|
Talk on Guswentah (Two Row Wampum) Time:
7:00 pm
Date:
May 22, 2012
Program Type (if applicable):
Lectures
Featured on Front Page?:
not featured
Featured on Calendar?:
Featured on Calendar
Talk on Guswentah (Two Row Wampum) Guswentah (Two Row Wampum) is the focus of an intriguing multidisciplinary talk. Historical and contemporary perspectives on wampum will be offered by Dr. Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora), Dr. Jon Parmenter, and renowned artist Alan Michelson (Mohawk). Admission is free and open to the public. The weaving of wampum belts is a sort of writing; the designs of beads denote different ideas according to a definitely accepted system. Woven belts of wampum commemorate treaties and historical events. They have also been created for exchange in personal social transactions. The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, the founding constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, was codified in a series of wampum belts. The flag of the Iroquois Confederacy is a wampum-belt design. And to the Haudenosaunee, wampum is sacred. The Two Row Wampum treaty, also known as Guswentah, is an agreement made between representatives of the Five Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and representatives of the Dutch government in 1613 in what is now upstate New York. Its two purple bands symbolize two paths or two ships, one of the Haudenosaunee, the other of the Europeans. “In our canoe we have all our laws, culture, and beliefs, and in your vessel you shall have all your laws, culture, and beliefs, traveling side by side through life as equals, never enforcing or interfering in each others affairs as long as the sun shall shine, the grass shall grow and the rivers shall flow this will be everlasting,” as the message is rendered on the Ganienkeh (Mohawk) Territory Council Fire website. The treaty is considered by the Haudenosaunee to be the basis of all their subsequent treaties with European and North American governments, including the Covenant Chain treaty with the British in 1677 and the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States in 1794. Leading the discussion will be Jolene Rickard, professor of art history at Cornell University, and Jon Parmenter, professor of history at Cornell, and artist Alan Mickelson. Mr. Mickelson installed his monumental work, Third Bank of the River, 2009, at the new U.S. Port of Entry in Massena, NY. Made of colored ceramic glass on glass and measuring 5 feet by over 40 feet long, it consists of panoramic views of the St. Lawrence River shorelines and three entities—Canada, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, and the U.S.—at the complex border. The work bridges two sources: panoramic river tourist guides and the Two Row Wampum. The Two Row Wampum continues to function as a meaningful symbol to contemporary Akwesasne, whose reserve straddles the border.
Featured:
not featured
Image 1:
|
