Remarks on Tribal History and Culture

Authors

Brian Patterson, Oneida Nation's Men's Council

First Page

5

Document Type

Article

Abstract

There is a lot to be said in a matter of minutes regarding what has occurred in the past five-hundred years. As we talk about culture, I wonder: What exactly is culture? For what we have been given, for what we have been able to retain is an understanding of who we are as people, of the instructions the Creator has given to all of us on this good Mother Earth. So as we struggle in this day and age, we hear words such as religion, culture, heritage. In my young mind-relatively young-I wonder what this really means when what we were given was a way of life, an understanding, a balance. We knew that the crow did not sing the robin's song; we knew that the quail did not sing a chicken song. We had an understanding that all of life has a balance, a cycle, and an understanding that, to this day, there are many misconceptions of who we are as a people. Unfortunately, because of time constraints I have prepared some discussion points to help me go through our history, which became your history for the past two-hundred twenty years or so.

Recommended Citation

Brian Patterson, Remarks on Tribal History and Culture, 11 St. Thomas L. Rev. 5 (1998).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol11/iss1/4