More remembrance of Jake Swamp

When I wrote yesterday about the passing of Jake Swamp, I was hoping someone who knew Jake far better than I did would respond.

My contact with Jake Swamp came mostly during the gambling troubles that so divided the Mohawk community in the early 1990s, when guns, police and violence linked to unauthorized casinos were the STORY at Akwesasne.  Those were awful days. Jake Swamp was a trusted, calming voice.

Later I saw him plant trees of peace, and heard his Mohawk Thanksgiving Prayer at ceremonies around the North Country.

I was glad for all that, but regretful that I didn’t have more to say, personally, about this man I’ve admired for so long. So, many thanks to John Scarlett of Littletree Forge in Rossie for this:

Martha,

Liz and I will miss Chief Jake Swamp.  We have many memories of time spent with him and Judy over more than the last ten years.  He has influenced us in so many ways since he first showed up at our front door to tell us he had bought some land two miles down the road to be the Tree of Peace Society’s learning center for teaching the Mohawk relationship to nature.

At Tree of Peace we heard the Peace Maker’s story (in abbreviated form; Jake could tell the whole nine day story), how to use the forgiveness stick, how to make fire and to dance, but mostly to just sit and talk in the wonderfully calm, slow, thoughtful way of Jake, who not only planted trees for peace around the world but who also wrote such beautiful books as Giving Thanks, A Native American Good Morning Message, with which our family continues to use to open our Thanksgiving meals, passing it around the table for each person to read a page.

We make no claim to having shared more than intermittent moments with Jake and Judy, whose family lives in Hogansburg, many miles from here.  But we were full time admirers and fans.  In 2000 I forged a large snail for Jake and Judy and stamped on it the Mohawk word for snail–otsiskaienita.  I loved hearing Jake make the sounds of a language I could only mangle. As I look back on that snail, I like to think that it symbolizes the pace at which the non-native residents of this continent are learning to live in a sustainable way on Turtle Island–maybe too slow to succeed.  It is something I hope we rediscover, for the first peoples such as the Mohawks had the proper attitude and skills long before the European invasion, and we were not ready to learn from them.

I once asked Jake why he did not seem to be angry with the genocide and continuing abuse of native Americans.  He said he had had to work hard to overcome what he felt was a self-destructive anger.  The man we knew and loved had found peace and a powerful way to share it.

John Scarlett