{"id":34338,"date":"2011-09-22T13:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.josephy.org\/2011\/09\/alvin-josephy-cornplanter-and-the-kinzua-dam\/"},"modified":"2011-09-22T13:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T20:49:00","slug":"alvin-josephy-cornplanter-and-the-kinzua-dam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/2011\/09\/alvin-josephy-cornplanter-and-the-kinzua-dam\/","title":{"rendered":"Alvin Josephy, Cornplanter, and the Kinzua Dam"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">Sorry for the long time between Josephy Library blog postings. Now that kids are back in school, I plan to get back with some kind of regularity!<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">Did anyone hear the recent NPR interview with the Seneca Nation\u2019s new president, Robert Odawi Porter? I had been digging through Josephy speeches and writings looking towards an anthology of his work that is still relevant today. And looking especially at articles and speeches that had to do with environmental issues. <city w:st=\"on\"><place w:st=\"on\">Alvin<\/place><\/city> came to these concerns through Indians, of course. I remember him saying that he first learned that Peabody Coal was strip mining coal and wreaking havoc on Hopi and Navajo lands in the southwest\u2014and went on to see the havoc that the strip mining and coal fire emissions were wreaking on <i style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">everyone<\/i> in the Southwest.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">But back to the Seneca. The NPR interview sent me to <city w:st=\"on\"><place w:st=\"on\">Alvin<\/place><\/city>\u2019s December 1968 piece in <i style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">American Heritage Magazine, <\/i>\u201cCornplanter Can You Swim,\u201d republished in <i style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Now That the Buffalo\u2019s Gone<\/i> in 1982. After two decades of Indian opposition, the Kinzua Dam had been built in 1965. Villages had been condemned, houses had been burned, and the remains of 300 Seneca Indians, including Chief Cornplanter\u2014Alvin had a great talent with titles\u2014had been moved by the Army Corps of Engineers to higher ground so that thousands of acres of Indian Lands could be inundated by the Alleghany Reservoir. The Corps was also running over, or abrogating, the oldest active treaty agreed to by the <country-region w:st=\"on\"><place w:st=\"on\">United States of America<\/place><\/country-region>, one signed by Cornplanter and 58 other Seneca sachems and chiefs in 1794!<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">Fast forward to 2011, and a new Seneca Chief with a Harvard law degree, to a Seneca nation made wealthy by three casinos and a thriving tobacco business, and then to 2015, when a 50 year lease on the Kinzua Dam expires (the dam provides power to Pittsburgh!). Chief\u2014or President\u2014Porter thinks the Senecas should run the dam, and he and his tribe are marshalling their legal forces to make the case. I don\u2019t know whether <city w:st=\"on\"><place w:st=\"on\">Alvin<\/place><\/city>\u2019s early work will be part of the case\u2014but maybe\u2026.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">And here is the link to the NPR interview. Googling Kinzua Dam and Seneca will get you much more.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/18\/139746162\/seneca-nations-new-chief-seeks-to-change-course\"><span style=\"color: purple;\">http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/18\/139746162\/seneca-nations-new-chief-seeks-to-change-course<\/span><\/a> <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\">p.s. For the Southwest, check \u201cMurder of the Southwest,\u201d Audubon Magazine, July 1971, and \u201cThe Hopi Way,\u201d American Heritage Magazine, February 1973. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry for the long time between Josephy Library blog postings. Now that kids are back in school, I plan to get back with some kind of regularity! Did anyone hear the recent NPR interview with the Seneca Nation\u2019s new president, Robert Odawi Porter? I had been digging through Josephy speeches and writings looking towards an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,643,596,1210,1209],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.josephy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}