Spatial Survivance: Haudenosaunee Active Presence in the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands

Reconsidering Regions in an Era of New Nationalisms, Anne F. Hyde and Alex Finkelstein, Eds., University of Nebraska Press (2023)

This chapter explores a new-old tradition of the movement of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people within their cultural space. Using Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance (survival + resistance), it demonstrates how Haudenosaunee People have resisted the imposition of the international border drawn through their commons with rituals of return and border crossing. It examines how they have used established settler law (U.S., Canadian, and British) to support their sovereign right of movement. It reveals that this right predates the establishment of these settler states. It postulates that such rituals of border-crossing may actually aide to coalesce their political and cultural unity.