Video
Guns Across The Lakes- Indigenous Peoples and the End of the War
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the next episode of Guns Across the Lakes my name is Eric Hemenway and I am the director of Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. I am here today at the Mackinac Island Native American Museum at the Biddle House for the Mackinac State Historic Parks Mackinac Island Michigan and in this episode we will be discussing the repercussions the War of 1812 had on tribal nations in the Great Lakes.
Hello, Anii (Continues in native language to introduce himself.)
My native name is the Lynx my English name is Eric Hemenway I am Anishinaabe Odawa and I am from the place of the Prayer Tree aka Crossroads, Michigan and I'm of the Crane Clan. I'm the director of Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians as a historian as an Anishinaabe person, a native person, I have a great interest in the war of 1812. I've studied it not just because of the heroes that I see in the records and in the stories such as Tecumseh and Shingwakoonz and Assiginack other individuals who from my perspective were fighting for our rights to exist in our native lands to uphold our way of life. But then also the repercussions of this war what it had on my communities, on my tribe, on my people, on me as a native person to this very day and those repercussions are very far-reaching they're very strong. And it's something that I don't think the public is very aware of what this war meant after it was over for native peoples in the Great Lakes and not just for native peoples in the Great Lakes but native peoples across the United States. Many warriors from my villages of Middle Village Cross Village, Little Traverse from here in Mackinac they departed east and they departed west to fight they departed to uphold a way of life that had been here since time immemorial since creation. But after the war things changed very drastically for the Anishinaabe, the Odawa, the Potawatomi, and the Ojibwa after the war we couldn't take up arms to defend our ways we had to go into different negotiations and different agreements to keep what we had for thousands of years land, resources, our families. So the change was very quick it was very rapid and it was very severe for the Anishinaabe here in Michigan. Soon after the war more populations that were non-native starting to come onto our lands competing for resources such as land, food, and water and as these populations came in they started to enforce their way of life on us. There was forced assimilation there was this idea that native people were savages and uncivilized and it was the duty of the American Government, society to bring us into quote unquote a civilized state. That means our religion would change, our dress, our housing, our government, how we raised our kids, how we hunted how, he fished, every single thing that made us Anishinaabe
was targeted for change and with this change was the idea of removal. The native people had to be removed from contact with whites it was for their best interests but we all know that wasn't for our best interests it was for our lands so this idea of Indian removal took legal form in 1830 with the Indian Removal Act. This is only 15 years after the war was concluded in 1815. So, within literally 15 years there's this legal mechanism that would effectively remove a hundred thousand native people from their homes east of the Mississippi to west of the Mississippi. These removal treks were often dubbed trail of tears, trail of death because that's just what they were people would die on the move westward and when they got out west they had no resources. You know they didn't know how to hunt they know how to grow so the hardships for many tribes continued on after they were removed so we are fighting to stay home we're fighting to keep our way of life and here in Northern Michigan we avoided removal. But we were targeted for removal in the 1830s they wanted to remove the Odawa, my community, to Kansas but we fought against that and one of the ways that we did fight against that was we got into treaty negotiations and the treaty that really was a hallmark for this area was the 1836 Treaty of Washington, DC and many of the tribal people who fought in the war shifted gears and took up the diplomatic mantle of being treaty negotiators. One such individual that didn't fight in the war for us but it was very influential was this individual here Augustin Hamlin and I very I strongly feel that if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here on Mackinac Island today given this presentation. I would be in Kansas. He was an interpreter for our communities during the 1836 treaty because we needed that individual to honestly interpret what was being said and without him we would have been removed I feel but we were lucky because we had an Augustin some tribes didn't and they did get removed. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois was vacated of their native populations. An individual by the name of Blackhawk he fought in the War of 1812 alongside my ancestors who were Odawa and Ojibwa and Pottawatomie. His story is one of tragedy and sorrow where he was finally removed but after his own conflict called Blackhawks War where the entire tribe was almost extinguished. So here I stand today in the land of my ancestors but it's because of my ancestors I am able to stand here today. The War of 1812 had drastic and long-lasting repercussions for tribes that are still felt to this day. Forced assimilation, Indian boarding schools, reservations, loss of land, language, cultural traditions are all part of that legacy of the War of 1812. Tribes are rebounding they're regaining they're reclaiming. Here on Mackinac Island we have a new installation as part of the Mackinac State Historic Parks the Biddle House. It's the Native American Interpretive Center. Telling more story from a native perspective.
Join us next week for the final installation of Guns Across the Lake at Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial where you'll learn about the conclusion of the war and its repercussions for the United States, Canada, and Tribal Nations. Hello, My native name is the Lynx my English name is Eric Hemenway I am Anishinaabe Odawa and I am from the place of the Prayer Tree aka Crossroads, Michigan and I'm of the Crane Clan. I'm the director of Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians as a historian as an Anishinaabe person, a native person I have a great interest in the war of 1812. I've studied it not just because of the heroes that I see in the records and in the stories such as Tecumseh and ______ and _______ other individuals who from my perspective were fighting for our rights to exist in our native lands to uphold our way of life. But then also the repercussions of this war what it had on my communities on my tribe on my people on me as a native person to this very day and those repercussions are very far-reaching they're very strong. And it's something that I don't think the public is very aware of what this war meant after it was over for native peoples in the Great Lakes and not just for native peoples in the Great Lakes but native peoples across the United States. Many warriors from my villages of Middle Village Cross Village, Little Traverse from here in Mackinac they departed east and they departed west to fight they departed to uphold a way of life that had been here since time immemorial since creation. But after the war things changed very drastically for the Anishinaabe, the Odawa, the Potawatomi, and the Ojibwa after the war we couldn't take up arms to defend our ways we had to go into different negotiations and different agreements to keep what we had for thousands of years land, resources, our families. So the change was very quick it was very rapid and it was very severe for the Anishinaabe here in Michigan. Soon after the war more populations that were non-native starting to come onto our lands competing for resources such as land, food, and water and as these populations came in they started to enforce their way of life on us. There was forced assimilation there was this idea that native people were savages and uncivilized and it was the duty of the American Government, society to bring us into quote unquote a civilized state. That means our religion would change, our dress, our housing, our government, how we raised our kids, how we hunted how, he fished, every single thing that made us Anishinaabe
was targeted for change and with this change was the idea of removal. The native people had to be removed from contact with whites it was for their best interests but we all know that wasn't for our best interests it was for our lands so this idea of Indian removal took legal form in 1830 with the Indian Removal Act. This is only 15 years after the war was concluded in 1815. So, within literally 15 years there's this legal mechanism that would effectively remove a hundred thousand native people from their homes east of the Mississippi to west of the Mississippi. These removal treks were often dubbed trail of tears, trail of death because that's just what they were people would die on the move westward and when they got out west they had no resources. You know they didn't know how to hunt they know how to grow so the hardships for many tribes continued on after they were removed so we are fighting to stay home we're fighting to keep our way of life and here in Northern Michigan we avoided removal. But we were targeted for removal in the 1830s they wanted to remove the Odawa, my community, to Kansas but we fought against that and one of the ways that we did fight against that was we got into treaty negotiations and the treaty that really was a hallmark for this area was the 1836 Treaty of Washington DC and many of the tribal people who fought in the war shifted gears and took up the diplomatic mantle of being treaty negotiators. One such individual that didn't fight in the war for us but it was very influential was this individual here Augustin Hamlin and I very I strongly feel that if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here on Mackinac Island today given this presentation. I would be in Kansas. He was an interpreter for our communities during the 1836 treaty because we needed that individual to honestly interpret what was being said and without him we would have been removed I feel but we were lucky because we had an Augustin some tribes didn't and they did get removed. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois was vacated of their native populations. An individual by the name of Blackhawk he fought in the War of 1812 alongside my ancestors who were Odawa and Ojibwa and Pottawatomie. His story is one of tragedy and sorrow where he was finally removed but after his own conflict called Blackhawks War where the intro time entire tribe was almost extinguished. So here I stand today in the land of my ancestors but it's because of my ancestors I am able to stand here today. The War of 1812 had drastic and long-lasting repercussions for tribes that are still felt to this day. Forced assimilation, Indian boarding schools, reservations, loss of land, language, cultural traditions are all part of that legacy of the War of 1812. Tribes are rebounding they're regaining they're reclaiming. Here on Mackinac Island we have a new installation as part of the Mackinac State Historic Parks the Biddle House. It's the Native American Interpretive Center. Telling more story from a native perspective.
Join us next week for the final installation of Guns Across the Lake at Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial where you'll learn about the conclusion of the war and its repercussions for the United States, Canada and Tribal Nations.
Description
For indigenous peoples the overall impact the War of 1812 on the original inhabitants of the Great Lakes region will be discussed in this week's episode of Guns Across the Lakes featuring Eric Hemenway the Director of Repatriation Archives and Records with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians
Duration
6 minutes, 54 seconds
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