MARLENE BRANT-CASTELLANO AT ALL SAINTS HALL, TYENDINAGA MOHAWK FIRST NATION

This evening our KAIROS Quinte group and friends were graced with the wisdom of Marlene Brant-Castellano of Tyendinaga Mohawk First Nation. She is Professor Emeritus of the Native Studies Department at Trent University (1973-1996) and was Co-Director of Research and a writer for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) from 1992 to 1996. She is a prolific author who bridges the gap between academia and the world of her Mohawk people. In addition to LLDs from Queen's University, St. Thomas University and Carleton University, she has been inducted into the Order of Ontario, has received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award and recently has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Promising a short presentation Marlene works with powerpoint slides and speaks in an engaging and informative manner for a good hour or more. She begins with the Blackfoot story of Coyote who as a result of his bad behaviour loses his eyes and must borrow an eye from Mouse. That eye sees only the ground right in front of him. Coyote borrows and eye from Buffalo but that eye only sees to the far distance. Coyote learns that to make his way he must work with Mouse eye and Buffalo eye. Marlene opens up the larger issues that engage the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and she guides us into local concerns of Tyendinga Mohawk First Nation.

She jokes about the reputation that her Mohawk people have for extended oratory. We are a group of 16 people out on a night that promised freezing rain. It is worth the risk.

At the beginning of her life she was puzzled by the lack of respect for "Indian" people. She goes to the heart of the matter: "It's about the LAND!" In order to dispossess the land, the newcomer settlers had to push the First Nations to the periphery and justify their actions by claiming "They are out there because they deserve it." A person who takes the soft approach herself, she understands the anger of the younger people and their insistence on being heard. She sees the stopping of the CNR train over impatience over slow land claim resolution as a statement that "I will be heard."

As I listen to Marlene I think of my Mexican host in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. He too has taken a soft approach.  Andres, a Tzotzil indigenous person, who had made the transition from the village to the city, understood that it was about the LAND. Not a Zapatista himself, he noted that since the uprising an indigenous person no longer lowers their head and steps off the sidewalk to allow a mestizo to walk by. There is resistance to exploitation by the big companies.

Marlene explains that the treaty with the Crown promised that the Mohawks would not be conscripted and that they would not be taxed. She explains that this provision of no taxation was about preserving the LAND. The land could not be lost for non-payment of taxes. It was the last preserve of a people who had been dispossessed. I think of the land base of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the ejidos of Mexico established in revolution and attacked by politicians promoting free trade.

There is so much more to say. Let me leave it at that for this blog. 2011 has been a year of learning. My passing over to Chiapas, Mexico for a brief month and a half has brought me back to Canada with a growing awareness of some of the major issues that trouble our country and our people.