17 December 2006 17 December 2006
Obituariaries for John Mohawk in the Buffalo News and University at Buffalo Reporter
Elmer Ploetz, Buffalo News, 15 December 2006
MOHAWK - John C., professor a foremost Iroquois scholar and activist
12/15/2006
John C. Mohawk, Ph.D., one of the foremost Iroquois scholars and activists of his generation, died Sunday at his home in Buffalo. He was 61.
Dr. Mohawk was a professor in the University at Buffalo's American Studies Department and was director of its indigenous studies program, helping shape the program from its start.
But Dr. Mohawk the academic was only part of the story. A professor at UB since 1993 and a lecturer in American studies long before that, Dr. Mohawk brought an unassuming humor and humility to the classroom, where he could go from referencing taking his children to Holland Speedway in the 1970s to traveling to Tehran as part of the Committee for American-Iranian Crisis Resolution in 1980.
He also led the Iroquois White Corn Project, a development project in which traditional white corn was grown and marketed to gourmet restaurants, and was active in groups encouraging small-scale sustainable agriculture.
Dr. Mohawk, a member of the Turtle Clan, was the son of Ernie and Elsie Mohawk, elders in the Seneca community. According to Barry White, a friend of more than 30 years, Dr. Mohawk was a carrier of Six Nations culture.
"John had a wonderful connection with the elders in the Haudenosaunee, and they invested in him truly to hold the culture in place," said White. "His dad, Ernie, was one of his major mentors in the thought and philosophy of the Iroquois, and people from across the Six Nations invested in him like he was a conduit for the transmission of their culture to the next generation."
Dr. Mohawk graduated from Gowanda High School, earned his undergraduate degree in history at Hartwick College in 1968 and started in the UB graduate program in 1970. Although he didn't receive his master's degree and Ph.D. until later, he was involved in shaping the American studies program's indigenous studies program at the beginning and later headed it.
"John was the heart of the Native Studies program at the University of Buffalo," said Bruce Jackson, a longtime UB professor who teaches in the department.
"Other people taught it, but he was the one who always provided the focus, the compassion and the guiding intelligence," said Jackson. "In addition, the students really loved him."
During the 1970s, he was enmeshed in the early throes of Indian activism, traveling to Wounded Knee, S.D., to stand with the Lakota who occupied that village in 1973 and serving as a delegate or representative of the Six Nations in situations such as the 1981 siege at Racquette Point in northern New York, when members of the Mohawk Nation's Warriors Society came into conflict with police.
Dr. Mohawk was editor of Akwesasne Notes magazine from 1976 to 1983 and edited Daybreak Magazine, a quarterly on indigenous issues, from 1987 to 1997.
In addition, he advised the New York State Education Department on Indian representation in textbooks and was active in the Seneca Nation.
Dr. Mohawk also wrote numerous newspaper, magazine and academic articles and lectured internationally.
His books include "Iroquois Creation Story: John Arthur Gibson and J.N.B. Hewitt's Myth of the Earthgrasper" and "Utopian Legacies: A History of Conquest and Oppression in the Western World." He co-edited "Exiled in the Land of the Free" and was a contributing editor on "Basic Call to Consciousness: The Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World."
Dr. Mohawk's wife, Yvonne Dion-Buffalo, died in 2005.
Survivors include two sons, Taronwe and Forrest, and two daughters, Charlene Brooks and Lisa Marie Spivak.
A service will be at 9 a.m. Saturday in Wentland Funeral Home, 10634 Main St., North Collins, and at 10 in the Long House on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation.
Pat Donovan, UB Reporter, 14 December 2006)
John C. Mohawk, associate professor of American studies, died Sunday in his home in Buffalo. He was 61.
A member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians, Mohawk was widely recognized as a leading scholar of Seneca culture and history. He also was an expert in Native American economic development and cultural survival who emphasized the relationship between the treatment of indigenous groups and the state of the earth's environment.
A member of the UB faculty since 1987, he was co-director of the Native American Studies Program in the Center for the Americas from 1999 to 2002. The center evolved back into the Department of American Studies, which he chaired from 2002-03.
Colleagues praised Mohawk as "a truly remarkable man," and say he will be sorely missed, not only for his scholarship and teaching, but for his legendary optimistic demeanor and the consideration and kindness he demonstrated toward others.
Among Mohawk's 20 books are "Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution," co-authored with Oren Lyons; "The Red Buffalo;" and most recently, "Utopian Legacies: A History of Conquest & Oppression in the Western World." He was contributing editor for "A Basic Call to Consciousness," which in 1978 was taken by the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy to a Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in an effort to establish international law standards for rights of indigenous peoples.
He also introduced the use of computer technology, images and music into the telling of the history of indigenous peoples through a multimedia CD-ROM project on American Indian history, "Treacherous Conquests: Chronicles of Race Conflicts in Modernity."
A graduate of Hartwick College, Mohawk received a master's degree in American studies in 1989 and doctorate in 1994, both from UB. He received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Hartwick in 1992.
He was a founding board member of the Seventh Generation Fund and the Indian Law Resource Center, and in 1981 served as a negotiator from the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) in helping resolve the Mohawk Nation's explosive Oka crisis at Racquette Point in southern Quebec. He also represented the Haudenosaunee in negotiations to end conflicts in Colombia and Iran.
Mohawk also was an active member of the Seneca Nation's Salamanca Lease Committee and helped to negotiate the settlement that became the 1988 Salamanca Settlement Act. Mohawk, served on the Seneca Nation Planning Commission and its investment committee, and was member of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy Grand Council.
From 1967-83, Mohawk served as editor of Akwesasne Notes: A Journal for Native and Natural Peoples, known for the past 26 years as "the voice of indigenous peoples." The work of Akwesasne Notes during his editorial tenure was of signal importance to the movement of Indian people seeking human and civil rights. Mohawk's intellectual leadership, grounded in a strong traditional longhouse base, provided the native discussion with clear parameters on which to build.
From 1987-95, Mohawk served as founding editor of Daybreak, a national magazine that focuses on Native American and indigenous topics.
In more recent years, he turned his attention to the worldwide environmental crisis, as well as to the health issues of Native Americans.
He wrote and lectured widely on these subjects and contributed essays to many books and journals on Native American culture, including The Native Americas Journal. For decades—long before the genesis of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Association it spawned—he spoke out on the crisis of globalization and against the homogenization of indigenous cultures and maximum commodity accumulation.
Mohawk also became a proponent of the international "slow-foods" movement, which promotes the reintroduction of slowly digested, often ancient, foods as a means of fighting heart and circulatory disease, tooth decay, obesity and especially diabetes, which is rampant in many native communities.
To this end, he founded and directed the Iroquois White Corn Project (IWCP) and the Pinewoods Cafe, located on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in Irving. IWCP and the Pinewoods Cafe are projects that promote and sell Iroquois white corn products and foods to revitalize indigenous agriculture and to reintroduce the traditional Iroquois diet and to support contemporary indigenous farmers.
Because of his involvement in this movement, he was invited in 2002 to present the keynote talk at the 34th annual commencement of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and School of Medicine.
Mohawk was the husband of the late Yvonne Dion-Buffalo, who also was a member of the American studies faculty.
Friends may call from 7-9 p.m. today and from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. tomorrow at the Wentland Funeral Home, 10634 Main St. (Rt. 62), North Collins. Funeral services will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday at the funeral home and at 10 a.m. at the Long House, Cattaraugus Indian Reservation.
Copyright 2006 by Buffalo Report, Inc.