What is American music?

• What does it mean to make music on this land?
• Where are indigenous people in your conception of America?
• Where is indigenous music in your map of music today or historically?

The Haudenosaunee and the Seneca Nation

• The Six Nations and the Seneca Nation today
• Sovereign nations (political entities, not racial groups)
• Treaty relationships with US and Canada
• UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Historical and current Haudenosaunee territory

Peacemaker and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

• Sky Woman and Turtle Island
• Peacemaker, Jikonsaseh, Hayonwatha, Tadodaho
• Five Nations (west to east): Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk
  • later a sixth (Six Nations): Tuscarora
• Hodinöhšö:ni:h: “Builders of the Extended Longhouse”

• Onöndowa’ga:’ (“Great Hill People,” Seneca Nation): Keepers of the Western Door
• The Tree of Peace
• Wampum
• League government

The Hayawatha Belt

Relationship and reciprocity

Seneca pronouns

The Haudenosaunee and the Euro-Americans

Colonial period

• New France, New Netherland, and New England
• The Covenant Chain
• Beaver Wars, Seven Years’ War

United States

• US Revolutionary War
• Treaty of Candandaigua 1794
• “Treaties” up to 1848 Seneca revolution

Challenges and Response

• Land dispossession, relocation
• Handsome Lake and the new Longhouse religion (Gaiwi:yoh, “Good Word”)
• Boarding schools, Termination, Kinzua
• Resistance and revitalization: Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, The Trail of Broken Treaties, Standing Rock

Seneca music

• Vocal with support from water drum, rattle (horn, or in ceremony, turtle shell)
• Almost always singing and dance together
• Ceremonial vs. Social
  • Privileged/protected knowledge, closed to non-Senecas and restricted within the Seneca community
  • Annual longhouse ceremonies and medicine-society rituals: The power of “sending a song”

Water drum

Cold Spring Longhouse in Steamburg, NY

Social songs

• Yöëdza’ge:ka:’ gaëno’shö’, “Earth Songs”
• Variety of occasions and functions, including community “Sing” (Easter and Thanksgiving, competitive)
• Standing Quiver and Old Moccasin Dance, common opening
• Oral tradition learned with strict protocols
• Ehsga:nye’: “New Women’s Dance” – genre where innovation is allowed/required

Key concepts

• Earth/Land
• Relationship/Reciprocity
• Tradition/History