The Significance of Land and Loss in the Creation of Jewish and Native American Ethnic and Religious Identity
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Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE December 2016 Brothers in Blood: the Significance of Land and Loss in the Creation of Jewish and Native American Ethnic and Religious identity Michael Eron Chaness Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Chaness, Michael Eron, "Brothers in Blood: the Significance of Land and Loss in the Creation of Jewish and Native American Ethnic and Religious identity" (2016). Dissertations - ALL. 565. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/565 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT Volunteering at the Onondaga Nation School and collaborating with Chief Jacobs has exposed me to a new and subversive underbelly of American political and religious life. Working on sovereign Native land also provided valuable on the ground experience in Onondaga language and Haudenosaunee culture - food, humor, lacrosse, art, ceremony, government, education etc. Throughout my tenure at Onondaga I have used comparison as the backdrop for my experiences collaborating with Native peoples as well as the methodological backbone for this dissertation project. My dissertation project, Brothers in Blood: the Significance of Land and Loss in the Creation of Jewish and Native American Ethnic and Religious Identity, represents an educational union between Syracuse University and the Onondaga Nation School as much as it explores the historical, theological and political interfaces between American Jews and American Indians. I argue that while the historical maintenance of a social- religious identity, outside a theological context, has caused patterns of Jewish and Native American identity creation to overlap and intersect the incongruities in the lived experiences of Jews in the United States and Natives in the United States arise from competing Jewish, Christian, and Native American orientations to religion, land, and community. Through the prisms of blood, genocide and theology my dissertation examines the interfaces between American Jews and American Indians as they converge and coalesce around patterns of religion, racism and anti-Semitism. Furthermore, I illustrate how these intersections can serve as a nexus for looking at the formation of race and ethnicity in the United States. BROTHERS IN BLOOD: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LAND AND LOSS IN THE CREATION OF JEWISH AND NATIVE AMERICAN ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY By Michael E. Chaness B.A. University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004 M.A. Syracuse University, 2006 M.Phil. Syracuse University, 2009 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion Syracuse University December, 2016 Copyright © Michael E. Chaness 2016 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For E.K. and the students, teachers, parents, administration and custodial crew of the Onondaga Nation School – and for Julia. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS: Preface………………………….…………………………...……….…………..….vi-xxiii Introduction…………………….………………………………….…………...……...1-38 Chapter 1: Method……………….…………………………………………………...39-81 Chapter 2: Blood…………………….……………………………………..………..82-124 Chapter 3: Genocide………………….………………………………………...….125-173 Chapter 4: Theology…………………….……………………………...………….174-213 Epilogue: …………………………….………………………………………...…214-220 Appendix I: IRB Consent Form……………………………………………………221-224 Bibliography…………………………………….…………………...…………….225-235 Vita…………………………………..…………..……...………………………....236-238 v PREFACE Easy knowledge about Indians is a historical tradition.1 Where are you from? “Where are you from?” is a common question in Indian country. For generations, Native peoples have been asking a wide variety of academics, including, but not limited to, historians of religion, anthropologists, sociologists, art historians, psychologists, geographers, geologists, and biologists alike, “where are you from?” In this question, there is a certain beauty in the ambiguity and simplicity illustrative of the subtlety of onk’we’honwe2 communication within mixed company. While “where are you from?” may seem like a simple query, its hidden depths are quite complicated and potentially problematic for the unwary. “Where are you from?” is wrought with the pain and misery of five hundred years of boarding schools, broken treaties, and religious persecution. The humiliation and degradation, shame and scars, Native people have experienced at the hands of missionaries, academics, and government agents have made them wary of outsiders - particularly, those outsiders who come to their territories seeking knowledge surrounding religion and culture. Throughout my fieldwork, I have been asked this question enough times, in enough social settings, by enough Native folk to know “where are you from?” carries in its depths the questions of “who do you think you are,” or “what are you doing 1 Vine Deloria, Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). 5 2 Mohawk for “the original people” but a common term throughout the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. vi here,” or “what do you want?” When these depths are properly navigated, “where are you from?” has the power to invert traditional power dynamics, catalyze cross-cultural exchanges, and cultivate mutual respect and understanding. No matter the context, conquest and colonization dictate that “where are you from?” needs to be handled honestly and thoughtfully, cautiously and carefully. When prodded with this question at Onondaga, I have answered Syracuse, Syracuse University, Chicago, and Ukraine depending on the context of the conversation. Ultimately, only one individual at Onondaga knows all my responses to the depths of this question and his name is Jesse. I have been visiting my friends at Onondaga for over ten years; without their help and cooperation, humor and love, my work would never have been able to mature. This project would not have been possible without the consent and support of certain individuals from the Onondaga Nation. More specifically this project would not be possible without the blessing, assistance, and friendship of Jesse Ray Jacobs - Beaver Clan Chief of the Onondaga Nation. Throughout this project I have used Jesse’s real name instead of assigning him a pseudonym or relying on some other type of subterfuge to disguise or mask his participation. This is the first occasion that Jesse has ever allowed himself to be recorded and he was adamant that if he agreed to go on the record that he wanted to be personally accountable for his words, actions and deeds. Over the years Jesse and I have cultivated a unique relationship that has transcended traditional academic models governing ethnographers and their “key informants.” Jesse is much more than an informant, he is my friend, he is my family and he has become my brother in blood. Even though Jesse is only quoted sparingly our personal relationship (mutual vii trust, curiosity and love of music) anchors this project in constant cycles of exchange and reciprocity. Jesse has one brother and two sisters; his mother, who passed away several years ago, was the Beaver Clan Mother for generations. From the time he was a boy, Jesse was raised in the longhouse tradition. He subscribes to Onondaga values and is plagued by Indian problems. Jesse is intensely proud of his family’s role in maintaining Longhouse traditions even when other families were abandoning their traditional ceremonies for Christianity and their traditional languages for English. Jesse has four children, ages seven, eleven, and nineteen-year-old twins, but is estranged from his children’s mother. Jesse has never been married. He views both the institution of marriage as well as the prospect of procreating with non-Indian women with a great deal of skepticism. Jesse lives along the southwest corner of the Onondaga Nation in a picturesque two-story log cabin I have nicknamed "oasis." The thick woods and hilly terrain make Jesse’s home invisible from the road. “Oasis” can only be accessed via an unmarked, sharp turn from route 11a onto a steep, quarter mile dirt road. The house, with accompanying in ground pool and koi pond, is a mixture between Sherman Alexie’s pain and Norman Rockwell’s romanticism. I have learned the hard way that if there is any snow on the ground, which is often the case during winters in the finger-lakes region of New York, I need to borrow “Big Dave,” my wife’s Trail Blazer, in order to be able to make it up the hill without incident. Although I have visited “oasis” fifty or more times, when it is pitch black outside, it has taken me over twenty minutes of driving back and forth along the same road in order to find it. While Jesse has many visitors — some viii asking for advice, some for favors, and others simply passing through — if you are not looking for the “oasis,” it is impossible to find. At age forty-two, Jesse is still the second youngest of fourteen Onondaga Chiefs. Although he has been in his position for nearly two decades Jesse is still one of the “bench warmers,” or “seat warmers” who is still learning from his elders. Jesse is not a fully condoled Chief nor is he fluent in the Onondaga language. He is approximately 5’10’’, and his weight, depending on his interest in running and Ju-Jitsu Su, fluctuates between a lean and muscular one hundred and eighty pounds and a top-heavy, but still formidable, three hundred and twenty pounds. His skin is dark and his hair is short, black, and unkempt with just a speckling of grey around the temples. He is able to grow a beard, but keeps his face clean-shaven. Jesse’s deep brown eyes can twinkle with kindness, maleficence, and grandeur, darken with loneliness and despair, or redden with fear and loathing. A five-inch scar from his left eye down to his chin is the permanent reminder of youthful transgressions and violence. Under his collarbone is a horrible, dime-sized tattoo of a skull that looks like it was the result of a lost bet.