Turning Pain Into Power: An Interview With Two Mohawk Leaders in the Akwesasne Territory

Here's yet another tradition, from the Haudenosaunee / Six Nations of the Iroquois, that names matriarchy as "Mother Law": Kahnistensera. Put that next to the Minangkabau Adat Ibu, same meaning, in Sumatra.

"Louise Herne McDonald, condoled Bear Clan mother for the Mohawk National Council, is a founding member of Konon:kwe, the circle of Mohawk women working to reconstruct the power of their origins through education, empowerment, and trauma-informed approaches. She champions the philosophy of Kahnistensera, Mother Law, natural law that binds Indigenous kinship society. She is the principal organizer and leader of Ohero:kon, Under the Husk, a traditional rite of passage ceremony for Mohawk youth. She has presented at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and lectures regularly at universities throughout Canada and the United States on Haudenosaunee philosophies and self-determination regarding women. Affectionately known as “Mama Bear,” which is her clan name, McDonald is a distinguished scholar in Indigenous Learning at McMaster University Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching.

Louise Herne McDonald: "I am about 15 years into my position as a Condoled Bear Clan Mother, which means I’m a national bear clan mother. This is a woman leader for our Bear Clan under the chieftainship of “he who is dragging his antlers,” that is, he has acquired, or is condoled, in his position through my write-up nomination. Women install our leaders and also can depose our leaders. So women really have their hands on the national representation of the people.

"Being a Bear Clan Mother has a matrilineal thread that runs back a gazillion years to the time of our creation that began with a Sky Woman that fell from a celestial opening in the Sky World. She came here already with child, and she established within our society a matrilineal thread, or a mother thread. And through the epochs of time there have been certain stories that have been handed down through the generations, and it begins with She who gave birth to a daughter and created the Earth as we know it. And the daughter in turn gave birth to male twins, and when you move forward in time the first man and first woman were created, and human beings began to populate the world.

"And then things went amiss, and along came the Great Thinker. He established within the society of the Haudenosaunee Indigenous people a clanship, or a clan, reflecting the animals that were in our territory, like the bear, the wolf, the turtle, the hawk, the deer. A variety of 14 different clans existed in the confederacy of the Haudenosaunee. From there, after the establishment of the clan system, people started to war and bloodlet, and then along came our Messenger of the Great Peace, who we call the Peacemaker. He took that matrilineal thread and saw its significance, and he didn’t dismiss it like the U.S. Constitution did dismiss the women out of their own governance.

"The Peacemaker saw the brilliance in maintaining the mother line, and he built the foundation to the house, and the men became the walls and the roof, but the women are forever the foundation and they’re also the Supreme Law of the Land, which means there’s a Mother Rite, vested in the mitochondrial DNA and in the cellular level of how a mother can transfer her genetics to her daughter and her son. So the status of who we are as Haudenosaunee follows the mother, which is a maternal order, not a paternal order. So pretty much everything that gets decided or gets set into law, the women have a big voice in it. And there’s different stories within history around the time of confederation with Washington, and Ben Franklin, and all the founding fathers, where they had to address the Founding Mothers of Turtle Island, meaning North America, that the women’s voice should not be dismissed. But it was."

"But things have evolved since then, and women are repositioning their self and their authority. But it’s unfortunate that the patriarchal European male mind could not comprehend the worth of women, and the brilliance of women, and they chose to ignore them; and I think that’s what’s eating away at the world: patriarchy. And, you know, I wouldn’t venture to say that it’s men in general, it’s the mentality that puts the privileged white male at the forefront of our decision making to the detriment of the rest of our society. That’s why the Peacemaker, in order to create balance, included everybody from the smallest child to the oldest elder, our men, our women, our children, we had a participatory governance.

"That’s why they put women at the center to be the representative to the people, and then she appointed a male leader to be the voice to her clan, and she also appointed a nephew who would carry the message from the mother to the chief, and she appointed a male faith keeper or ceremonial keeper, and a woman ceremonial keeper, so that we held in balance our politics and our spirituality, and they were tightly interwoven into each other. Everybody had a say and everybody was represented. There was no canceling of [anybody], and so it was freedom not just for one or for an elite few but for everybody."

"I am about 15 years into my position as a Condoled Bear Clan Mother, which means I’m a national bear clan mother. This is a woman leader for our Bear Clan under the chieftainship of “he who is dragging his antlers,” that is, he has acquired, or is condoled, in his position through my write-up nomination. Women install our leaders and also can depose our leaders. So women really have their hands on the national representation of the people."

Jonel Beauvais, Wolf Clan Mohawk and founder of the Welcome Home Circle, support for women in prison and exited from prison, in the Akwesasne Territory

Jonel Beauvais: Even as an Indigenous woman growing up in Akwesasne, which is also, you know, in between two political bodies — the United States and Canada, our community runs right through that — and so growing up in a very complex political, policed community, I would inevitably be a part of all of those statistics that you would read about Indigenous women: sexual assault, domestic violence, dropped out of high school, very early on addicted to drugs and alcohol, wanting to commit suicide, and so it was just kind of like I was just following through and not understanding that there was anything beyond these adversities.

And I [found] myself sitting in New York State’s only maximum security prison for women, and I had a court sentence me to 12 1/2 years in this maximum security prison. I had three small kids, and I was struggling to find my way out of this sentence, and thankfully I was able to get the state to appoint me a lawyer to help me fight this case. And just before I go to prison my mother dies from uterine cancer, and I have three small babies, and so my life is just really crumbling, and I don’t understand in that moment in my own infancy in my womanhood, you know, why was I losing my mother, why was I going to prison? I was a single mother trying to get out of a toxic relationship, and I was trying to do all the right things, and there was no backup, there was no support. And the women of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility really taught me a lot. They really taught me a lot about spirit and humanity, and environment.

Beauvais: ... in prison it’s hard. Cash support is hard, and it’s expensive, and me being so far away from my community and my children. Prison really killed a certain spirit in me, and I didn’t really see myself living out those years in there and wanted to just end it, I just wanted to end it, I was nine months into my sentence and I said I don’t want to do these 12 1/2 years, and I was just gonna, you know, hang myself in my cell …

Morgan: But you didn’t. You came out, somehow, miraculously, and you now work with formerly incarcerated women, and you’ve won all sorts of awards and international attention for doing so. I mean, this is extraordinary. Talk about that.

Beauvais: You know what, it really is extraordinary, and I think I’m really learning to appreciate the extraordinary-ness about it. But when you’re in it, you just feel like, you know, everything’s falling apart and you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen next. You buckle down and learn something about yourself in survival mode, and you learn what you tell yourself, or how you were taught to survive, or how you chose to cope, or how you chose to react, or what you denied yourself, and you think about all those things looking back. Thankfully, I was able to get out of prison, and I didn’t have to do those 12 1/2 years. Then in the transitioning of me coming out of an institution and back into the community, I thankfully landed myself at a community event where Louise was conducting and facilitating a women’s talking circle, and there [were] all these revered women, nurses and police officers and public officials, and they were just these really worthy women, and I was just this, you know, Department of Corrections New York State property of Bedford Hills; 11G0437 was my Department of Corrections number. I had no worth, I felt unworthy.

As a result of that circle, those women, they rallied around me, and Louise asked them to sing me a song, and to send me good wishes, and to welcome me home. As a result of the camaraderie of those women underneath that tent at that ceremony, here I am eight years later completely thriving, absolutely, proudly working alongside these women and many more. So it has really been about me getting here extraordinarily off the backs of primarily black women and Indigenous women cultivating their strength, using their positions of power and absolutely putting their hand back down and helping the next woman get on top of things. It’s definitely saved my life and I’m sure many others.

Morgan: And making it visible, because now you’re a member of Section 84 Parole Board of Akwesasne, and a council which is a restorative justice initiative integrating Indigenous ways of mediation to reduce incarceration, and to provide a more interpersonal means of healing for both parties. This is grounding that vision in pragmatic, practical reality. And then also the coalition that you’re part of, the Seven Dancers Coalition, does community outreach that educates tribal communities and service providers through trainings and preservations on sexual assault, domestic violence, campus safety, teen dating, sex trafficking, and stalking. So it’s not surprising that you got the 2020 Visionary Voice Award nominated by the New York State Council Against Sexual Assault. I mean, you’re doing remarkable work.