A Museum With Exhibits Featuring Artifacts And Short Films Telling The Story Of The Haudenosaunee People
Gregg Tripoli was new to his job as the executive director of the Onondaga Historical Association in Syracuse, New York, when he happened to meet an Onondaga clan mother at an event. When he introduced himself as head of the local history museum, he was shocked at her reply: “Oh, you have the bones of my ancestors in your museum.”
Tripoli soon discovered that the archives of the association did indeed include human remains, as well as a pretty serious collection of sacred objects. “Many were collected over 100 years ago by the founder of the historical association,” Gregg tells The Buzz. “He was considered the Father of Archeology in New York State and often excavated Native American graves.”
Concerned by the ethics of the situation, Tripoli began the delicate negotiations that eventually resulted in one of the largest voluntary repatriations of sacred artifacts and remains to a Native Nation to date. From the relationships he developed grew another idea: a museum dedicated to the history and traditions of the Haudenosaunee people, Native American tribes known to the European settlers as the Iroquois Confederacy or the League of Six Nations.
“The Haudenosaunee were one of the most influential tribal groups for over 1,000 years,” Tripoli says. “Their power extended over to the Ohio River Valley, up to Canada and down to the Carolinas. There were six tribes in the league, but the spiritual center of the Haudenosaunee was here on the shores of Onondaga Lake.” The Onondaga Nation, which lived by the lake, was called the Central Fire of the confederacy, keepers of the traditions and ceremonies of their people.
“The Haudenosaunee had the first representative democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” Tripoli says. “They were a truly egalitarian society, organized along matrilineal lines. The Clan Mothers were the equivalent of the judiciary.”
Tripoli says the Haudenosaunee had a huge influence on the Founding Fathers of the young United States. “John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin all met with these tribes and wrote about their democratic traditions and the ways they maintained the peace between the tribes. The Bundle of Arrows and the ceremony of Burying the Hatchet are both Haudenosaunee ideas. Franklin printed a pamphlet about these traditions that helped the 13 colonies come together and form a more perfect union.” Even the eagle is a Haudenosaunee symbol, perching at the top of their great Tree of Life.
Another Founding Father, George Washington, was not so keen on the Haudenosaunee. According to tribal elders as well as historical documents, the general ordered a genocide against the tribes after the Revolutionary War, intending to seize their lands to give to his veterans. Many Onondaga were killed, their crops ruined and their longhouses burned, a wrong still remembered by the tribe.
Gregg Tripoli worked for nearly a decade with the Onondaga elders, both male and female, along with representatives from surrounding universities and various governmental agencies, to iron out the details of the new museum. “The fact that so many different parties were at the table and were able to agree was pretty amazing,” he admits. “Slowly we built a relationship based on trust and honesty.”
Skä•noñh, The Great Law of Peace Center, opened on the shores of Onondaga Lake in late 2015. “We wanted to tell the story of the Haudenosaunee in their own words,” says Dan Connors, general manager of the center. “Our exhibits are based around short films that show the chiefs and clan mothers telling the stories of their people. They come from a tradition of oral history and are great storytellers.” Pronounced “Skano,” the center’s name means peace and wellness in the Haudenosaunee language.
Stories told at the center include the Creation story of Turtle Island, the Native American name for North America, the ceremony of Thanksgiving for the natural world, and the coming of the Peacemaker, who with his helper Hiawatha, helped unite the tribes in peace. The true story of Hiawatha, a great orator of the Onondaga people, has nothing to do with Longfellow’s poem, according to Gregg Tripoli.
“I guess Longfellow just liked the name,” he says. “The original Hiawatha was grieving for his daughters and consoled himself making strings of beads to help remember them. This is the origin of wampum, which was not used as currency, but as an aide to memory.”
Dan Connors says that other exhibits at the museum detail the encounters between the incoming Europeans and the Haudenosaunee. Outside is a recreation of a Jesuit mission, founded by the lake in the 1650s. “It was the first permanent European settlement in this area,” Connors says. “It lasted less than two years.” The Jesuits, tribal elders recall, did not come in peace.
Connors says that although the museum is not artifact-based, it does display examples of beadwork and basketry of a non-ceremonial nature, as well as beaver pelts, axe heads, the model of a longhouse and wooden lacrosse sticks. “Lacrosse was first played 1,000 years ago, when the Creator told the tribes to play this game instead of going to war,” he explains. Today, a lacrosse festival is the center’s biggest event of the year, and the sport is spreading around the world.
Frieda Jacques, an Onondaga Clan Mother, is one of the elders who contributed to the center’s storytelling films and is generally pleased with the result. “The stories told there are ones that most people don’t get from their education,” she says. “We had a great influence on democracy and also on the suffragette movement. Our women have voices and a place in governing. We inspired Matilda Gage [an early proponent of women’s suffrage], who lived not far from here.”
Frieda says there are more stories to be told, but thinks the Skä•noñh Center is a good start. “It tells our history from our own vantage point, and corrects some misconceptions,” she says. “People are inspired to look into the true story of the Native American peoples.”
Renee Wright
A graduate of Franconia College in Social Psychology, Renee has worked as Travel Editor for Charlotte Magazine and has written three travel guidebooks for Countryman Press among other writing assignments. She enjoys food and camping.
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