In the heart of the Mohawk nation is Akwesasne, or “Land Where the Partridge Drums.” A 25-square-mile reservation that spans the St. Lawrence River and the international border between northern New York and Canada, Akwesasne is home to about 8,000 Mohawks.
I’m riding the Akwesasne reservation roads with Katsi Cook, Mohawk midwife turned environmental justice activist. It is two o’clock in the morning, and Katsi is singing traditional Mohawk songs. Loud, so strong, is her voice. We are driving between Katsi’s meetings, planes, and birth practice. The birthing chair she uses is wedged in her trunk between our suitcases. Her stamina is almost daunting. That may be the gift of a life-bringer, a midwife—all that power of birth and rebirth, which stays in your presence month after month. (Or, perhaps, it is just that she is a Mohawk. And, as Katsi jokes, if you want something done, get a Mohawk to do it.) My head droops to the side as we careen down the country roads of upstate New York, and my attention rivets back to her words, her company. Katsi is alternating between singing and explaining to me the process of bioaccumulation of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in breast milk. A combination of Mother Theresa and Carl Sagan.
She comes from a family whose tradition feeds her political work, and from a community with a long history of political resistance. “My father, mother, and grandparents of past generations distinguished themselves as political and cultural activists, who upheld community service as one of their highest standards,” she explains. “My grandmother Elizabeth Kanatines [She Leads the Village] Cook, a traditional midwife, delivered me and many of the babies in my generation at the Mohawk territory at Akwesasne. My father, William Rasenne Cook, organized a cooperative at Akwesasne among the farmers and consumers. He also organized the peaceful ousting of New York State enforcement jurisdiction on our lands in 1948.”1
Well, some things change, and some things do not. The Mohawks and Katsi Cook can tell you that. She is cut of the same cloth.
So it is that a culture and identity that are traditionally matrilineal will come into conflict with institutions that are historically focused upon their eradication. Katsi Cook, Wolf Clan mother and an individual who strives to uphold those traditions, finds that she must confront some large adversaries. Besides “catching babies,” as she calls it, and raising her family of four children (the oldest of whom, Howie, bore her first grandchild in the Winter of 1998), Katsi finds herself in a stand-off against her adversary, one of the largest corporations in the world: General Motors (GM). At its Massena, New York, power train plant, General Motors has left a Superfund site—one with approximately 823,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated materials. GM has tainted the land, water, and ultimately the bodies of the Mohawk people, their babies included. Katsi’s work is precedent-setting environmental justice work that links the intricate culture of the Mohawk people to the water, the turtles, the animal relatives, and ultimately the destruction of the industrialized General Motors Superfund site. “Why is it we must change our lives, our way of life, to accommodate the corporations, and they are allowed to continue without changing any of their behavior?” she asks.
Mohawk legend says that at one time the earth was one, never-ending ocean. One day, a pregnant woman fell from the sky. A flock of swans carried her down to earth, gently placing her on the back of a large sea turtle. Some beavers then swam to the bottom of the ocean and picked up some soil and brought it back to this woman so she could have some dry ground on which to walk. She then walked in an ever-widening circle on the top of the turtle’s back, spreading the soil around. On this giant turtle’s back the earth became whole. As a result, North America is known today by the name Turtle Island.
As in the creation legend, the turtle remains the bedrock of many ecosystems. But snapping turtles found at so-called Contaminant Cove on the Akwesasne reservation contained some 3,067 parts per million (ppm) of PCB contamination; others were found with 2,000 ppm PCB contamination. (According to EPA guidelines, 50 ppm PCBs in soil is considered to be “contaminated.”) The story of how that turtle became contaminated in many ways mirrors the story of the Mohawk people of Akwesasne.2
The Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, is among the most ancient continuously operating governments in the world. Long before the arrival of the European peoples in North America, our people met in council to enact the principles of peaceful coexistence among nations and in recognition of the right of peoples to a continued and uninterrupted existence. European people left our council fires and journeyed forth in the world to spread principles of justice and democracy which they learned from us and have had profound effects upon the evolution of the Modern World.
—Haudenosaunee Statement to the World, April 17, 19793
The Mohawk people, like other Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations peoples, have lived in the eastern region of the continent for many generations. The Mohawks themselves are referred to as the Keepers of the Eastern Door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—the People of the Flint. It is said that the Six Nations peoples were once virtual slaves to the neighboring Algonkin peoples. Amidst their agricultural economy, they’d labored long and hard to pay the heavy tolls imposed upon them by the Algonkin.
But as the story goes, between miracles and sheer determination, the Six Nations peoples came to prosper in the region. As the generations passed, the differences grew between the peoples, and they divided into the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora—the Six Nations. Early in their history, the great prophet Aiionwatha created the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, one of the most prominent and far-reaching forms of government ever created on the face of the earth. From this form of government came the concepts of constitutional government and representative democracy, the very foundation of the principles of the new American state. This form of government remains today in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
The Mohawk Nation expanded under the principles of the Great Law, established by Aiionwatha’s teacher, the Great Huron Peacemaker. That law, Kaienarakowa (the Great Law of Peace and the Good Mind), upholds principles of kinship, women’s leadership, and the value of the widest possible community consensus. Through these teachings and many others, the Mohawks eventually established communities scattered over 14 million acres of land that straddle what would become the U.S.-Canada border. These lands would come to be home for seven major communities—Kahnawake, Kanehsatake, Akwesasne, Ganienkeh, Tyeninaga, Ohsweken, and Wahta.
While new American leaders such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin studied the Haudenosaunee government, they also engaged in land speculation over territory held by these peoples, and Mohawk lands were ceded through force, coercion, and deceit until fewer than 14,600 acres remained in New York State. By 1889, 80 percent of all Haudenosaunee land in New York State was under lease to non-Indian interests and individuals.4
For the Mohawks, words were not enough to defend their land. During the 1900s, additional land and jurisdiction grabs continued in Mohawk communities, along with Mohawk resistance to them. Whether through Katsi’s father or the armed take-overs and struggles in the Mohawk communities of Ganienkeh (1974), Kahnawake (1988), or Kanehsatake (1990), the Mohawks have been vigilant in their commitment to their land, way of life, and economy.
Faced with heavy impacts on their traditional economy, the Mohawks adapted economically. First, as legendary high-steel workers, they built much of the infrastructure for eastern cities. Then, in more recent years, they have creatively used their strategic position on the national border to tap into the controversial “export-import” business, traversing colonial borders that separate the various Mohawk communities.
The Mohawks are also adept at both maintaining and recovering their culture and way of life. The Akwesasne Freedom School is foundational to that process. An independent elementary school run by the Mohawk Nation, the school was founded in 1979 by Mohawk parents concerned that their language and culture would slowly die out. In 1985, Mohawk-language immersion began. The Mohawk “Thanksgiving Address,” which teaches gratitude to the earth and everything upon it, is used as the base of the curriculum. The students study the Mohawk ceremonial cycle, as well as reading, writing, math, science, and history, combining solid academics with Mohawk culture. “The prophecies say that the time will come when the grandchildren will speak to the whole world. The reason for the Akwesasne Freedom School is so that the grandchildren will have something significant to say,” explains Sakokwenionkwas, or Tom Porter, a Mohawk chief.5 (Porter is also known for his recovery of traditional land. Leading some Mohawks into a different part of their traditional territory, Porter has successfully purchased some land and, with a number of traditional families, is in the process of restoring their village, in their own terms, and in their own way.)
Environmental struggles have also been a part of Mohawk history. In the 1950s, while Indian people nationally were mired in efforts to oppose termination, 130 acres of Akwesasne were flooded by the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and in 1967, 9,000 acres were flooded by the notorious Kinzua Dam project in upstate New York, which affected Seneca communities. In 1958, the New York State Power Authority attempted to seize half of the Tuscarora reservation; when the Tuscaroras physically blocked access to the site, “a ‘compromise’ was then implemented in which the state flooded ‘only’ 560 acres, or about one-eighth of the remaining Tuscarora land.”6
There is, through all of this, very little land left for the Mohawks and the Haudenosaunee. The St. Lawrence River, called Kaniatarowaneneh, which means “Majestic River” in Mohawk, has been the wellspring for much of Mohawk life. It has also been the target for much of the industrialism in the region. In 1903, the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) established a factory a few miles west of Akwesasne. Less than 30 years later, a biological survey noted serious local pollution problems. That was just the beginning.
In 1949, the St. Lawrence Seaway and Moses-Sanders Power Dam were built and hailed as the eighth wonder of the world. Dams and locks allowed huge ships to enter the Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean and produced cheap hydro-electric power that lured giant corporations to the St. Lawrence. In the late 1950s, General Motors, Reynolds, and Domtar (in Canada) became the Mohawks’ neighbors, and the majestic river became a toxic cesspool.
In 1959, Reynolds established an aluminum plant one mile southwest of Akwesasne, and within a decade the facility was emitting fluorides into the atmosphere at a rate of 400 pounds per hour. In 1973, pollution control devices reduced this level of emissions to 75 pounds per hour, but the cost of the pollution was high.7
According to Dr. Lennart Krook and Dr. George Maylin, two veterinarians from Cornell University, Mohawk farmers suffered severe stock losses of their dairy herds in the mid-1970s due to poor reproductive functions and fluorosis, a brittling and breakage of teeth and bones, which they found were linked to the fluoride emissions.8 Additional studies have shown that area vegetation suffered as well. The impact on area wildlife is still unknown.9
Today, an estimated 25 percent of all North American industry is located on or near the Great Lakes, all of which are drained by the St. Lawrence River.10 That puts the Akwesasne reservation downstream from some of the most lethal and extensive pollution on the continent.
Canada has singled out the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation from 63 Native communities in the Great Lakes basin as the most contaminated—a dubious honor. On the American side of the border, things aren’t much better. Until the mid-1980s, five saturated lagoons and a number of PCB-filled sludge pits dotted GM’s 258-acre property, adjacent to the reservation.11
Until 1978, when PCBs were banned, all of these companies used PCBs. Virtually all of those PCBs ended up in the surrounding water, soil, or air. Many of them have ended up in the fish, plants, and people of the Mohawk territory. An insidious chemical known to cause liver, brain, nerve, and skin disorders in humans, shrinking testicles in alligators, and cancer and reproductive disorders in laboratory animals, PCBs are one of the most lethal poisons of industrialized society.
Studies of PCB contamination of alligators in the Everglades indicate a problem called emasculization—shrinking testicles in subsequent generations. A study of boys in Taiwan born to mothers exposed to PCBs found that they also had smaller penises. Studies of polar bears in the Arctic indicate dropping reproduction rates associated with PCB contamination, a concern in animals that are already threatened with extinction.12 It will take a while for most Americans to consume levels of PCBs capable of causing such damage. But what happens if a segment of the population does become affected? Most of the information regarding the effects of PCBs and dibenzofurans on human health is based on accidental poisonings.
In Japan in 1968 and in Taiwan in 1979, thousands of people accidentally ingested PCB-contaminated rice oil, which contained PCB concentrations as high as 3,000 ppm. In Taiwan, 12 of 24 people died from liver diseases and cancers. Following both incidents, many people suffered from a severely disfiguring skin acne. Other problems included the suppression of the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to many diseases. Thirty-seven babies born to PCB-poisoned Taiwanese women suffered from hyperpigmentation, facial swelling, abnormal calcification of the skull, low birth weight, and overall growth retardation. Eight of the infants died from pneumonia, bronchitis, or general weakness.13
Similarly, recent studies of malignant breast tumors indicate that PCBs may be linked to breast cancer. Researchers in Hartford, Connecticut, found that malignant breast tumors contained more than 50 percent as many PCBs as were found in the breast fat of women the same age and weight who did not have cancer.14 Wayne State University’s Joseph and Sandra Jacobson’s study of 212 children reported worrisome data showing learning deficits in children who had the highest, although still modest, exposures to PCBs in the womb. Those children were reported to have scored about six points lower on IQ tests and also lagged behind on achievement tests that rely on short-term memory, planning ability, and sustained attention. Their word comprehension fell six months behind that of their less exposed 11-year-old peers. Of the 212 children that were studied, 167 had been born to women who had eaten a modest amount of fish—at least 11.8 kilograms of Lake Michigan salmon or lake trout during the six years preceding their children’s births.15
PCB Contamination at Akwesasne
In 1979, the Haudenosaunee called for thoughtful ways of living and issued the following statement to the world:
Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides. The insecticides kill the black flies, but also destroy much of the food chain for the bird, fish, and animal life which also inhabit those regions.
The fish of the Great Lakes are laced with mercury from industrial plants, and fluoride from aluminum plants poisons the land and the people. Sewage from the population centers is mixed with PCBs and PBS in the watershed of the great lakes and the Finger Lakes, and the water is virtually nowhere safe for any living creature.16
In 1981, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation blew the whistle on General Motors’ dumping of PCB-contaminated materials, reporting that there was “widespread contamination of local groundwater” by PCBs and heavy metals such as lead, chromium, mercury, cadmium, and antimony. Several Mohawks lived less than 100 yards from the General Motors facility. At least 45 Mohawk families drew their water from area wells, while over 200 families relied on water from an intake on the St. Lawrence River, which was only a half-mile from the GM plant.17
In October of 1983, after 25 years of dumping toxics, General Motors was fined $507,000 by the EPA for unlawful disposal of PCBs—in total, 21 violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA. Among the charges, General Motors was cited for ten counts of unlawful disposal of PCBs and 11 counts of unlawfully using PCB-laden oil in a pumphouse with no warning sign. At that time, GM received what was the highest EPA fine levied against a U.S. company for violations of the TSCA. The EPA placed the GM site on the National Priority List of Superfund sites that urgently need cleanup.18
But the EPA’s early resolve quickly eroded. The latest battle with General Motors has been over regulatory gymnastics and some interesting redesignations of what the EPA admits is a very dangerous site. The EPA estimated that it could cost $138 million to clean up the GM site, but during the mid-1990s has balked and backed down, redesignated and allowed for new proposals, proposals which would save General Motors a considerable amount of money. In August of 1990, the EPA suggested that “containment” rather than “treatment” can be appropriate for industrial sites contaminated with PCBs between 10 and 500 ppm. The redesignation by EPA meant that GM would have to dredge and/or treat only 54,000 cubic yards of contaminated soils, in contrast to the 171,00 cubic yards it currently has on-site or in nearby rivers and creeks. This redesignation of the numbers has saved General Motors over $15 million dollars in cleanup costs.19
“In one core sample of the river bottom at the GM site we tested, we found over 6,000 ppm of PCBs,” says Dave Arquette, an environmental specialist with the tribe. “GM put sand and gravel over those areas and considers that to be a permanent cap,” he adds.20 Today, the GM dump site is landscaped and covered with grass. But absent a liner under the waste, the GM contaminants still leach into the majestic river. The GM landfill “frustrates Tribal environmental standards applicable within the same ecosystem only a few feet away,” according to the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment.21 “Capping is to cover up, not a cleanup,” says an exasperated Jim Ransom of the Task Force.22 The tribe’s position is that the Mohawk PCB standard of 0.1 parts per million be applied to the entire cleanup, not just Mohawk land.
“This is a classic environmental justice site,” says Ken Jock, a director of the Akwesasne Environment Program. A slight man, with soft eyes and a quiet manner, he spends much of his time arguing with agencies about implementation of the law. His huge office is full of reports and photos documenting the extent of the contamination. The reports, photos, and sheer size of the Akwesasne Environment Program dwarf the infrastructure of most Indian nations in the country. Yet it seems that even with reams of paper, the action taken by federal agencies is minimal. “This all used to be a fishing village. That’s all gone now. There’s only one family that still fishes,” Jock says. “We can’t farm here because of all of those air emissions. Industry has pretty much taken the entire traditional lifestyle away from the community here.”23
Today, 65 percent of the Mohawks on Akwesasne reservation have diabetes, says Jock. Henry Lickers, director of the environmental health branch of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne echoes Jock: “Our traditional lifestyle has been completely disrupted, and we have been forced to make choices to protect our future generations,” says Lickers. “Many of the families used to eat 20–25 fish meals a month. It’s now said that the traditional Mohawk diet is spaghetti.”24
“The fact is that women are the first environment,” says Katsi. “We accumulate toxic chemicals like PCBs, DDT, Mirex, HCBs, etc., dumped into the waters by various industries. They are stored in our body fat and are excreted primarily through breast milk. What that means is that through our own breast milk, our sacred natural link to our babies, they stand the chance of getting concentrated dosages.” When the Mohawks found this out in the early 1980s, Katsi explains, “We were flabbergasted.”25
Katsi Cook and other Mohawk women wanted to know the extent of their risk. In the Fall of 1984, Katsi went to the office of Ward Stone, a wildlife pathologist. Stone’s work documented toxicity in animals in the St. Lawrence/Mohawk/GM ecosystem and has been very influential internationally in the study and cleanup of the Great Lakes region. Stone showed that beluga whales of the St. Lawrence River carry some of the highest body burdens of toxic chemicals in the world and suffer from a host of problems, including rare cancers and pronounced disease and mortality among young whales. These whales have a reproductive success rate one-third that of belugas in the Arctic Ocean.26 Katsi also went to the office of Brian Bush, a chemist at the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research at the New York State Department of Health in Albany. She explained the concerns of the Mohawk women.
In 1985, Katsi helped create the Akwesasne Mothers’ Milk Project in an effort to “understand and characterize how toxic contaminants have moved through the local food chain, including mothers’ milk,” as Katsi wrote. “You’re not going to find a lot of women that went away to the universities and then came back to the community with degrees in environmental engineering,” Katsi says. “It’s hard to get the women involved although they are so impacted by all of this.... Now [with the Mothers’ Milk Project] the women are learning to apply science in their everyday lives.”
Katsi’s persistence, along with the work of Henry Lickers and Jim Ransom, former director of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribes Environmental Office, evolved into a bioaccumulative analysis of the entire food chain at Akwesasne, from fish to wildlife to breast milk. The collaborative epidemiological research project that ultimately resulted from Katsi’s work was one of a scant 11 Superfund studies funded by the U.S. Congress, and the only one focused on human health.
Under Katsi’s supervision, the research project studied 50 new mothers over several years and documented a 200 percent greater concentration of PCBs in the breast milk of those mothers who ate fish from the St. Lawrence River as opposed to the general population. “But their PCB levels came down after they stopped eating fish,” Katsi explained. “I’ve got myself 0.108 parts per billion of mirex [a flame retardant], 22 parts per billion PCBs, 0.013 parts per billion HCBs, and 13.947 parts per billion DDC [a pesticide related to DDT] in my breast milk,” Katsi said in an early 1990s interview, acknowledging the personal nature of the concern.27 Related studies of fetal umbilical cord samples showed similar results. Subsequent studies indicated a decline generally, a result of the mothers reducing the consumption of natural foods.28
The Mohawk officials reassured the community to continue breast feeding their infants in spite of high levels of toxic contamination in the local fish and wildlife. But this advice was only viable because of the drastic reduction in the amount of fish consumed in the community.
Mohawk mothers voiced their anger at the contamination and the impact on their way of life. “Our traditional lifestyle has been completely disrupted, and we have been forced to protect our future generations. We feel anger at not being able to eat the fish. Although we are relieved that our responsible choices at the present protect our babies, this does not preclude the corporate responsibility of General Motors and other local industries to clean up the site,” Katsi charges.
“The beauty of the response of the mothers,” Katsi says, “is that they saw everything in a bigger picture. Many of us bless the seeds, pray to com, and continue a one-on-one relationship with the earth.” That process of remembering and restoring the relationship between people and the earth is a crucial part of healing the community from the violations of the industry in their way of life.
But “GM has been fighting us every step of the way,” she says. In 1997, General Motors sat at the top of the U.S. Fortune 500 list. It also sat on top of the world’s Fortune 500 list. Not bad. So it’s not like they couldn’t spring some money for cleanup. But instead, they have fought the Mohawks’ water, air, and soil quality, and pushed for more lenient cleanup.
Part of the Mohawks’ challenge is navigating the many jurisdictions and global corporations that have a stake in the region, as a bizarre result of colonialism. Akwesasne contends with two federal governments—Canada and the United States. Then there are two other governments—the province of Quebec and New York State. Then there are several separate Mohawk jurisdictions, those recognized by the U.S. and Canadian federal governments, and the traditional Mohawk government. It seems that between them, no one can really make any progress. “New York State doesn’t care, because as far as they’re concerned, we’re not part of New York State, we might as well be in Canada,” says Ken Jock.29 Canada views the problem as originating on the other side of the border, and among all of them, there seems to be limited application of the law. Except, that is, the law according to GM.
The Mohawk relations with GM, however, are not unique. In 1994, GM was hailed by Multinational Monitor as one of the ten worst corporations in the world and profiled in the illustrious Corporate Hall of Shame. GM was called on the carpet for the infamous exploding gas tanks, this time not on a Ford Pinto, but on a GM pickup. Two years before, the Council on Economic Priorities listed General Motors as a bad boy as well, mostly because of toxic releases.30 In its annual rankings in the Campaign for Cleaner Corporations, the council and a jury of investors, academics, religious institutions, and activists determine the largest culprits in relation to the environment. GM came in number two, after Cargill. In 1988 and 1989, for instance, GM released nearly three times as much toxic material into the environment as Ford Motor Company, its principal competitor. The company is also potentially responsible for about 200 Superfund sites.31
And the Mohawks’ problems with GM are no longer just local problems for Mohawks; they are of urgent international concern. The national movement to stem the impact of PCBs and other toxic contamination, now often called “POPs,” or persistent organic pollutants, is increasingly turning to international forums. POPs are airborne, ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and are present in every segment of our environment. Theo Colburn, chief scientist to the World Wildlife Fund and author of Our Stolen Future, illuminates the scope of the problem in some remarks given at the State of the World Forum in 1996.
Every one of you sitting here today is carrying at least 500 measurable chemicals in your body that were never in anyone’s body before the 1920s.... We have dusted the globe with man-made chemicals that can undermine the development of the brain and behavior, and the endocrine, immune and reproductive systems, vital systems that assure perpetuity.... Everyone is exposed. You are not exposed to one chemical at a time, but a complex mixture of chemicals that changes day by day, hour by hour, depending on where you are and the environment you are in.... In the United States alone it is estimated that over 72,000 different chemicals are used regularly. Two thousand five hundred new chemicals are introduced annually—and of these, only 15 are partially tested for their safety. Not one of the chemicals in use today has been adequately tested for these intergenerational effects that are initiated in the womb.32
International discussions on POPs are now part of the United Nations, which in 1995 directed several international agencies to begin evaluating POPs, starting with the 12 most hazardous known substances (dubbed the “dirty dozen”) and under a cooperative effort with more than 100 countries.33 It is hoped that an international protocol will stem their production and distribution. It will require much, particularly when one considers that the cleanup of a single site has met with so much red tape and foot dragging.
The Great Law of Peace and Good Mind
When you are out there on that river, you can think, you’re at peace with yourself. You can talk to your Maker.
—Francis Jock, Mohawk fisherman34
Meanwhile, back at Akwesasne, Ken Jock and others are working on ecologically and culturally appropriate solutions. A new aquaculture project is underway. The fish farm consists of cages suspended off the bottom of the river, away from contaminated sediments. The fish are raised in the cages and fed on a diet of nutrient-rich, contaminant-free food. So far, the project shows promise and is expanding.
“The real question,” Katsi says about all of this environmental justice work, is, “How are we going to recreate a society where the women are going to be healthy?” That first environment, from Katsi’s perspective, is the starting place for it all, and the best indicator. The first environment is about a baby, a woman, and family. Katsi’s approach, not unlike that of her grandmother, the noted midwife from half a century ago, is that everything the mother feels, eats, and sees affects the baby. That is a part of the Mohawk belief system. That is why, whether it is GM contamination or the mental health of the mother, all must be cared for if the baby is to be healthy. And that is Katsi’s work, holistic midwifery. “One home birth will impact 30 people,” she tells me and acknowledges it as a form of strengthening the social bonds of the community. She has deliveries coming up almost every month, but keeps her midwifery practice small so that she can attend to the holistic nature of bringing life into the world.
“The midwifery work is what keeps it all from being so damn depressing,” she explains. “It’s one thing to look at a statistic, it’s another to look at and feel a baby,” she continues. Katsi hopes one day to see a midwifery center and an exemption for aboriginal midwives to support their practices. “That is small remediation for the loss of self-esteem as a result of the breast milk contamination,” she says.
In mid-September of 1997, Katsi Cook had her first face-to-face meeting with Carol Browner, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency. A decade after her first interactions with the federal agency, this would be the first time Cook would speak with Browner. She spoke mother to mother, explaining that the Mohawk mothers needed the EPA mother to help them. The Mohawks are hoping that the Great White Mother, the Environmental Protection Agency, will do her job. That she will protect the water, the air, the soil, and the unborn Mohawks. As of this writing, the Great White Mother has done little, but GM has budged slightly, because of all the community pressure. In 1998–99, some cleanup began. GM dredged some of the contaminants out of the bottom of the St. Lawrence and shipped them off to some unlucky community in Utah. According to Ransom, GM plans to “identify...hot spots inside the dump. Then, based on what they find, they may consider more remediation, or go back to...capping.”35
According to the Mohawks, industry, along with government officials and policy makers worldwide, must heed the warnings that contaminated wildlife are sending before it is too late. The creation is unraveling, and the welfare of the entire planet is at stake. As the Mohawks would say, when the turtle dies, the world unravels. Instead of letting that happen, the Mohawks are determining their history. They are facing down General Motors, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the big industries. They are demanding a change and making stronger their community. Rebirthing their nation, from the first environment of the womb to the community and future generations, they are carrying on the principles of Kaienarakowa, the Great Law of Peace and the Good Mind.