Onondaga Nation

Last week, I went to Syracuse, NY to visit my sister ET, who is fighting the good fight against a very aggressive form of cancer - carcinomatous menengitis, or cancer of the nervous system (spine, brain). She had fought and beaten pancreatic cancer, only to have this come out of nowhere. For more on ET, see www.etjourney.blogspot.com.

ET actually lives in Baldwinsville, NY, just north of Syracuse. Its a beautiful town, simply lovely. Driving along interstate 81, just south of Syracuse, you pass through "Onondaga Nation", which is a reservation for the native American Indians who are indigenous to the area. Entering Onondaga Nation, along Hwy. 81, you see the following billboards:




The sign has a great deal of bad history behind it. Apparently it all started with conflicts over land rights and sovereignty - the Onondaga people believe that a large part of their territory (including what is now Syracuse, NY) was taken illegally, through a series of treaties that were never officially ratified or accepted. Then more recently, the state of NY attempted to tax sales of certain items (gasoline, tobacco, etc) within the Onondage Nation territory. Tribal chiefs made deals with the NYS government (then Gov. George Pataki) that the people claim are invalid because they were not accepted by the people. And since the original "treaties" were with the U.S. government, the people of the Nation do not want to deal with the state of NY. The bottom line is, it appears that a handful of tribal leaders are getting rich off these deals, while much of the Nation lives at poverty level.

In 1997 members of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora Nations) staged a protest under the sign and were attacked by NYS troopers. Shortly thereafter, the man who owned the property that the sign occupies was murdered in his home - he died of blunt trauma to the head, and his hands were cut off. His son maintains the sign today.

I took a detour on my way back and drove through Onondaga Nation. The poverty in some places was stunning. I guess those bumper stickers are correct - Freedom Ain't Free.

Postscript: There is an excellent and fascinating legal review of the Onondaga case against the State of New York at http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6147&context=expresso. In particular, Section II: CONFLICTING CONCEPTIONS OF PROPERTY is a fascinating study in Anglo-exceptionalism. This story very closely parallels a book the Academy is reading for 5th-grade history - A People's History of The United States, by Howard Zinn. In it, Zinn debunks the common misconception that indigenous Americans were primitive hunter-gatherers with no political systems and no concept of property - the foundation of John Locke's successful claim against native lands. Zinn points out that in some respects native American concepts of politics and property were far more progressive and advanced than the Anglo- and Franco-settlers. What's also fascinating about the Onondaga legal proceeding is that the Nation does not seek to reclaim their land and evict the settlers. What they want is for the state of New York to take responsibility for forcing the cleanup of toxic waste that has been continually deposited on their lands (especially Lake Onondaga in Syracuse) for more than a century - in other words, they want their land returned to its former healthy and vibrant condition, so that they may renew their connection to their land.