In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, Ithaca College's anthropology department has hosted a number of events on Indian issues and history. Last night the department hosted Dr. Robert Spiegelman, creator of the website SullivanClinton.com, to give a presentation on the genocide against the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee Indians, ordered by General George Washington in 1779.
“By United Nations definitions, it is genocide,” Speigelman said about the Sullivan Campaign. “When you go and attack the very infrastructure of survival of a people…The ability of Haudenosaunee people to have endured everything, you know, when you see the backdrop of Sullivan-Clinton, is an extraordinary testimony to the Haudenosaunee people.”
The aim of the campaign was to eradicate the Indians, who were mostly allied with the British, and to use their land for political, economic, and strategic gains in war. One of the uses of the gained land was as a reward to unpaid Rebel soldiers. George Washington sent two men, Generals Sullivan and Clinton, to complete the job.
Smiegelman emphasized the absence of this enormously important historic event in the public mind, blaming the New York State school curriculum for glossing over it in classes--if it is even mentioned at all.
"It's bascially not in the textbooks," Spiegelman said. "It's pretty much off the radar."
IC anthropology professors Brooke Hansen and Jack Rossen are working to change that, speaking in elementary schools to fill in what they see as gaps in the curriculum for the students.
With greater knowledge of injustices committed against Indians during and after the war, Hansen and Rossen hope future generations will be motivated to educate others and better understand their Indian neighbors.
"We're planting the seeds," Hansen said.
Photo courtesy of SullivanClinton.com.
--Eric Raue
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