Kirkch01's List: Iroquois

• Traditionalists view Indians' exclusion from mainstream political and economic power as desirable--Indians do not want assimilation, as I define it, because Mohawks are a separate nation. But their holding this view does not alter the fact that, throughout the history of relations between the federal and state governments on one hand, and Iroquois people on the other, the Indian communities have been denied independent access to power and resources.
• Author:  Ciborski, Sara 
  Title:  Culture and power: the emergence and politics of Akwesasne Mohawk traditionalism 

  Publisher:  Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1990 [1994 copy]. [xi], 277 p.: map 
• At Akwesasne, the traditionalist social consciousness emerges out of struggle against conditions which have historically blocked Mohawk people from living according to their chosen ethical and cultural impulses, in short, out of the distinctive political, economic, and geographic situation of the community
• In many respects, the public discourse of traditionalism is an attempt at cultural mediation through the defining of a common ground where Indians and non-Indians can meet and support each other.
• One outcome of the growing interest of non-Indians in aspects of Iroquois traditionalism is the phenomenon of intercultural encounters, that is, events or programs set up for the presentation or performance of traditional Iroquois culture.

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• The League of the Iroquois was originally a confederacy of 5 North American Indian tribes: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. A sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, joined the League in 1722 after migrating north from the region of the Roanoke River in response to hostilities with White colonists. In the 1980s members of the 6 Iroquoian tribes lived in Quebec and Ontario, Canada and New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma in the United States
• Traditionally, the Iroquois were farmers and hunters who practiced a slash-and-burn form of horticulture. In addition, they fished and gathered berries, plants, and roots. Before the arrival of Europeans the primary weapons were bows and arrows, stone axes and knives and blowguns, however, by the late seventeenth century European trade goods had almost completely replaced the traditional weapons and tools. The principal crops were maize, beans, and squash which, in addition, were prominent in ceremonial activities.
• Tribal representation on the council was unequally distributed among the 5 tribes although abuse of power was limited by the requirement of unanimity in all council decisions. Below the level of the League council were separate tribal councils concerned with the internal affairs of each tribe and each tribe's relations with external groups. The tribal council was composed of the sachems who represented the tribe on the League council. Sachem positions were hereditary within each tribe and belonged to particular matrisibs.

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• Barth, Fredrik . 
     Principles of social organization in southern Kurdistan 
• It seems probable that a fluid and complex situation of this type is characteristic of societies which lie in the shatter zone between larger culture areas -- in this case, between the Arab, Persian, and Turkish. Such a location produces familiarity with various competing normative systems, principles of organization, and power hierarchies. This familiarity on the part of the villager leads to attempts at   [Page 10]   manipulating these various systems and principles. Thus competing factions, manipulating the familiar (but in part mutually exclusive) systems, will establish different power hierarchies in different villages, resulting in the present variety of forms of social organization found in the area.
• Peoples have been and shall continue in the future naturally and organically to assimilate or be assimilated into other peoples at various stages of their collective lives. Kurds are no exception, and do not require a separate treatment. It is the forced assimilation of peoples by states that merits special attention here.
• A major example of voluntary assimilation of the Kurds is the ongoing case of the Laks. In the past few centuries a segment of the Kurdish nation, the Laks of southern Kurdistan, have been progressively assimilating into their neighboring ethnic group, the Lurs. The Laks still speak a Kurdish dialect, distinct from Luri, which is itself a dialect of Persian. The Laks practice the native Kurdish religion of Yârsânism, while the Lurs are Shi'ite Muslims (see Language   and Religion  ). Despite these differences, large numbers of Laks now prefer to be counted as Lurs, and are switching their religion and language as well. No state forced this conversion.
• Busby, Annette.
     Culture summary: Kurds
• One of the earliest and most important ethnic propagandists in the Turkish Republic, under Atatürk, was Sukru Mehmet Sekban, himself a Kurd. He fabricated a history of the Kurds, complete with linguistics, designed to embed the Kurds in the utterly alien Turkic family of peoples, seemingly to spare them the unpleasantness of remaining an ethno-linguistic minority in a hostile social environment.
• This history has profoundly affected almost every aspect of Kurdish life and culture. Rapid social change has been occuring in the countries that divide Kurdistan, which affects the Kurds as well. The policies of the various governments have also had quite different kinds of impact on the Kurds. Whereas the Turkish government outlaws the use of the Kurdish language in public and the publication or possession of Kurdish writings or audio recordings, the Iraqi government allowed the use of Kurdish as the language of instruction for Kurdish schoolchildren during the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, the development of Kurdish literature prospered in Iraq but was severely hampered in Turkey. In addition to dialectal differences, written communication is further complicated by the use of the Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets in the different countries. These examples illustrate the complexity of the situation and serve as a caution against overgeneralization.
• Izady, Mehrdad .
     The Kurds: a concise handbook 
• The idea of a separate Kurdish identity, in the future, as in the past, will clash the most with the state ideology in Turkey. While the names Iran, Iraq  , and Syria   are not ethnicbased country names, Turkey   is. By definition, Turkey   means “the land of the Turks.” Yet for the Kurds from Turkey to refer to themselves as “Turkish Kurds” is a contradiction in terms. How can a Turk be a Kurd?
• A law passed in 1932 ordered the deportation, but particularly the dispersion, of the Kurds in Turkey, apparently to force their assimilation. The law provided that Four separate categories of inhabited zones will be recognized in Turkey, as will be indicated on a map established by the Minister of the Interior and approved by the other Ministers. 
• An important factor accounting for the modern distribution of the Kurdish tribes, the religions they practice, the dialects they speak, and even the variations in their physical characteristics, has been the episodes of massive migrations within and from without Kurdistan proper. Mass deportations in the past and present have further diversified the tribal makeup of Kurdistan. They have also brought the Kurds into close contact with many other ethnic groups in the region, and fostered links of various kinds among them.

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• Ciborski, Sara .
     Culture and power: the emergence and politics of Akwesasne Mohawk traditionalism 
• In the acculturation paradigm generally, there is a tendency to evaluate the surviving cultural patterns as genuine and authentic, depending on how demonstrable are their connections with the past. Regardless of whether the focus is on culture change or culture persistence (and Fenton differs from most acculturation theorists in highlighting persistence rather than change, e.g., 1953b), there is an assumption of a static referent-an original uncorrupt version of traditional culture-against which later changes (or persistences) are measured.
• It is this assumption which generates a distinction between genuine and spurious culture in the work of many Iroquoianists. Fenton's definition of the “old ways” as genuine culture makes inevitable his evaluative observations that there has been a “gradual breakdown of Iroquois culture” over time (Fenton 1940:159), that “the culture has declined in power and effectiveness,” and that the Iroquois “have grown poor in knowledge of their former ways” (1965:258-59). As for contemporary native cultural revival efforts, he finds them spurious, ineffective attempts to reintroduce the cultural patterns of the past (Fenton 1975).

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