Traditional Iroquois Socials: Maintaining Identity in the City

"We have good socials," an Iroquois woman in Rochester, New York, once remarked to me. The urban American Indian community in Rochester is proud of the social dances it sponsors, which provide a place for Native people to come together and participate in traditional Iroquois activities. The socials are promoted as community events, but they are also sites of conflict ranging from simple disagreements to more serious breaches. Conflicts arise when individuals or events threaten the form of the social, which is a community event, or the identity of the social, which is specifically Iroquois. Contrary to the predictions of many researchers, this urban community has not developed a pan-Indian outlook or identity but has remained rooted in Iroquois culture and traditions.

Background

Rochester is located in western New York in the homeland of the Senecas, one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois. The other nations are the Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora, whose traditional territories included most of what is now New York State as well as parts of southern Ontario and Quebec and northern Pennsylvania. ¹ The Senecas in New York today are divided into two groups, the Seneca Nation with reservations south and west of Buffalo, New York, and the Tonawanda Seneca, with a reservation between Buffalo and Rochester. ²

Iroquois people began coming to Rochester from reservations in New York State and reserves in Ontario and Quebec in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of these early urban immigrants were ironworkers who worked on construction projects in Rochester and other cities in the Northeast. Their families lived in Rochester, often remaining there even when the men had jobs out of town. ³ Today, Rochester is home to some twenty-five hundred Native people, most of whom are Iroquois. Other tribes are represented by several Navajo families, several Cherokee families from both the Eastern and Western Nations, two or three Apache families, and scattered members of other tribes—usually students at one of the local colleges or universities.

Twelve nonprofit social and cultural organizations serve the Rochester Native community. These include educational and cultural programs for Native youth, college student groups, a women's social and service club, a service club at Eastman Kodak Company (the area's largest employer), and an Alcoholics Anonymous-style sobriety group. The largest organization is the Native American Cultural Center, a social services agency providing educational and employment training, substance abuse prevention programs, and social and cultural programs. An additional organization, the Friends of Ganondagan, also provides social and cultural programming for the Rochester Native community, although it is not strictly an Indian group. The Friends is a support group for a local Seneca historic site, Ganondagan, and its staff and membership include both Indian and non-Indian people.

The Rochester Indian community hosts socials approximately four times a year. The scheduling of the socials does not correspond to traditional Iroquois events or ceremonies but rather to seasons or holidays in the majority society, such as the December Christmas social. Most often the sponsoring organization is the Native American Cultural Center, but the Friends of Ganondagan and other organizations sometimes act as the hosts. Any proceeds from raffles or special dances go to the sponsoring organization itself or to a designated beneficiary such as elders or youth. Socials usually take place in the auditorium of the Rochester Museum and Science Center but are occasionally held at local churches or colleges. The auditorium is cleared of seats, leaving a large wooden dance floor with chairs around the perimeter. Rochester does not have a large urban Indian community center; discussions of a new building for one or more of the local Native organizations in the future always include the need for a space large enough to hold socials.

Several hundred people, both Native and non-Native, usually attend the socials. Attendance is not limited to Rochester itself; there is almost always a large contingent of people...