All eyes are trained on a middle-aged man speaking in Mohawk in the center of the room. As we hustle into the bleachers, Keetah whispers that he is reciting the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, or the Words That Come Before All Else (aka the Thanksgiving Address). It continues on for some time, mostly because there is so much gratitude to impart, but also because of the orator’s halting command of Mohawk. An elderly clan mother wearing oversized glasses and moccasins makes corrections as needed from her perch on the bleachers.
Toward the end of the address, Loran Thompson strolls in, looking debonair in his kastowa and embroidered shirt. Like his brother Kanietakeron, he is a controversial figure at Akwesasne,6 but people here seem relieved to see him. One of only a handful of truly fluent speakers at this Longhouse, he has an extensive knowledge of ritual as well. Each of the traditional ceremonies—including Midwinter, Maple, Green Bean, Strawberry, Green Corn, and Harvest—occurs only once a year, and some last for several days. It is challenging keeping track of which stories, songs, dances, peach bowl games, prayers, and rituals go when. There is no Haudenosaunee equivalent of seminary school. You learn to lead ceremonies by attending them and soliciting help from the elders—until that daunting day you realize the eldest is you.
Now that the forces that construct the universe have been acknowledged, the Strawberry Ceremony begins. I hopefully disclose no confidences with this: there is singing and there is dancing and there is chanting, and often all three at once. Two men keep the rhythm with rattles made of turtle shells while the rest of us dance in a long procession around the room. At first, I try to follow the footwork of the woman in front of me but gradually realize that people are moving to their own internal beat. I do as well, relishing in the freedom. At one point, someone grabs my hand. I look down to find a girl who can’t be more than four staring up at me with unblinking eyes. She is wearing a little white sundress embroidered with strawberries. Her silky black hair is parted into pigtails. She seems to want me to lead her, and so I do, clasping her small hand in my own. Together we travel round and round the Longhouse, along with thirty, then forty, then sixty others. Someone makes a sound like “Yee-oh!” The rest of us respond in turn.
An hour into the ceremony, Keetah exits the Longhouse and I trail behind. Next door is an industrial-size kitchen where women are preparing the day’s feast, pulping piles of strawberries and sliding them into a bucket of water. Keetah stations me with her Ista (mother), who is making corn mush at the stove. She shows me how to whisk the corn flour and water together until they take on a Cream of Wheat sheen, then how to add in strawberries and maple syrup.
“Has Keetah told you about Sky Woman?” Ista asks, peering at me through her owl-rimmed glasses.
I recite the stories I’ve heard, about how Sky Woman fell from the sky one day, landed on the back of a turtle, and walked about sprinkling sky dirt that became earth dirt beneath her feet. Ista nods approvingly, then adds another legend to my library. Sky Woman’s husband often tried to test her resolve. Once, he asked her to make corn mush without wearing any clothes.
“See how it’s bubbling?” Ista asks.
I glance down to discover that the mush pot has become a lava pit. A giant bubble bursts, singeing my hand with splatter. I yelp and lower the flame.
Ista laughs. “That’s what Sky Woman’s husband wanted to know. If she could endure the pain.”
No Sky Man for me, in other words, but that’s okay. Around this time next year, I’ll fall in love with a Sky Woman of my own, who heals instead of hurts. But that border-crossing story is better saved for another day.
Back in the Longhouse, a girl is selected from each clan to distribute strawberry juice. I accept a cup and wait to see if a toast will follow. Sure enough, Loran rises to announce that the strawberry is a leader among fruits. When Sky Woman fell, this was the first fruit she found. Likewise, it is the first berry to reveal itself each spring, paving the way for all the other berries to come. Therefore we must honor this brave berry, giving it thanks for ripening yet again for our health and well-being.
With that, Loran tips back his cup. The rest of us do, too. The liquid is tangy but sweet, with just enough pulp to munch. As generations of Mohawks have undoubtedly done before me, I register this in my mental tally of the perks of attending a Longhouse ceremony over a Catholic Mass. Strawberry juice versus communion wine? No contest. Dancing versus scripture? Ditto. As I wrestle over Saint Kateri versus La Virgen de Guadalupe, Loran speaks again.
“But there is a contradiction here,” he says sternly. “We are drinking this healthy, nourishing juice out of plastic cups, which are essentially poison. They will have to be thrown away into a landfill, which will pollute Mother Earth and eventually our children. We all should have brought our own cups from home!”
Ah, guilt. Not even the animists are spared of it.
The sermon is fleeting, however, for the time has come to name the baby girls. Three sets of parents climb down the bleachers, holding their infants close. Keetah leans over to explain that no two living Mohawks share the same name. Only when someone passes can their name be released. The elderly clan mother walks up to each family, peeks inside their blankets, and exchanges a prayer with the parents. Then she turns to the crowd to announce each new name. “You have to enunciate the whole name because that is how the universe will know her,” the clan mother says. “We raise up each girl’s name so it is easier for her to use her power to connect to the universe.”
Lunchtime. The women from the kitchen pull a long table out into the middle of the room and set it with every strawberry configuration imaginable: jam, shortcake, compote, muffins, mush, and juice, along with stacks of fry bread and several kinds of corn bread, including one speckled with kidney beans. Elders are invited to line up first, followed by guests, women and children, and then men. I carry a steaming bowl of mush back to the bleachers. Ista joins me.
“What else do strawberries signify?” I ask, blowing on a spoonful.
Holding up her cup of juice, she says, “You see its color? That represents the blood of the woman.” Pointing at my mush, she adds, “When you cut a strawberry in half, it also represents the woman. It grows the closest to the ground, so it is the closest to the earth, which is the mother. That makes it feminine, too. The strawberry is medicine for the woman.”
Years ago, I helped my friend Rachél organize a “menstruation celebration” for teenage girls in Corpus Christi. We delighted over her idea to serve strawberry shortcake with red fruit punch, but when I shared this menu with others, they thought it kinky. So it’s gratifying to learn that Rachél’s instinct was right, that strawberries really do symbolize the feminine and have been celebrated as such by Haudenosaunee since time immemorial.
After lunch, we dance again. As the turtle-rattles pound a rhythm into my brain, I feel increasingly elated. Men emit their “Yee-ohs!” Footwork gets fancier. Sweat trickles down our faces. Someone whoops; someone hollers. Not for a god. Not for a prophet. For a berry. Something that leaves behind sustenance instead of commandments. Something that offers a single interpretation: plant and water and harvest me, and I will return. Poison me, and I won’t.
One song ends and another begins. More rattles, different rhythms. Round and round the Longhouse we go. Drinking the symbolic blood of women. Eating the gifts of Sky Woman. Another whoop, another holler. Euphoria swirls through the procession.
The chanting stops and starts again. New song. New rhythm. Same motivation. The valiant strawberry. To say you “almost tasted strawberries” is to say you narrowly avoided death. The skyway above is lined with the fruit. You can pluck as many as you want from the patches.
Hours pass. Days, even. Then all too soon, the music ends. A final whoop, a last “Yee-oh!,” and we all clamber back onto the bleachers. Loran removes the wampum hanging on a nearby stand and holds it to his heart. Again, we are treated to the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, the Words That Come Before All Else. We thank the Earth Mother and the waters,
the fish and the plants, the animals and the trees. We thank the four winds and the thunders, the sun and Grandmother Moon, the stars and the Enlightened Teachers. We thank the people. We thank the Creator. Ehtho niiohtonha’k ne onkwa’nikon:ra. And now our minds are one.
As we exit the bleachers for the last time, Keetah is stopped by a cousin. They talk a moment, then turn to me for introductions. When I mention being from the other border, he rubs his chin.
“You heard of the Minutemen?” he asks. “They tried to come here five or six years ago.”
“Really?” I ask. “What happened?”
“The Border Patrol told them they’d get their asses kicked, and they left.”
He and Keetah exchange a knowing laugh. Of the many things I admire about Akwesasne Mohawks, this is chief. They own their own power. And as Edmund Wilson concluded in Apologies to the Iroquois, “By defending their rights as Indians, they remind us of our rights as citizens.”
Glancing at my phone, I am startled to see it is 2 P.M. We have been here for nearly five hours. My movers arrive in the morning. I grab a broom and start sweeping around the women packing food, the men moving tables, the children eating Popsicles. Gradually the crowd thins until only Keetah, her daughters, and I remain. I return the broom to its corner. Keetah flicks off the lights. Together we pull the wooden door closed. When I search for a way to lock it, Keetah says there’s no need.
“Are you sure?” I ask, thinking of all the kastowa and turtle rattles inside.
She nods. “This is a sacred space. Our community respects that. We keep our doors open.”
We drive back to Keetah’s in the rain. No Adele this time. We want to preserve the resounding rhythms in our brains. There’s my car, sitting in Keetah’s driveway, my notebook inside the trunk. I step out and embrace the girls, one by one. By the time I reach Keetah, I have grown so emotional, I don’t know what to say. She has given me time, story, knowledge, friendship. She has shown me not only her self but my own self. I still feel fractured somehow, but if I’ve learned anything at Akwesasne, it is that you can still be united while divided.
These are the words that come before all else: Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.
They are all I can say and everything I can say.
And so I do.
NOTES
1. Boundary disputes wrought by the War of 1812 established the 49th parallel as the official borderline between British North America and the United States in 1818. Although portions of present-day Canada are technically south of the 49th parallel and bits of Alaska north of it, “the 49th parallel” has since become not only a catchall phrase for the entire 5,525-mile border but a cultural buffer/mindset/metaphor as well.
2. One of Quebec’s major culinary exports, poutine is a heap of french fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy. Quebecois seem genetically immune to its caloric impact, but I can attest that the rest of us are not.
3. The reasons behind this placement are both financial (better access to “local” advertisers and funders) and philosophical in nature. Deb Cook, who has worked for Indian Time since its inception in the early eighties, told me, “We did that on purpose to show we are our own nation and it doesn’t matter if the building is in one place or the other. We can’t be dictated by an outside government.” She jokingly conceded, however, that they needed to cut out a path for their non-Mohawk editor so that she could remain in New York all day while she worked and not worry about checking in at the border post whenever she needed to use their photocopier (located across the hall in Quebec).
4. Or so it seemed until May 2016, when the Texas State Board of Education proposed including a new textbook called Mexican-American Heritage in the state’s public school curriculum. Scholars and activists had been petitioning the board to diversify its materials for years, but not with a text like this, which claims Chicanos “adopted a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society.” A Christian activist who has criticized public education as “a subtly deceptive tool of perversion” is apparently the owner of the textbook’s publishing house. Past State Board of Education–approved textbooks have referred to African slaves as “workers” and implied that Moses influenced the U.S. Constitution.
5. Carved out of living trees, False Face masks are said to acquire the power of whatever spirit they represent. As such, they demand a fair amount of placating, including regular massages with sunflower oil and tobacco leaves. When the New York State Museum burst into flames in 1911, elders said it was because the collection’s masks were protesting their entrapment. The Tadodaho has since called for the return of all masks to their nations, plus banned future sales to the public. Traditionalists believe they should be restricted from outsiders’ view altogether and brought out only for certain Longhouse ceremonies and healing rituals.
6. In addition to igniting the Raquette Point standoff by confiscating the power tools of tribal employees, Loran Thompson played a significant role in the casino war by siding with the pro-gamblers. He is said to have made a fortune through contraband as well. Eventually he got charged with money laundering and served two years in prison. When I interviewed him about all of this, he said, “I’ve never done anything illegal in my life. I might have broken Canadian law. I might have broken U.S. law. But I have never broken my own set of laws.” Nowadays, Loran runs an Internet service provider and presides over the Longhouse frequented by the Warriors.
EPILOGUE
The United States of In-between
TELL PEOPLE YOU’RE RESEARCHING THE U.S. BORDERLANDS, AND ONE question is sure to follow: Isn’t it dangerous over there? They’ve skimmed the headlines; they’ve seen Frozen River and Sicario; they’ve absorbed the single story. Particularly near the Mexico border, they rarely venture there themselves, for fear of being shot.
Yet the lives most endangered in the U.S. borderlands are those whose ancestors preceded the imaginary lines by centuries. Who understand that violence takes forms besides bullets. Like the vaqueros who lost their traditional lifestyle because of corporate buyouts of ranches. Like the Mohawks who can no longer support their families hunting, trapping, or fishing due to the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Many of us do not speak Spanish because our elders had it humiliated out of them in public school; ditto with Mohawks during their century of Indian Residential Schools. Our fence-line communities are likely being sickened from the toxics released by Citgo, Valero, and Flint Hills; theirs, by General Motors, ALCOA, and Reynolds. Too many of our youth are imprisoned for smuggling; theirs, for trading. In borders north and south, we must contend with the trafficking of firearms right through our neighborhoods. We die in frightening numbers from diabetes caused by obesity wrought by poverty. We grieve the loss of our land, the loss of our culture, the loss of our dignity. The violations of deeds and treaties. The creation of checkpoints. The abundance of chokepoints. The Predator drones that so often target our own.
If an unusually high percentage of border denizens deal in shady economies, it’s easy to understand why. They haven’t exactly been left a plethora of alternatives. Is it even reasonable to expect someone to respect an arbitrary line that has caused their family such grief? There are existential ramifications when an ancestral land is cut in two. It doesn’t matter that the treaties were signed a couple hundred years ago. Their impact is felt every time a Tejano or Mohawk confronts a wall or a bridge and an agent peers over his sunglasses to ask, “Where are you from?” Scientific evidence is emerging that intergenerational trauma could very well be true—that horrors like colonialism are today manifested as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Some researchers have even posited that Native Americans have their ancestors’ sufferings woven into their DNA.
Considering what these communities have been through, the headlines we really should be reading are how these cultures survived at all. Our languages might have been scrubbed out of our mouths with soap, yet they are somehow still spoken today. South Texas
is incorporating more dual language programming into some of its schools, while the Akwesasne Freedom School is working toward expanding its immersion program through twelfth grade. Cultural practices are also making a comeback. While cities like San Antonio realized that promoting Tejano culture could be not only healing but also profitable long ago, this is occurring to towns closer to the border, too. In 2008, two artists in Corpus Christi threw a block party for Dia de los Muertos that has since evolved into a vibrant street festival that draws upward of 35,000 attendees a year—many dressed as skeletons. Minutes from Mexico in tiny San Benito, the Narcisco Martinez Cultural Arts Center has been hosting an annual conjunto music festival for a quarter century.
Elder Mohawks I have interviewed also attest to a resurgence in cultural pride. Not only are community members making Native aesthetic choices in their hairstyles, piercings, and tattoos, they are signing up for classes in traditional arts like basketry1 at the Akwesasne Cultural Center as well. The tribe recently won an unprecedented $8.4 million settlement from ALCOA to help revive four cultural practices that suffered as a result of the company’s contamination: hunting, trapping, and fishing; basketry; medicines; and horticulture.2 After decades of being derided as devil worship, the Longhouse is thriving at Akwesasne, too—so much so that there is even a concerted effort to reunite the houses after their contentious split many years ago. At a recent meeting, Keetah stood up and told her elders, “If it doesn’t happen in your generation, then it will be my burden, but I will take it on and work on it.” Then she sat down and watched as, one by one, the other young people concurred.
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