Across Onondaga Creek, sirens and car horns rang out on the Interstate 81 highway, mere background noise as about 50 people gathered Monday at the creek’s bank to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

To Lance Isaacs, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation, the day represented a time to shift public attention away from Christopher Columbus and to instead commemorate indigenous communities.

“We have to live as we are today and still remember the main thing: taking care of what we’re walking on, our Mother Earth,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs said some thousands more Onondaga people once walked the same grounds where Monday’s group stood. Standing at the head of the group circle, he described a land once densely populated by longhouse villages of the Onondaga people where the creek banks were places for dancing and family.

Now, standing together in the evening cold to perform nine traditional dances and reflect on the history of his people, Isaacs said his family lay with the whole indigenous community and not just members of his tribe.

Much of the event’s dialogue reflected on implications of modern land ownership in a time where social resources have dwindled for the indigenous community. Some people don’t share an interest in preserving their indigenous heritage, Isaacs said. Others don’t participate in seeking out their heritage out of fear that too much of their culture has already been lost, said Ionah Scully, a Syracuse University graduate student and Michel Band member who attended the celebration.

Scully discussed a deep-rooted lack of cultural acceptance by communities across the United States. Pointing to places such as Seattle, Vermont and South Dakota, where Columbus Day has been renamed to Indigenous People’s Day, Scully criticized Syracuse’s reluctance to do the same.

Beyond the holiday’s name, there remains a world of other systemic issues to address, she said. Still, Scully appeared optimistic about the future of reclaiming indigenous rights.

“We have the blueprints from our ancestors and experience to show us how to push back against these injustices and to thrive in that process,” Scully said. “And those blueprints? They are literally in the bodies of us, the bodies of the land, the bodies of water around us.”

Isaacs echoed Scully’s sentiment, once again stressing the importance of a positive outlook for future generations in the community. Andy Mager, a project coordinator for the local community group RiseUp, helped organize the event.

Mager, who is white, referred to indigenous lifestyles and resilience as an example for other communities to learn from in facing issues such as climate change. A positive first step toward acting effectively against climate change and other social justice issues involves detaching colonial ideals and those who represent them from the country’s understanding of history, he said.

“We seek to take responsibility for that and work together with our Onondaga sisters and brothers to create a better future for all of us,” Mager said. “And as part of that, we recognize that we face a deep ecological crisis.”

Separating from colonial ideals was one reason Mager pushed for this year’s gathering to take place on the creek shores, not beneath the shadow of Columbus’ statue in Armory Square, he said.

During the celebration, community members performed a dance that showed an active preservation of other nations’ traditions, Isaacs said. The Onondaga Nation carries on the tradition of the Delaware Nation by performing the Delaware Skin Dance. The day’s dances were only a small glimpse into the nearly 30 existing dances that have been passed down through generations, he added.

“The songs that we sing are the last of that era of those songs,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs said he felt glad to be out in the open, in a place where his voice could touch the places where his ancestors had walked before him. This ancestral connection could be seen in the final dance, as a young woman spun slowly in the center of the circle, performing alone for the last dance of the evening.

Gripping a small drum in his left hand and a soft mallet in his right, Isaacs raised his voice to a defiant tune. Above, patches of blue sky had started to peer out from behind the clouds. Eventually, streams of sun stretched out over the grassy hill and its self-proclaimed caretakers.

“We’ve been here from the beginning, and we’ll be here till the end,” Isaacs said.

Published on October 15, 2019 at 12:13 am

Contact Marnie: ammunozc@syr.edu