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244 ADifferentView: ADescendaOtRecounts the 1704Attack,1995 Taiaiake Alfred O F 13, 1995, Taiaiake Alfred came to Deerfield to make a presentation to the guides and employees of Historic Deerfield, Inc., and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. Taiaiake was born in Montreal in 1964, grew up in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, and earned a Ph.D. in political science at Cornell University. He is a writer, philosopher , activist, and professor at the University of Victoria with his own website (http://www.taiaiake.com/). His scholarly work includes Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995), and Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999). Taiaiake’s talk at Deerfield forms part of his effort to educate the broader public about Native issues and, in this instance, the history and culture of Kahnawake. What follows is an excerpt from a longer talk, which was recorded and archived in the library at Historic Deerfield. The rest of the talk focuses on how Kahnawake’s identity has been shaped by its location between two colonial powers, first the French and English empires, now the nations of Canada and the United States. It has been a difficult existence. Though Kahnawake is located just across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal, its people, like Taiaiake, are predominantly English-speaking. This fact has set them apart from their French-speaking neighbors in what is now Canada’s Province of Quebec. In 1990 tensions over land rights led to an armed stand-off first with the Quebec police force, then with the Canadian army that lasted all summer. For Taiaiake, the great theme of Kahnawake’s history has been persistence and survival under colonial conditions. One important element of that theme in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the absorption of captives from other communities into Kahnawake in order to maintain its population—the Gerald R. [Taiaiake] Alfred, Mohawk Community at Kahnawake [sound recording], 1995, guides training, April 13, 1995, Historic Deerfield Library. Transcription made with the speaker’s permission and assistance.  ,    245 fundamental strength of its community. Within this context he recounted the Mohawk story of the bell. This version of the story is particularly important. It is told directly by a Mohawk, but it is told to a Deerfield audience knowledgeable about the 1704 raid and captives, such as Eunice Williams, taken by men from Kahnawake. Scholar, Mohawk, and educator, Taiaiake here not only recounts a venerable Mohawk tradition; he expounds on it to take into consideration the concerns of the Deerfield audience. Why were captives taken? What happened to them after they were captured? More than just the latest recorded version of a Mohawk oral tradition, then, this is an informed commentary on the issues raised by the story from a contemporary Mohawk perspective. What Taiaiake stresses here is the Mohawks’ ability and desire to assimilate all sorts of people into their community. Whether Native, European, or African in origin, once they were adopted into a Kahnawake family they were Mohawk. Some accepted this practice more than others, as he notes by contrasting Eunice Williams with John Smith, but the important point is that the Mohawks themselves decided who was a Mohawk. Race did not matter. Culture and community membership did. Further on in his talk Taiaiake emphasizes that the legacy of colonialism means that now Mohawks are preoccupied with racial definitions of who is and is not Mohawk. All of this from a man who, as he discovered, is also a descendant of Eunice Williams and of Puritans. In his person and his experience, then, Taiaiake embodies the legacy of both the English colonists at Deerfield and the Mohawk warriors who attacked them in 1704.  I’ll tell you the story from our side of the raid on Deerfield. Then we can compare notes. It is a very simple story from our perspective. The Jesuits promised us a bell for our church. Part of the deal in converting over to Christianity [was] that we would have a nice new church and we would have a nice place to worship in our new faith. In the understanding of our people it was a bargain made on both sides. So the Jesuits promised a bell from France which was forthcoming . The bell was in a ship destined for Quebec and thence to Montreal [but] an English pirate took that...

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