Iroquois

Cayuga Museum Opens Iroquois Art Exhibit

September 23, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Cayuga Museum of History and Art, in Auburn, NY has opened its newest exhibit, A Living Legacy: Arts of the Haudenosaunee, which features original art from more than a dozen artists from the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Among those exhibiting are Tom Huff, Trevor Brant, Eric Gansworth, Richard Glazer-Danay, Alex Hamer, Debra Hoag, G. Peter Jemison, Luis Lee, Penny Minner, Terrill Hooper O’Brien, Erwin Printup, and Marla Skye, and more. [Read more…] about Cayuga Museum Opens Iroquois Art Exhibit

The Shadow of Kinzua: The Seneca Since World War II

July 26, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Kinzua Dam has cast a long shadow on Seneca life since World War II. The project, formally dedicated in 1966, broke the Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, flooded approximately 10,000 acres of Seneca lands in New York and Pennsylvania, and forced the relocation of hundreds of tribal members.

In Laurence M. Hauptman’s In The Shadow of Kinzua: The Seneca Nation of Indians Since World War II (Syracuse Univ. Press, 2013), he presents presents both a policy study, namely how and why Washington, Harrisburg, and Albany came up with the idea to build the dam, as well as a community study of the Seneca Nation of Indians in the postwar era. Sold to the Senecas as a flood control project, the author argues that major reasons for the dam were the push for private hydroelectric development in Pennsylvania and state transportation and park development in New York. [Read more…] about The Shadow of Kinzua: The Seneca Since World War II

Oneida Nation Dancers At Iroquois Indian Museum

July 7, 2014 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Iroquois Indian Museum will have a Social Dance Saturday on July 12 at the Museum featuring Onota’a:ka (Oneida Nation Dancers), based in the central New York Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) community of Oneida.

Founded by Elder and Wolf Clan Mother Maisie Shenandoah for the purpose of cultural education, the troupe’s original purpose continues to be carried forth by daughter Vicki, granddaughter Tawn:tene (Cindy Schenandoah Stanford) and an extended family with common goals. [Read more…] about Oneida Nation Dancers At Iroquois Indian Museum

Summer Festival at Kanatsiohareke This Weekend

June 24, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Kanatsiohareke (Gah-Nah-Joe-Hah- Lay- Gay) Summer Festival is a family-friendly celebration of Mohawk culture that is shared with friends, relatives, volunteers and everybody in the local Mohawk River Valley community.

The event includes Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) storytelling, dancing, music and culture as well as contemporary music. Vendors will be selling Native American art works and crafts. Food will include some traditional Mohawk dishes as well as organic grass-fed beef. [Read more…] about Summer Festival at Kanatsiohareke This Weekend

New Exhibit Highlights Contemporary Iroquois Concerns

March 24, 2014 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, NY has announced its new exhibition, Standing in Two Worlds: Iroquois in 2014, which will open on April 1st and remain at the Museum through November 30.

The exhibit features over 30 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artists and focuses upon contemporary concerns that warrant their attention and creative comment. Exhibition works (artwork and poetry) include those that explore boundaries and borders, environment, hydro-fracking, economy, gaming, the digital/disposable age, sports mascots, the impact of national/international events and decisions, the role of tradition and community, and the state of the arts. [Read more…] about New Exhibit Highlights Contemporary Iroquois Concerns

New York History and the Birth of the Nation

January 2, 2014 by Peter Feinman 1 Comment

Scholars divide time into periods in an effort to make history comprehensible, but when to draw the diving line can be problematical and historians often disagree where one period ends and another begins.

For the birth of the nation, I am using the end of the colonial period, roughly from the French and Indian War to the end of the War of 1812. The colonial era for me was the time of the settlement of the 13 colonies which would become the United States. That process began in Jamestown and ended approximately 130 years later in Georgia. Up until then individual colonies, notably New York, Massachusetts / New England, and Virginia, dominate the curriculum, scholarship, and tourism, with only passing references to the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Dutch in New York. [Read more…] about New York History and the Birth of the Nation

The Mixed Multitudes of the Mohawk Valley

December 30, 2013 by Peter Feinman 2 Comments

Peacefully sharing a space-time continuum does not come easily to our species. The challenge of doing so was played out in colonial New Amsterdam/New York in the 17th and 18th centuries especially from Albany and Schenectady westward throughout the Mohawk Valley.

There, and north to the Champlain Valley and Canada, multiple peoples who had not yet become two-dimensional cliches struggled to dominate, share, and survive in what became increasingly contentious terrain. Battles were fought, settlements were burned, and captives were taken, again and again.

By the 19th century, much of that world had vanished save for the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. By the 20th century, that world existed in state historic sites, historical societies and local museums, Hollywood, and at times in the state’s social studies curriculum. [Read more…] about The Mixed Multitudes of the Mohawk Valley

Oral Tradition in Historical Scholarship:
The Dutch, The Iroquois, and The Two Row Wampum

December 20, 2013 by Peter Feinman 1 Comment

The challenge of contact in the 17th century between the Dutch and the Iroquois was brought to life in the 21st century with a symbolic summer journey from western New York to the United Nations to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Two Row Wampum and its message.

That event was the subject of several posts on The New York History Blog. I wrote about the scholarly challenges posed by the Two Row Wampum; Naj Wikoff, an artist active in the Lake Placid region, also wrote about the the Two Row Wampum, acknowledging that there is not a written record of the treaty, nor does the physical object exist, but the oral tradition of the event is valid and its message remains relevant. [Read more…] about Oral Tradition in Historical Scholarship:
The Dutch, The Iroquois, and The Two Row Wampum

William Starna’s New History of the Mahican

November 23, 2013 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The University of Nebraska Press has published From Homeland to New Land: A History of the Mahican Indians, 1600-1830, by William A. Starna, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the State University of New York College at Oneonta.

This history of the Mahicans begins with the appearance of Europeans on the Hudson River in 1609 and ends with the removal of these Native peoples to Wisconsin in the 1830s. Marshaling the methods of history, ethnology, and archaeology, William A. Starna describes as comprehensively as the sources allow the Mahicans while in their Hudson and Housatonic Valley homeland; after their consolidation at the praying town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts; and following their move to Oneida country in central New York at the end of the Revolution and their migration west. [Read more…] about William Starna’s New History of the Mahican

Iroquois Indian Museum Seeks New Director

September 12, 2013 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Board of the Trustees of the Iroquois Indian Museum has announced a search for an Executive Director. Located in Howes Cave, NY, the Museum is a non-profit educational institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Iroquois culture by using the arts of the Iroquois from the past to the present to tell their unique story. [Read more…] about Iroquois Indian Museum Seeks New Director