Vera left Akwesasne twice herself: once to study painting and jewelry making in Santa Fe and another time to marry a German man out in Rochester. “I thought I did valiantly for eleven years, but we divorced,” she says, biting into her turkey club sandwich and grimacing. “The culture shock was too much. We were living on Long Island, and their life had no meaning to me. They’d dress up and go sailing on weekends. What life is that? I didn’t want to stay in the white world.”
She returned to Akwesasne in the early eighties and has lived here ever since, selling crafts, delivering meals, and—for the past two years—running the pawnshop. “I get everyone in there, teachers to hillbillies. There are people who are really down and out. They try to sell to help their existence. There are sad things I see. Women trying to raise a family and the husband leaves them and they need to pawn off their wedding ring. I try to work something out with them. I think women should help other women. But it’s a business and your mind has to be quick. You have to read people, and I can read them like a cheap novel.”
Like now. Even though I am firing off the questions, Vera seems to be sizing me up too, noting everything from my intonation to where I rest my eyes. And she’s not the only one. Often at Akwesasne, I feel myself falling under the same scrutiny I did while living in Moscow in the mid-nineties. Yet Mohawks silently notice things, whereas Russians are very verbal about their observations: “Are you sick or something? You look awful.” “Don’t you have a hairdresser? Your ends are all split.” In Moscow, I attributed Russians’ observational prowess to the fact they had just endured seventy years of political terror. Here at Akwesasne, the legacy must have rooted half a millennium ago.
Since people-reading is a logical transition to gambling, I ask what she thinks of it. She approves of the Bingo Palace, not only because she likes to play herself but also because it is considered Class II gaming and thus doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of New York State.8 By virtue of being Class III, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino is subject to regulations by both tribe and state (and, as Vera puts it, “Once you let the state in, you never get rid of them”). She participated in tribal discussions before the casino opened in 1999 and remembers one subchief asking the contrarians, “Why are you worried about getting a casino? Everyone will have a Cadillac in their garage. The only thing you will have to worry about is what color you want.”
“But we never got a per capita and we never got a Cadillac,” Vera says, her wide eyes narrowing. “The chief said we didn’t need a per capita, because if we did, we would just sit on our porch and drink it.”
At that, an elderly couple walks past our table. The woman stops at Vera’s side and, in a quiet voice, asks if she’d heard that a kid died last night.
“Overdose?” Vera asks.
The woman nods.
“There were two last week,” Vera says.
Nodding solemnly, the couple moves on, and Vera resumes our conversation without acknowledging the previous one. Her biggest gripe with the casino, she says, is that it employs too many white people. When I counter that the ethnic breakdown has seemed evenly split during my own visits there, she says that I probably only saw the security guards. The folks who make the real money, the managers and such, are either white people or Indians who used to be gambling opponents.9 Of course, Vera notes, the casino isn’t the only place that hires whites over Natives. “Look around.”
I do. Every staff person within eyesight appears to be white, while nearly all of the customers seem to be Mohawk. “The owner doesn’t hire Natives, only whites, because if they are Native, you can’t treat them the way you can treat these people,” she says.
Since my interactions with “these people”—who presumably hail from nearby towns like Massena and Fort Covington—are regrettably limited to service transactions, I don’t know how they view their own “treatment.” Premature wrinkling suggests they clock in more than their fair share of hours, though.
“The only successful people on this rez are the ones with a white parent and no clan,” Vera continues, ticking off some high-profile examples. “When you have white in you, your first thought is to gain control. It’s a capitalist European gene.”
This conversation is growing increasingly difficult to process. Chances are, Vera is simply sharing her perspective with a reporter. But could she also be speaking to me as one representative of a historically oppressed group to another, as a way of invoking solidarity? Or is she speaking to me as a white person, with an intention of making me feel guilty? Or—if she is as perceptive as she says and knows my biracial origins without me even claiming them—is she explaining a part of me to myself?
Whatever the case, we have been talking for two hours. Mo’ Money awaits. Next time, Vera says as I escort her to her minivan, we’ll go on a tour with her friend. I wave good-bye as she peels away, but rather than return to my own car, I cross the street to a brick building surrounded by a palatial lot. A quarter century ago, this was the site of Tony’s Vegas International, or ground zero of the casino war. To the chagrin of tribal government—which strives to eliminate competition with its own casino—Tony Laughing reopened his business in 2010 under the name Three Feathers Casino.10 Every time I drive by it, however, it looks closed. In December, I’ll pick up a Watertown Daily Times and learn that Laughing (along with four others) has been indicted for operating Three Feathers and could face additional charges for allegedly stealing $200,000 worth of electricity to do so. The newspaper will note that this is his third federal sentence, after a 1998 charge for racketeering and money laundering while “smuggling” cigarettes and alcohol into Canada. The story will also mention that Laughing is sixty-five years old.11
A red flag featuring a multi-rayed yellow sun flies above the casino. As I step closer, the profile of an Indian’s head and shoulders emerges inside the sun. A single feather rises from his braid. The Mohawk artist and writer Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall created this image in the seventies as a call upon all Indian nations to unite under the Great Law of Peace. Decades later, it remains a fixture at Native protests in both the United States and Canada. Here at Akwesasne, the symbol seems to especially resonate with the Warriors, who paste it to their windshields, tattoo it on their biceps, and fly it from their homes and businesses. I stare at the flag a long while, contemplating its suggested resilience.
AFTER THE BEAR’S DEN, Twinleaf is the most upscale truck stop at Akwesasne. Located on the far west side of the nation, it features a dozen gas pumps operated by men in red shirts, a convenience store selling everything from Haudenosaunee koozies to John Grisham paperbacks, and a restaurant that bakes made-to-order pizzas in a brick oven. I arrive to find Vera seated at another brightly upholstered booth, stirring another cup of coffee and sporting another turtle brooch. We chat until a heavy-set woman in a denim jacket and sunglasses opens the glass doors and lumbers over.
“Here she is, queen of the Snye!” Vera calls out.
The woman grins as she lowers herself into our booth. Vera introduces her as Diane Lazore, and I scan my mental files before realizing with a jolt that she is the Warrior “den mother” I have been reading about. As I reach out to shake her hand, I see that my internal lightbulb has been noted. Her face forms a scowl that is downright scary. An instant later, however, it is gone and she bursts into laughter. “Gotcha,” her eyes say.
A waitress appears like a genie, notepad in hand. I offer to buy us lunch, and the orders start flying. Vera picks the soup of the day, an entrée, and a slice of pie, while Diane requests the scrambled egg platter. “That’s about the only thing I can eat these days,” she explains, her upper lip curled over her gums.
I should state here that I never took a side in the so-called casino war. Warriors just happened to be more willing to talk about the events of 1989–90 than any of the gambling opponents I contacted.12 I start this interview with the obvious: how did Diane get involved with the Warriors? She arches one brow. “It was like lightning struck.”
L
ightning is not a bad working metaphor for this woman. Every few minutes, a new emotion grips her face—anger, triumph, grief, sass—and then vanishes. Even her hairstyle is kinetic, alternating black strands with silver and gray, some dyed amber at the tips. It’s easy to picture her blasting an assault rifle.
“I never set out to be the Warrior Queen, but I tried to impart my understanding of our teachings to a crew of people who very sparsely knew the language, who had, as my father would say, no discipline or idea of what was right or proper,” she says. “I have the historical perspective of cosmology. I was trying to instill reason and a little bit of teaching into the young men at the time.”
In an hour of prying, however, Diane never articulates those teachings beyond the basic principles of sovereignty, which many Mohawks support regardless of their stance on gambling: “If we are who we are, we have the right to make determination for our community” and “If we willingly accept the authority of New York State or the United States, we are finished as a people.” Although she is extensively cited in books and articles, she insists her role in the skirmish was minimal. Her mother was dying then. Caring for her was Diane’s foremost concern, though occasionally she got dispatched from her mother’s sickbed to the casino strip to check on her brother, a Warrior nicknamed “Noriega.” (He too appears in the history books, including for getting shot at a few days before the final standoff in April 1990.) Diane also permitted the Warriors to use her home as their base camp on the last night of the standoff. The morning after, it burned to the ground.
“Diane’s house was estimated at $600,000,” says Vera. “When it got blown up, there were irreplaceable things in it, like a buckskin dress with beadwork. She got nothing for it.”
“Blown up?” I ask Diane. The books I’ve read called it a house fire.
She nods. “I know who did it, who blew it up. But they are pawns. I want the king, and I am going to get the king.”
Diane contends that much of the fighting in 1989–90 resulted from personal vendettas rather than ideological differences. “There were fifteen agendas running at once. There were people who said, ‘He stuck gum beneath my chair when I was in second grade; I’m going to get him.’ People used the war to settle the score.”
And those scores unraveled many ties within the nation. Soon after the standoff, Diane’s ailing mother asked her and her brother to go pay their respects to a dying uncle on her behalf.
“They were all antis, so it was like walking into a room of vipers. And we put our tails between our legs and we went. They all shriveled when we walked in. Our uncle was sitting there at the table, with his oxygen, and he acknowledged us. He stood up, even though he struggled. That sent a message to all in the room. We had no choice but to go to the table and shake his hand.” Diane pauses to chew a spoonful of eggs. “That is the division this left in our family. We will all show our faces at a funeral, but you will never see us drinking coffee around a table together.”
Vera and Diane share a sigh that has probably been collectively resounding within this nation for the past quarter century. Ian Kalman, a doctoral candidate at McGill University who is also researching the border’s impact here, has a helpful framework for this: Akwesasne is a community united by divisive issues.
The glass doors open again, and a man breezes by. “What, you don’t say hi anymore?” Diane calls out.
Pivoting on his heel, he backtracks. Maybe forty years old, his face is round and cratered. Diane asks how his neck is doing, and he launches into a story about how a state trooper started following him down the highway one day, even though he’d done nothing wrong. Figuring it must be racial profiling, he sped off toward Akwesasne, sparking a high-speed chase that culminated with his car flipping off the road. “I spent seven months in a cast,” he concludes, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around his neck to show where. Then he nods to each of us and continues on his way.
Throughout our conversation, Diane has yelled for more napkins and coffee and cutlery while Vera has demanded the music be turned down so she can hear. Now that our plates have been cleared, they shout for the check and grin when the (white) waitress comes running. Time for the tour, Vera says after I sign the credit card slip. We pile into Vera’s minivan, which is full of laundry and novels, and pull onto Route 37. Somewhere, Diane procured a broad-rimmed hat with a feather tucked in its band. Plopping it on her head, she instructs Vera to hang a left at Raquette Point. The slender road curves past a string of old-time gas stations and HUD houses that are gradually spaced farther and farther apart. Then come the abandoned houses, the condemned houses, the burned houses. Swap the trees for cactus, and we could be back in the colonias of South Texas. The houses exude the same blend of exhaustion and fortitude, while the yards showcase similar assortments of auto parts, tricycles, furniture, and toys. We turn on a side road and follow it down to a tree-shrouded marina that is just wide enough for a speedboat. The river spills before us.
“This is where you take cigarettes across,” Diane says. “A Mohawk died on the river last summer when he got chased by a Border Patrol agent in a speedboat. The waves were so big, he lost control and hit a block of concrete.”
A nearby grassy knoll is crested by a house that has been stripped to the bones. Vera says her aunt Shirley used to run a speakeasy there. “I was only twelve years old and was out serving drinks.”
We laugh as she thrusts out an arm and pretends to palm a tray. Before there was a weapons trade, people trade, drug trade, or cigarette trade, there was a whiskey trade here at Akwesasne. Al Capone grew rich and famous smuggling cases through the Canada-Michigan border during Prohibition, but Vera claims plenty of bottles passed through here, too.
“My grandmother’s husband died transporting whiskey from Canada in a bootlegging accident right here on the St. Lawrence River,” Vera says. “He was six-foot-two and got caught by his bootstrap. People still dive in the river today and bring up bottles. There are old barns with whiskey inside the walls, packed with straw.”
She backs out of the marina and follows a road that winds along the riverfront. The houses increase in size and value until we reach a veritable mansion behind a tall stone wall. “Why don’t they just put up a fluorescent sign with flashing lights that says ‘Drugs sold here’?” Vera asks.
Diane informs me that the owner’s son just got forty years for masterminding the murder of a drug dealer. His mother is currently under house arrest for money laundering.
“She wears her anklet to Walmart!” Vera says. “She is proud of it.”
We continue past a row of colonial homes with Escalades parked in the driveway and boats tied at the dock. Vera and Diane claim to know the story behind each one. This guy trades pharmaceuticals; that one owns a cigarette factory. This family runs their own construction company. I scribble a page full of notes, but when I look up again, we’re back among the HUD houses. A modest cemetery comes into view, and then we pass a road sign marking the speed limit in kilometers instead of miles.
“And now we’re in Quebec,” Diane announces.
Panic grips my chest as I poke my head between the front seats. “Wait, what? I didn’t bring my passport!”
Diane lets out a cackle, then turns to face me. Don’t worry, she says. There’s no checkpoint.
“But … isn’t this illegal?” I crane my neck to peer through the windshield, half-expecting a Border Patrol SUV to emerge from the trees.
Vera laughs as Diane explains that the U.S.-Canada borderline cuts Akwesasne in two. That means some Mohawks technically live in New York State while others technically live in Quebec, Canada, even though they all inhabit the same contiguous landmass that has always been home to the Mohawks. You can cross the border without even realizing it, as we just did. There is also a third portion of Akwesasne called Cornwall Island located in the section of the St. Lawrence River claimed by Ontario, Canada.
Complicating matters further, Diane adds, is the fact that the portion of Akwesasne locat
ed in the United States falls under the jurisdiction of a government known as the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council, whereas the part in Canada is governed by the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Both are elected by community vote. There is also a traditional form of government called the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs, which upholds the teachings of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and is chosen by the clan mothers. Decisions made by one government are not always supported by the other two—to say nothing of all the external forces Mohawks must also contend with: Albany, Washington, Ottawa, the New York State Police, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Sûreté du Québec, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canada Border Services Agency (to name a few).
“And they wonder why we aren’t normal!” Vera says after catching my dazed expression in the rearview mirror.
It will take time for this to fully compute. For now, I just try to accept the fact that we are suddenly in Quebec, a part of the world I previously only associated with separatists and brie. Up ahead, the road splits in two, and we veer right toward the village of Kanatakon. We pass a post office, a currency exchange, and a couple of government buildings before some single-story houses appear, each with its own stoop, yard, and stash of cars and ATVs in the driveway. The steeple of a Catholic church appears in the distance, but Vera cuts left and we glide instead by a sign for Big Russ’ Chip Stand featuring the silhouette of a portly woman posed in classic mudflap position. We park where the Raquette River flows into the St. Lawrence River—one water dark, the other nearly green.
“There was a story my father would tell me, many moons ago,”13 Diane says, beckoning me closer. “When scouts arrived here, looking for new land, they camped near Yellow Island. One said, ‘I’ll fish for supper,’ while the other set up camp. As he cut some wood, he tripped over a log and inside it was a fish, a magic fish. The man cooked and ate the fish, and then he got so thirsty that bowls of water would not quench it. So he went down to drink from the river, and his form changed into a sea creature. He told his friend to go back and tell the elders never to name anyone after him again. He also said that if anyone ever needed him, to hit the water seven times with a red willow branch and call his name.”
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