Genetically Mohawk, Culturally French: the Case For and Against an Indigenous Living History Persona

When doing living history, one walks a fine line when creating a new persona for interpretive programing. Many hours of research go into creating a character, sometimes based on one famous person from history, many times they are a composite of characters made up of the lives of lesser known individuals that together offer enough information from the period in order to understand how a person may have lived. You constantly question your and possibly the institution’s motives for offering the interpretation program, hoping that you don’t cross the line into uncomfortable territory, for either you as the animator, or the public.

Such is the case when creating indigenous characters for interpretive programming. Much the same way ‘black face’ is found offensive, and rightfully so, ‘red face’ is equally offensive. The problem lies not in making up ones face to be a race they are not, but in the lives lived by the animators. Everyone within the field would love to see a more multicultural aspect to the programming we offer.  Indigenous peoples played a large role in certain aspects of the American Revolution, certainly in what is now New York State. Not many Indigenous people are called to the field of living history though, due to the simple fact that for them, their struggles are not ‘history’, rather they are still very much current affairs. And so the problem lies more in the offensive offerings of ‘middle aged white-dudes’ playing at ‘Indian’.

In the spring of 2016, my husband and I attended a conference on the Revolution in the Mohawk Valley in New York State. It was an excellent opportunity for my husband to connect with his family’s history, as much of Bourgogne’s campaign crossed lands that were inhabited by his ancestors, from Forts Chambly and Saint John, and down the Champlain valley. During the conference, a fellow living historian took the stage in full eighteenth-century Haudenosaunee attire. Darren Bonaparte’s lecture was his living history program. Drawn from stories of his ‘grandfathers’, he spoke about the many wampum belts that were exchanged during the revolutionary period. He showed the audience several reproductions of these belts, and explained the meaning behind the symbolism contained in the imagery. He also spoke about how they were created originally, as well as his own reproductions. He also spoke about the clothing he was wearing, how the European elements were added to his traditional clothing items and why. My husband was gobsmacked, he was so impressed. We learned this man was an iron worker from Ahkwesasne.

My husband’s family is from Kahnawa:ke, but he grew up in LaSalle on the island of Montreal. His grandfather removed the family from the reservation before Pierre’s dad was born. That aspect of his history was never spoken about, in fact, it was not until his father’s death that I learned that Pierre was ‘that close’ to indigenous heritage. Not that it would have made any difference in how I feel about him, it was more of an interesting ‘shock’ when his cousins came into the church wearing the cultural markers of modern indigenous women. It made sense to me how both Pierre and his dad could become so brown from the sun in the summer, they are brown men. His aunts, being much older than his dad, were already adults when the family moved off-reserve, and so made their own decisions about where they would live.  His dad’s family is not exactly close, and so this was my first meeting of his dad’s older sisters and cousins. They remained culturally Mohawk, Pierre’s dad, and in turn, Pierre and his siblings were raised to be culturally French.

On the way home from that Spring conference, we discussed the man from Ahkwesasne and his living history program. While it would be lovely to see more indigenous peoples in living history programs, it is not something that Pierre would feel comfortable doing. Not exactly a ‘middle aged white-dude’, culturally he is one.  He has not lived the life of an indigenous man, he does not intimately understand the struggles that continue to face Indigenous people. That part of his history has been lost. He is culturally French. Pierre may never feel comfortable enough to portray a fully indigenous man, but now, his interpretive character includes that cross-over in his heritage, and at Fort Ticonderoga in the summer of 2016, he was able to offer a crossover perspective to the interpretive program.

History is a difficult subject at times. Cultural trauma is a subject that must be addressed carefully. In many instances, it has shaped who we are as modern people. In the instance of indigenous heritage, colonialism is very much a current issue. As long as people are forced to live on reservations, often in sub-standard living conditions, not able to privately own their own homes, or control things that the rest of us take for granted, like clean drinking water, Canadians are engaged in a colonial project. As historians, we walk a very fine line between anthropologist and colonizer. I believe we should spend a bit more time listening to what those indigenous voices are saying to us before we try to make our own voices heard in the effort to ‘save’ the culture. Who are we saving it from? Who are we saving it for?

This may be an interesting read for anyone interested in de-colonization issues surrounding Canadian Indigenous people,
Michael Asch. (2014). On Being Here to Stay: Treaty and Aboriginal Rights in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 217pp.