In a wide-ranging conversation, Doug George-Kanentiio spoke to students and faculty about Indigenous inclusion and reminded listeners of our campus’ connection with the Haudenosaunee people.
To begin the talk, George-Kanentiio played “Prophecy Song” by Joanne Shenandoah, Doug’s late wife. George-Kanentiio explained to listeners that the Iroquois people “achieved a lifestyle where you could go from Long Island to the Pacific shore and you wouldn’t find any place that was contaminated with water that was unfit to drink […] or without minerals extracted by urban removal systems.” George-Kanentiio stresses that it’s possible to learn from that lifestyle “as long as the broad stereotypes that qualify Native people are removed from the American consciousness.”
George-Kanentiio praised Joanne for using music as a way of combatting those racist stereotypes. The powerful sound and lyrics of “Prophecy Song” reflect the strong emotional connection music has to Iroquois culture, which George-Kanteiio emphasized. He asserted that “music permeates this planet” and that the Earth has a movement and a heartbeat to it. Consistent with Iroquois tradition, animals and plants have their own consciousness and share information and knowledge.
George-Kanentiio explained that “Hamilton College is an institution that was established… consistent with the Iroquois principles of learning and our passion for intellectual endeavors.” He went on to credit John Skenendoa for his influence in shaping principles that define Hamilton, because his contributions “have often been obscured by most historians.” He explained that there is a tendency to overlook the efforts of Indigenous people and stated that “you cannot overestimate how much the Iroquois contributed to establishing our nation.” When discussing Hamilton and its roots, George-Kanentiio emphasized the importance of remembering that “Skenandoa was part of a tradition of reaching up and seeking to share knowledge,” a principle that has guided Hamilton since its founding.
George-Kanteniio went on to discuss the responsibilities of the Hamilton community, and the community’s obligation to live by the principles upon which the campus was founded: “The way Hamilton was chartered was to provide for the needs of native and non-native people to learn in a place of mutual respect.” That respect, he argued, goes beyond how we treat each other and extends into how we treat Mother Earth. It is our responsibility to treat her, as well as all other elements of creations — “whether ant or eagle” with equal respect and an “equal standing within the deliberations of humanity.” He explained that there is value in embracing and giving thanks to nature. George-Kanteniio believes that compassion toward the natural world and dedicating ourselves to an intimate, personal relationship with the different elements, as the Iroquois did to create their society, is how “all our needs are met.”
George-Kanteiio spent much of his presentation articulating his dedication to Indigenous inclusion and identifying ways to go about changing our perspective of Native peoples. To do this, he spoke about his partnership with Marvel Studios and his journey to create a positive and accurate representation of Indigenous people within mainstream media. George-Kanteiio recalled being contacted by a producer at Marvel who was “looking for alternative storylines” beyond their niche of male, superhuman protagonists.
He and Joanne set off on a journey to create a character that would envelop the beauty “within the indigenous people in this continent,” and from that came Kahhori of the What If…? series. Though George-Kanteiio’s introduction to this project was born out of a “sometimes problematic” relationship with mainstream media, he praised Marvel’s dedication to truly portray the beauty of the Iroquois people and explained the intricacies of Kahhori’s character. In the Iroquois nation, he explained, “women are the center of everything” and “oversee political, economic, and military lives.” As such, he knew that the character would be a woman who was, consistent with Mohawk people, “taller, healthier, more vigorous than the colonizers.” In order to further refine the representation of Indigenous people in mainstream media, George-Kanteiio insisted that “She couldn’t be beyond human” and stood firm on his belief that “people who saw her in our community should recognize her as one of them. She cannot be sexualized.” Kahhori is adorned in stars that Joanne designed, because “we are humans that took form from this earth” and whose “gift of awareness and consciousness and intellect came from the stars. We are star people.”
In order to capture Mohawk culture, the characters in the episode spoke in Mohawk. “It wasn’t enough to create a storyline. We had to take an aboriginal language and have people speak it the way I’m speaking to you now,” George-Kanentiio continued. The episode serves as a piece of mainstream media that portrays the Mohawk people as articulate, complex human beings and honors Indigenous tradition. In doing this, George-Kanteiio drew closer to “changing the world’s perception of who [the Iroquois] are as people.”
