One morning, Dana Leigh awoke to burning feet. Kicking off the covers, she discovered them peppered with the same blisters Kanietakeron had as a kid. Cortisone shots and creams proved useless. Convinced they were being poisoned, she told Kanietakeron they must leave. She met the same kind of resistance Suzie Canales did at Dona Park: What? This is our homestead. My parents lived here. My brothers and sisters still do. It is the site of our family story. Yet Dana Leigh was firm, and her husband finally consented to transferring to their current plot, which is about as far away from GM, Reynolds, and ALCOA as you can get at Akwesasne. “I go to Raquette Point now and see all these people with gardens, and I will say to them it’s not good, but you can tell by their face they don’t want to hear it,” she says with a sigh.
In 2010, GM’s bankruptcy estate pledged $773 million to clean up eighty-nine of its old industrial facilities around the country. The Superfund site near Akwesasne received the biggest cut—$120.8 million—but that didn’t feel sufficient to the Thompsons, considering the company’s stature.9 They also resented the lack of urgency suggested by the cleanup’s timeline. “I went to the clinic one morning, and my sister was there with her kidney cancer, and my buddy was there looking grayish in color, and I said, ‘When is this going to stop?’” says Kanietakeron. “So I went to a [St. Regis Mohawk] tribal council meeting, and people who signed that agreement with GM were there, and I said whoever signed that should be shot. Once the leaders sign something, they lock everyone in; there is no more recourse.”
Not officially, anyway. So Kanietakeron and Dana Leigh devised a recourse of their own. On August 12, 2011, before a circle of supporters and camera crews, Kanietakeron chained himself to the steering wheel of his backhoe, drove onto the property of the old GM site, excavated a hunk of landfill, transported it over to some railroad cars, and unloaded it as a way of showing—as he puts it—“Now what’s so hard about that?” On his return trip to the landfill, a truck rumbled over, blowing its horn. The New York State Police had arrived as well as the site’s new owner, RACER Trust. An enormous payloader proceeded to corner Kanietakeron’s backhoe between a chain-link fence and some pipes.
“I thought they were going to use that machine to stop me and Taser me and then all the Indians would come to my rescue. The only way to get out was through the fence, which they had locked, so I just went right through it and was back on the reservation.”
Dana Leigh opens her MacBook to show me the YouTube video. A camera zooms in on Kanietakeron riding high in his backhoe as it bursts through the fence. Afterward, he informs police, “You’re going to have to carry me to the car.” While they discuss this—“Are you going to resist if we carry you out, or can we just carry you out?”—the camera pans across the landfill where Kanietakeron says he played as a child. With its 25- by 25-foot crater, it looks like it has just been bombed.
Kanietakeron spent four days in jail before getting slapped with a felony count of criminal mischief, misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment and resisting arrest, and a $70,000 fine from RACER Trust for upsetting its landfill and ruining its fence. He showed up to court wearing traditional regalia and announced that he did not recognize New York State law but rather “natural law.” His trial gets under way in a couple of weeks.10
Media mostly portrayed Kanietakeron’s story as a heroic act of civil disobedience, but Mohawks’ reactions were more nuanced. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council publicly criticized him for driving the contaminated backhoe around the community. How, council members asked, could someone so concerned about PCBs so carelessly spread toxics like that? (Only after repeated requests did Kanietakeron consent to having his backhoe cleaned.) Others grumbled about the couple’s flagrant abuse of the law for thirty years running. Yet the Thompsons are accustomed to clashes. That’s why they revoked their tribal membership in the mid-nineties. They hated being bound to the chiefs’ decisions, Kanietakeron says, “because it meant we were subjects of the queen.”11
He believes the only legitimate authority figures of Akwesasne are the clan mothers. In fact, he invokes their name so often and with such reverence, I start to envision an assembly of oracles convening by candlelight, deciding the fate of their nation. A romantic image, yes—until you remember that even this traditional system split in two a quarter century ago, with gambling opponents constituting the majority of one longhouse and Warriors another, each with its own set of clan mothers to guide it. The Thompsons then further ceded from the tribe by destroying their official tribal cards and passports and issuing documents of their own. When I ask to see one, Kanietakeron opens his wallet and produces a laminated card that is purple on one side, pink on the other. ID of the Onkwehonwe of Americus Empire (AKA) Turtle Island, it reads.
“How many people use this?”
“The clan mothers told us not to tell,” Kanietakeron says.
“That is the original ID of the land,” Dana Leigh adds. “We use it to cross the border.”
Most Mohawks use their tribal cards for this purpose, which exempts them from paying international bridge tolls. Kanietakeron, however, says he insists that customs agents honor this ID. “I tell them, you are on my territory and that is the ID we use. It is superior to yours.”
“What do they say?”
He chuckles before rattling off examples of being detained for hours (and hours) while agents tried to clear his name. Of singing Indian songs instead of signing papers. Of lying on the ground so he could be handcuffed. Of enduring a three-day hunger strike at an immigration detention center while puzzled inmates from Iran, Russia, and Eritrea looked on.
“The border is not meant for us, but for Europeans,” he explains. “When you say, ‘Oh, I am in Canada now,’ in the long run, you give it recognition, and that can do a lot of damage.”
Which is why, in November 2009, he climbed in his backhoe and drove around Akwesasne, unearthing three granite obelisks that marked the international borderline. He deposited each one in front of the Warrior longhouse and, before cheering supporters, flicked on his jackhammer and smashed them to bits. The tribal police drove up to inform Kanietakeron that the obelisks were the property of the federal government. They threatened either a jail sentence or a fine, but nothing came of either. Six months later, however, the Thompsons received a visit from the very same outfit that once knocked on the door of their Tejana counterpart, Suzie Canales: the FBI.
“We offered him a peace pipe and asked, ‘Do you come in peace?’ Then we had a three-hour meeting and explained everything to him. He said, ‘Can we have the markers back?’ So we showed him the video so he could see they got jackhammered. Then he asked why we did it.”
At this, Kanietakeron pauses theatrically.
“And you said … ?”
“On commandment of the clan mothers!”
Not even the FBI could argue with that. The agent left soon after, and they haven’t heard from him since.
When Dana Leigh’s cell phone rings for the umpteenth time, I realize I’ve sapped four and a half hours of their day. After thanking them profusely, I make a final faux pas, asking if my next destination is on the U.S. or the Canadian side of the border.
“We say north of the river or south of the river,” Dana Leigh says.
Kanietakeron leans in close, as if to reveal a secret. “When you acknowledge the border,” he says, his eyes widening, “you make it real.”
NOTES
1. And Snye, in turn, has a few nicknames of its own. Mohawks who live on the other side of the nation joke that it’s “Snyberia,” because it’s so far away. Those who live there prefer “Snyami.”
2. Families were offered market value compensation for their homes but at the depressed rate incurred by the seaway. Here is how Edmund Wilson describes a bulldozed house at Akwesasne in his 1959 book Apologies to the Iroquois: “It remains in my mind as a symbol of the fate of the individual at the mercy of modern construction: the house had been scrunched like a cockroach, a flattened-out mas
s of muddied boards.”
3. Regarding her nation’s obesity epidemic, Sweets Jacobs of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne told me, “Our generation grew up on commodity foods. We no longer have gardens because of the environmental contamination. We no longer fish because of the EPA guidelines. Our recreation is gone, our food is gone, you can’t hunt any more because there is no more land left, and everybody is on four-wheelers so no one walks any more.”
4. The GM site finally shuttered in 2009, abandoning an 800,000-square-foot building and depriving 500 people of employment. Beginning in the fall of 2012, EPA crews oversaw the removal of its PCB-laden concrete and soil. They initially expected to clear out 77,000 tons of waste, but as of February 2014, they had removed more than four times that amount.
5. Poor Massena. Despite its many concessions and sacrifices, ALCOA decided in November 2015 to “idle the potlines” there anyway and laid off 500 workers, devastating the town’s economy.
6. Traditionally, Mohawk men individually plucked each hair until only a small square remained at the back of their head, which they then braided. The spiky “Mohawk” hairstyle favored by punk rockers worldwide can actually be traced to the Pawnee.
7. The $243 million plan ultimately chosen by the EPA calls for the removal of 109,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment near the shore along a 7.2-mile stretch of the Grasse River. In addition, several hundred acres of sediment will receive some form of capping to isolate contamination. During the May 6, 2013, meeting where this plan was unveiled at Akwesasne, Mohawks quickly noticed that the bulk of the capping would occur in the stretch of river closest to Massena. “That is where the poor people live,” Chief Ron LaFrance protested, pointing at the cap-less swath of map of his nation. Dana Leigh Thompson, meanwhile, accused the EPA of “being part of the genocidal process.”
8. Trees, of course, were merely the timber of this skirmish. Though sources vary about the true igniter (everything from land claims to corruption in the local police force), the standoff is likely traceable to a long-standing conflict between the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council and the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs. The former is the “legal” tribal government, or the one elected by popular ballot and recognized by New York State and Washington. The Council of Chiefs, meanwhile, is the tribe’s traditional government elected by clan mothers and sanctioned by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
9. According to Forbes, GM is the world’s sixty-fourth biggest public company. In May 2015, the magazine estimated its market cap at $59 billion.
10. Ultimately, these charges will be dropped against Kanietakeron, including the $70,000 fine. He will, however, be banned from entering the GM Superfund site again.
11. Both the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council and the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne were imposed as governing bodies of the tribe in the late 1800s by the United States and Canada, respectively.
16
The Movement
WINTER SETTLES OVER THE NORTH COUNTRY, SLICKING THE ROADS and icing the trees. I glance down at my hands while pumping gas one afternoon and discover they have desiccated into lobster claws, red and crinkled. Worried I could lose a finger in the time it takes to fill a gas tank, I retreat to the Victorian, crank up the thermostat, and refuse to leave except to teach. When temperatures plunge into the negative twenties and I must not only shovel a path to the garage each morning but also chip away the ice that sealed its door shut the night before, I abscond to Texas.
Bad timing. While I’m gone, one of the biggest indigenous rights movements in Canada’s history erupts. Called “Idle No More,” it is triggered by legislation intent on eliminating key protections for water, fish, Aboriginal land, and Native sovereignty. Four Saskatchewan women hold a teach-in widely touted in social media, and flash mobs soon begin descending upon shopping malls and performing round dances before bewildered Christmas shoppers. Other protesters block major railways, highways, and ferry lines. Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence erects a teepee on Victoria Island by Parliament Hill and launches a hunger strike1 to persuade Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the governor general to meet with her and other indigenous leaders. The following day, an Attawapiskat elder swears off food as well.2 The movement spreads, with solidarity demonstrations in Stockholm, London, Berlin, Auckland, Cairo, and a number of U.S. cities, as well as at the Mall of America3 in Minneapolis. I watch these developments with excitement and longing from my MacBook in Corpus Christi. The hardest day to miss is January 5, when thousands of Indians shut down border crossings throughout Canada. At Akwesasne, Mohawks occupy the bridge connecting the portion of their nation called Cornwall Island with mainland Canada for three hours as they round-dance, drum, chant, and sing.
As soon as I return to the North Country, I call Bob, the elder who showed me around Thompson Island. Not only am I eager to discuss Idle No More, I also want to learn more about him. During our hike through the forest that afternoon, we discovered we have mixed parentage in common. While I relate much more strongly with one heritage over the other, however, hybridity is his identity. He calls himself “Métis” with a pride seldom heard from mestizos.
Bob lives with his wife, Marie (a Mohawk), on the far eastern tip of Cornwall Island. From the bridge, you pass a Peace Pipe Tobacco and Convenience Store, a string of self-built houses, a snowman, young men joyriding an ATV, and an arena shaped like a turtle before turning on the last road before the gravel falls into the St. Lawrence River. Marie’s homestead spreads across five acres of fields. Bob envelops me in a hug, his bear claw necklace tickling my face, and invites me inside. Every room contains a conversation piece—artwork, hanging textiles, a box of dried corn, a bowl of tobacco leaves, dozens of old photographs—but he is most eager to show off a hand-woven sash festooned with fringe. Back in the nineteenth century, French Canadian men tied sashes around the waists of their coats to keep out the cold. The style has since been adopted by the Métis.
“I was talked down to by the whites for being Indian, and by the Indians for being white. ‘Half-breed’ is usually considered derogatory, but the Métis are proud of it,” Bob says as he drapes it over my outstretched palms. Cherry-red, it is patterned with arrowheads colored yellow, green, and blue. Then he shows me the Métis flag, which features the sign for infinity: a horizontal number eight. It represents the two cultures coming together forever—“nine months after the first Europeans arrived!” he jokes.
That’s pretty much how it happened, though. European men (particularly fur trappers) quickly realized that Native women were essential to their survival in the punishing new climate. Not only did they provide food and pleasure, but they assisted with translations and culture clashes as well. The trappers invited women to live with them in the villages surrounding the trading posts where they sold their pelts, and together they had children who eventually became employees of the trading companies too.
While European men mostly benefited from this arrangement, it was a grave risk for the women. Until 1985, under Canada’s Indian Act, Aboriginal women were considered “disenfranchised” when they married non-Native men. Not only did they (and their children) lose their status as Indians, but they were also prohibited from living on their reserve, inheriting family property, receiving treaty benefits, and being buried in their ancestral cemetery.4 Aboriginal men who married non-Native women, meanwhile, could keep all their rights plus gain Indian status for their wives (despite the fact that many tribes are matrilineal). This, Bob says, is partially why Métis rights organizations were formed. “A Native woman would marry a white man and he would abuse her and leave her, and she’d be left on the outskirts of a reserve with her children trying to fend for herself, because her tribe would not take her back,” he said. “Our organizations sprang from there, to get those women housing, to give them some support.”
Gradually, the offspring of these mixed couples developed a culture of their own with a distinct music, dance, dress, and language (a fusion of Cree and French called Michif). Although Bob sa
ys their population is well over a million, the government estimates less than half that amount. One reason for the discrepancy is confusion over who can claim to be Métis. The Supreme Court devised the following test in 2003: self-identifying as such, having an ancestral connection to a Métis community, and being accepted by that community as a member. That method is hotly debated in Aboriginal communities, along with whether or not Métis should have treaty rights, yet as someone long afflicted with an inferiority complex over her hybridity, I am actually impressed that they receive group recognition5 at all. I once interviewed fifty biracial people for a book project about mixed identity. Every single one of us struggled over existential isolation but were so guilt-ridden that we could hardly admit it. I eventually abandoned the project for the same reason.
“My mother was Cree and my father was like Daniel Boone, a crazy Irish fur trapper,” Bob says as we sink into the couch with glasses of iced tea. “He was nineteen and she was sixteen when she got pregnant, and a priest got the authorities to throw him in jail for six months. But when he got out, he went back to her and proved he would be with her, and they stuck it out.”
The couple reared five children in a region so remote, the nearest full-fledged hospital was a three-hour flight away. This distance proved disastrous when she contracted tuberculosis after giving birth to Bob. When it was clear she would not recover,6 the father brought their baby home alone. The government soon took away Bob’s four older siblings and sent them off to Indian Residential School (or “Catholic concentration camp,” as he calls it) while Bob got placed with his maternal great-grandmother. Having lost his entire family, his father headed south.
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