Sweetgrass and the Mohawk language vanished together from the Mohawk Valley

Evidence

From time beyond memory, Mohawk people inhabited this river valley that now bears their name. Back then the river was full of fish and its spring floods brought silt to fertilize their cornfields. Sweetgrass, called wenserakon ohonte in Mohawk, flourished on the banks. That language has not been heard here for centuries. Replaced by waves of immigrants, the Mohawk people were pushed from this generous valley in upstate New York to the very margins of the country. The once dominant culture of the great Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy was reduced to a patchwork of small reservations. The language that first gave voice to ideas like democracy, women’s equality, and the Great Law of Peace became an endangered species. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 933

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the earlier claim (ch11) that boarding school language bans nearly erased 350 Indigenous tongues, and to ch8 language loss as an ‘endangered species.’ — connects to: Most North American Indigenous languages will be extinct by 2050 — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 679; A grandmother’s prophecy of return drove Mohawk resettlement at Kanatsiohareke — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 942; Old Mohawk lands at Kanatsiohareke are regenerating after logging damage — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 943

Broader Connections

• A grandmother’s prophecy of return drove Mohawk resettlement at Kanatsiohareke #expands (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 942
• Old Mohawk lands at Kanatsiohareke are regenerating after logging damage #expands (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 943