Honored with a Blanket

This evening, I received a phone call from a UPS driver, at 9pm, so I toddled off in my PJs to the main door of my apartment building and signed for the package. Once I brought it in and opened it,  I will be honest I started to cry.  I was not expecting a gift of a blanket. As many of you know, in contemporary North American Indigenous culture, receiving a blanket symbolizesa variety of things based on who is gifting the blanket. Most of the time in First Nations cultures, blanket gift-giving acknowledges relationship, honor, respect, and recognition of an individual's achievements. It’s with this blanket, I will carry the comradery and teamwork of Akwe:kon with me.
I am so humbled by Akwe:kon’s generous gift of a blanket. 

I just want to say,  I am so happy to co-founded Akwe:kon and worked with such a variety of dedicated staff from so many divisions. It really is a thing that I will always carry with me in my career and look back on it with joy that  Suzanne and I were able to convince a large organization like NWA to form a collective workgroup to advise on NWA’s reach into Indian Country.

I am so happy that Mel will be leading the charge going forward because I know he will not only bring thoughtfulness but a generosity of spirit in being the servant leader of Akwe:kon. To those of you who may be unaware, I proposed Akwe:kon as our work group’s name, because it means “all of us” in Mohawk. It is that spirit I felt it was important to keep in the collective mind of the organization, that it takes all of us, in collaboration, to do hard work, especially in Indian Country.  And deep down, it tickles me that Mohawk presence will remain after my departure, though the name.(Chuckle)

It could be that I was already primed to cry, because of the announcement that ICWA was saved today. But, like the collective actions of Indigenous people working to save ICWA,  I know our rag-tag team of dedicated and passionate people on Akwe:kon will be able to accomplish so much for the organization.
These are tears of joy. And I want to thank you all.

Akwe:kon enska entitewahwehnon:ni ne onkwa’nikon:ra tanon tenthshitewanonhwera:ton ne Shonkwaia’tison tsi akwe:kon roweienenta:on ne ohwentsia:ke tsi naho:ten tehshonkwa:wi…eh kati’niiohtonhak ne onkwa’nikon:ra.

'Home is the community you belong in'

 Kwe, Bree Herne, iónkiáts. Akwesasne nitewakie:non. Kanien'kehá:ka Wastòn:ke non:we kì:teron.

Hi! I'm Bree Herne, Akwesasne Mohawk, living in Nimpuk and Wamapanoag Territory, known to some of you as Boston, Massachusetts. But home to me will always be my commun I am part of the 78% of Indigenous people living off reservations. I am recognized by the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk)  traditional government, aka the Longhouse of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) as a citizen. I am dually enrolled by both colonial governments of the United States and Canada as a member of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe and Akwesasne Band of Mohawks, I live under occupation. I am a citizen of a Nation that has to carry identity cards to travel within its own territory. The United States and Canada set limits on citizenship of my Nation based on blood quantum, the controversial measurement based on how much Native blood I'm deemed to have, which ignores our own governance. My existence is resistance.

I grew up just off my reservation, which straddles the U.S./Canadian Border, about 10 miles  from Akwesasne on the Canadian side. It was a conscious decision by my parents to live there. My parents were a mixed couple: My dad, was Akwesasne Mohawk, and my Mom is American, of English and Dutch descent. I often kid that my mom's side has been in New York for 400 years, dating back to when it was New Amsterdam, but my dad's side has been there for 40,000 years. They met in Syracuse, New York, after my dad returned from Vietnam in 1968. I'm the youngest of two girls, both born in Cornwall, Ontario.  My parents chose Cornwall because my dad wanted to be close to Akwesasne, and they chose the Canadian side specifically for health care, and public education being superior than New York. They did not reside on the reservation for a couple of reasons: Mixed race couples could not live on the Canadian side of Akwesasne until the 1980s; and there was a big housing shortage on Akwesasne. What little housing that was available wasn't great. 

Housing on Akwesasne has improved over the recent years, however, there's still a shortage. When I was little, I would visit my Aunt Bessie's house. It was like about 10% of the housing on the reservation at that time: poorly insulated, had an outhouse, and the only running water in the house was a hand pump in the kitchen. It was really different from the house I lived in off reservation, a small brick bungalow with an oil furnace and two bathrooms attached to city water and sewer.  I was in university when my Aunt finally got a full bathroom. 

Home isn't a house; home is your community. And my Aunt's house may not have had running water, but it was a home because the community always checked on each other. Her house was not the nicest house in my extended family, but it was where you could find at least four of my 32 cousins at any given point in time. If anyone needed a place to sleep, there was a couch. If you were hungry, there was corn soup and frybread on the stove. And that's what made it a home.

Map of Akwesasne. Credit/McGill University

Housing on Akwesasne is wildly diverse. You will still find rundown stick builds with multiple, non-matching additions like my Aunt's -- mobile homes, both new and old; new, eco-friendly larger houses; and multifamily units. Housing development is hard on reservation land, and it often comes in waves.  It's complicated, due to most reservations being in economically depressed areas, and the difficulty in getting mortgages on reservations, since you cannot mortgage the land, just the building that's on it. On my reservation, it gets even more complicated since the U.S.- Canadian border runs right though the land area. 

My junior year of high school was marked with me applying to University. I was a good student, honor role in advanced classes, mathlete, academic decathlon and I had strong extracurriculars. But I was told by my guidance counselor that I should go to trade school, because Mohawks don't do so well at University. It was the next day that former St. Regis Mohawk Chief Ron Lafrance called me and told me to meet him at Tim Hortons, the doughnut shop near my school, at 3:45 the next day.  So, I did. That is when he looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to Cornell. Fill this out." Chief Lafrance, who'd earned his doctorate from Cornell, was director of the American Indian Program there, and the university had a dorm built for Native Americans in the Iroquois style.  "You are a smart, ambitious kid and you are going," he said. "We need more Mohawks with degrees." That was that; I attended Cornell.

Overall, I am glad I went to Cornell, even if it was just for meeting other Indigenous students from all over the U.S. and Canada, whom I am still in contact with today. Many of us are either working in our home communities or living away from our home communities but working with the Urban Indigenous communities where we do live -- everything from an executive director of tribal government, to founding member of Team Indigenous in World Roller Derby League.

It was at Cornell that I was exposed to more Indigenous experiences, and to the massive wealth disparity that exists in the U.S..  I had to work full time, on top of fulltime classes, while classmates would burn though money like it was nothing. It was at Cornell that I learned that there are people who don't need to take out student loans or work. The first week bartending is when I learned that a good number of my classmates could afford $500 bar tabs, and tip poorly, while I often had to decide between rent and textbooks.  That pissed me off, and I organized the American Indian Science and Engineering Society chapter at Cornell, to fundraise to cover textbook costs. That was probably my first independent action in the community development world, but I didn't see it like that at the time; I just saw it as a way to ease some of the economic pressure off me and my fellow Indigenous students. 

Fast forward a few years, and the Urban Indigenous community here in Boston is how I first learned about NeighborWorks America. I had been tutoring at the Urban Indian Center here, and Suzanne Letendre, the mother of one of my students worked at NeighborWorks. It would be another eight years and me turning down a NeighborWorks summer fellowship to pursue a permanent position at Harvard, before I started working for NeighborWorks fulltime. I had moved from and then back to Boston by then, to enroll in grad school in Public Administration, when I reached out to Suzanne to see if there were any entry level jobs in Community Development, specifically in housing or economic development, that she knew of that I could apply for, because I needed to work while in grad school. The rest of that is history.  I got my master's while working for NeighborWorks; my thesis was on Urban Native Americans and Housing. 
 

Outside of work I've been on the Board of the North American Indian Center of Boston and Allston Brighton CDC, as well Chief Organizer for Boston's Indigenous Women's March, and Indigenous March for Science. I have also been a lead organizer with Medicine Wheel Solidarity Network, a community group made up of Boston Native American community and Settler Allies formed in response to calls for solidarity organizing. Notable actions have been for mutual aid, fundraising and political support for Red Warrior Camp and Camp of the Sacred Stones at Standing Rock, Mauna Kea ʻOhana, Wet'suwet'en Solidarity, and the Tyendinaga Mohawk.

I wanted to work in community development and work to bring attention to community development in Indian Country, both on and off reservation. I am happy that NeighborWorks has committed to expanding its work in Indian Country in its strategic plan, and that it now has Akwe:kon, the Native American working group. Akwe:kon means "all of us" in Kanien'kehá:ka, or Mohawk. It really will take all of us: Indigenous and Non-Indigenous, NeighborWorks and its network members to work to develop partnerships in Indian Country. 

Together we can support Indigenous communities both on and off reservations in developing housing and economic plans that work for them. It is through Akwe:kon that I hope people will learn that every Indigenous community is different and deals with different treaties, land use regulations, economic climates and political climates. Just because you have visited on reservation, doesn't mean you will have a full grasp on any other reservation, nor will it touch on the off-reservation communities. I hope that NeighborWorks and the Network organizations will reach out to their local communities, both reservation and urban, to develop partnerships.  

Being Indigenous isn't about DNA, or blood quantum; it's about your community. Or to put it another way, it's not about what you can claim; it's about who claims you. That is why my dad wanted me and my sister to grow up where we did. It was important to be a part of the community, so even if I did leave, I would still carry it with me. Home is the community you belong in. Any time I go back, I get teased, "where have you been?" Working at NeighborWorks lets me be able to say, "I've been working to try get more resources for home." And while I currently do not live in Akwesasne, they still claim me.

Bree Herne, is senior coordinator for organizational assement for NeighborWorks America.

Tags: massachusetts, northeast region, race equity diversity and inclusion