Who Are These People Anyway? by Chief Irving Powless, Jr (review)

FORRESTER IN THIS SECOND COMPILATION attempts to re-create her original work And Grandma Said … Iroquois Teaching as Passed Down through the Oral Tradition. Who Are These People Anyway? presents itself as a collection of short stories, thoughts, and vignettes that are reflections of Onondaga elder Irving Powless. This work is meant to be framed around the question posed in the book's title: Who are these people anyway? As Powless indicated to Forrester, Indigenous peoples have been asking this about the newcomers since earliest contact.

This work, as Forrester describes, is an attempt to portray the living, spiritually–vitality of the Haudenosaunee. It is meant to turn the lens around and subject the newcomers to analysis. Tongue-in-cheek, scathing, a natural response Forrester writes, to the centuries of stereotyping and misunderstanding. She describes being asked to turn off the recorder and Powless then would continue with rich stories, which she expected would eventually become central to this work. As their relationship strengthened and Forrester gained the trust of Powless, the microphone was left on. As a result, the book is presented as a collection of reflections from a man who has lived for a long time in one place, the Onondaga Nation. One can imagine sitting in the room with elder Powless as he described his life. The richness of his stories is hinted at in this work but not fully articulated for our benefit.

Forrester's goal was to portray Haudenosaunee culture through Powless's eyes and to document it for future generations. Forrester only partially succeeds in this endeavor. The strength of this work lies in the glimpse we get of Powless's life in the twentieth century and his reflections on the meaning of the treaties and treaty process. The value in Powless's anecdotal reflections on the impacts of the treaty process, and their subsequent violation, serve in making these painful points in history meaningful and palatable for a wider audience. Yet Forrester is remiss in not contextualizing these important points in history, and as a result some value is lost to the reader. Additionally, when reading this work, one cannot help but ask who is the audience? And what value does this collection present for the various audiences that might read it?

Due to the disconnected nature of the chapter format that Forrester uses, the inherent fluidity of Indigenous storytelling is lost. Historical, social, and cultural contexts add richness, and without these contexts the "stories" in the short chapters feel as if they stand alone, each disconnected from the next. The reader is left hanging at the completion of each chapter. In her first work with elder Tom Porter, Forrester was successful in conveying both the fluidity and context of the Indigenous story. This new work does not draw you in with the same competency that her previous work does. Yet this work has its strengths, such as Powless's view on the treaty relationship, or the humor of his anecdotal reflections on the newcomers, lacrosse, and reservation life in the early twentieth century. Storytelling is about weaving together aspects of life, philosophy, and culture in a way that communicates important information that the listener learns. In this work the spoken words of elder Powless would have benefited from a more comprehensive approach by Forrester, one in which we are left feeling fulfilled by his important insights. Instead we are left with the expectancy that there is more to the stories. This book will likely be relevant to a general audience interested in knowing more about Haudenosaunee historical and contemporary life.