The Kanien’kehá:ka

The Kanien’kehá:ka were nicknamed “Mohawks”¹man-eaters by the Algonquins during wars, but their original name refers to them as the “Flint People”. The term “Kanien’kehá:ka” translated as Mohawk became “Agnier” in French. They are also known as the “Haudenosaunee”, meaning “People of the longhouses”.

Native to New York State in the United States, and Ontario and Quebec in Canada, they are known as the “Iroquois Confederacy or the League of Six Nations”.

Semi-sedentary people at the time of contact with settlers, they lived in villages of several longhouses along the Mohawk River. Families of the same clan by maternal lineage lived in these houses. Each longhouse was linked to a totemic animal symbolizing the ancestor.

The matrilineal kinship system and matrilocal residence they adopted ensured family transmission from mother to daughter: the clan mother helding social and political office.

The men farmed, hunted and fished, and kept a supply of pelts and furs. The women, for their part, devoted themselves to agricultural activities, producing the three sisters – “Milpa” –²beans, squash, corn and tobacco, sacred to the natives, and to basketry, pottery and bead weaving, as well as collecting firewood and water.

Because of the fear they inspired in their enemies and their bravery in battle, the Kanienkehaka were quickly instrumentalized by the colonial powers, leading to numerous conflicts which had repercussions within their nation. Allies of the British in several wars between the Europeans, then divided, they fought either on the American or British side. After losing much of their land in the United States, they settled on reserves within their ancestral lands, while

others moved to Canada in the province of Quebec, where they were repeatedly deported by the Sulpicians. Today, they share Kanehsatake, Kahnawake and Akwesasne in Canada, Hogansburg and other reserves in the United States.

Resilience and resistance are terms that characterize the journey of this people from the depths of time.

The Mohawks have perpetuated their traditions and spiritual practices over time, and are very attached to them. Despite the traumas of colonization, the unresolved loss of their original territory and the extinction of their language among their youngest members, they continue to assert their cultural autonomy and their ancestral territory in North America.

One of the veterans of the Second World War, Louis Levi Oakes – a native of Akwesasne – who died in 2019, was one of the speakers of Mohawk code, the “talker code” used for secret communications.