishing that.”

According to a Capital News Service article last year, more than 40 percent of the high schools that abandoned the Redskins nickname said they acted in response to pressure from students or concerned citizens, and often over the objections of older alumni who argued that it forsook a part of the school’s history.

That exact conflict played out at Cooperstown High in upstate New York last year. After a group of students spoke out, the board voted to change the team name from the Redskins to the Hawkeyes. In appreciation, the nearby Oneida Indian Nation donated $10,000 to help pay for new uniforms.

C.J. Hebert, superintendent of the Cooperstown Central School District, told the Star-Gazette’s Legare that the decision was met with resistance. "We really phrased it that times have changed, and the connotation and words have changed over time as well, and people have become more socially aware,” Hebert said. “In this day and age, it wasn't acceptable."

Two other New York high schools, Canisteo-Greenwood and Lancaster, also have had recent discussions about dropping their Redskins nickname.

There’s no such sign of change at Sayre, where the fight song is “On the Warpath.” Sayre superintendent Dean Hosterman declined Legare’s request for an interview.

It must be said that a few majority-Indian high schools use the Redskins team name. One is Red Mesa in Arizona. Tommie Yazzie, a Navaho and Red Mesa’s superintendent, told the Capitol News Service that the term isn’t derogatory if Indians use it within their “cultural connection,” but he feels white schools should avoid it. He also objects to the common use of tomahawk chops and war whoops. “We have respect for warfare,” he said. “You don’t use the same type of gestures and hollering and bring that back into a sporting event.”

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota and founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association, wrote in a recent opinion piece about his decades of activism against the use of Indian mascots. “Can't the average American understand that it is not an honor to have our culture stolen, mimicked, and insulted by fanatical football and baseball fans?” he wrote. “Find an Indian and walk up to him or her and say, ‘Hey, Redskin,’ and see how honored that person is. And then stand back before you get punched.”

There actually is a new national effort to promote listening rather than punching.
The White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights are kicking off a unique “school environment listening tour” to gather input about improving the climate for Indian students. The focus will be on bullying, student discipline -- and offensive imagery and symbolism. The first talk was Oct. 10 in Wisconsin, with a future stop set for Troy, N.Y.

Oneida spokesman Barkin is one who promotes the talking path.

As he told Elmira reporter Legare, "The vast majority of people don't mean any harm [by the mascots] and they don't make any association, but it's not necessarily those people being impacted by this. It's important to have that discussion and make sure people in areas where there's either a lot of contact or no contact with the Native American community aren't only being portrayed as a mascot or just read about in November (around Thanksgiving). This is a living, breathing part of our country."