Candace Maracle: In this video, I'm going to be talking about
the various forms of leadership in Indigenous communities and
the various forms of governance structures. I'm going to focus
specifically on my community. One of the main reasons that I'm
going to be doing this is to avoid the pan Indian approach
that we often see when mainstream media covers
Indigenous issues. Now, first, I'm going to give you a little
bit of a backgrounder as to who I am and where I come from. My
mom was Odawa, and Potawatomi. And my father is Mohawk. Mohawk
people are matrilineal, which means that the children often
take their mother's nation or clan, because of the way our
traditions have been disrupted since colonization, a lot of
those traditional forms of passing along the clanship or
the nation to the descendants has shifted and changed. So as
it happens in Western culture, my sister and I both took on our
father's band, and that's his nation. And his last name,
Maracle. Mohawk is the name of my nation, and my nation is part
of a greater confederacy of six different nations. In our
language, we refer to the Mohawk people as Ganienkeh, which also
means the People of the Flint, and that refers to the
surroundings of the place of our origin, where we originally came
from in upstate New York. One of the first suggestions that I
would make when you're reporting in Indigenous communities is to
always ask your subject, how he or she identifies, what nation?
So they consider themselves Aboriginal? Do they consider
themselves Indigenous or Native American? The French also had a
hand in naming our people and that's where we get Iroquois
from a we call ourselves Haudenosaunee, which means
people of the longhouse, which is the place where our
ceremonies take place. Okay, I hope you're still with me. The
Canadian government also has a name for us. And that's Indian.
One of the biggest misnomers that's slowly been amended over
history. But it's still in place and a lot of old Canadian
federal legislation as it pertains to us. And right here
on my certificate of Indian status card. Now, the greatest
aim of the Indian Act was to get rid of the Indian and the tribal
system, and assimilate the Indian people in all respects
with their inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are
fit to change. Sir John MacDonald, 1887. Until the 50s,
the Indian Act made it illegal for us to practice our
ceremonies and it also denied women the right to vote up until
the 1960s. I know this is a lot of information. And trust me,
it's confusing for me too. But this brings me to my point,
which is who's really in charge on Indian reserves?
Rohahiyo Brant: The common belief is that there's the
there's the chase with great big long headdresses. Okay, big
plane style headdresses. And they're the the chiefs. And then
there's the council. And it's elected through band council
Candace Maracle: Many First Nations people don't actually
elections.
vote for our elected Chief and Council, that's the band, the
chief, the elected councillors. They were an imposed governance
structure by the federal government, which is why a lot
of people, a lot of my people at least don't vote. One of the
reasons that people do vote is because we fought long and hard
for the right to vote.
Rohahiyo Brant: When we look at it in terms of the language, if
we ever have a traditional Council, and we have a band
Council, and they're represented differently in the language we
have in our traditional system. We have very different
vocabulary for much older words. When we're looking at the
contemporary Council, of course, we say Roya and a word for a
chief, Band Council chief would be Royá:ne(r), or Yakoyá:ne(r)
for a female,Royá:ne(r) for a male. And basically it means
almost like a boss or a manager. So it's seen, and the way I see
it's kind of more as a company operating, instead of a
traditional Council of conducting business. And within
each nation, we have chief stood up for a very long story. But we
have representatives from each nation, and within each nation,
we have a clan system. The traditional chief himself will
be a Nahó:ten. is from a word that most people might know as
yakoyá:ne(r). And we kind of translate it nowadays is it's
good. More so it means it has a path in it. When it's back in
the day, when you're going trying to find another place or
you're trying to go hunting you're trying to get anywhere.
You're in a very dense woods. Well, what's the most useful
thing you could find well probably a path. So for
something to have a path in it something, no path not only
representing a way to get somewhere, but a sense of
usefulness to it.
Candace Maracle: Sid Hill is the traditional head chief of the
Six Nations, the Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca
and the Tuscarora he presides over the Grand Council. His
title is The Tadodaho is a lifetime appointment.
Tadodaho Sid Hill: This is our passport here that we use to
travel in law.