The Akwesasne Notes: A Catalyst of Cold War Native American Transnational Protest

Abstract

Launched by the longhouse faction of the Mohawk of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy in 1969 after Native American activists reasserted their transnational passage rights by blockading the International Bridge connecting the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the Akwesasne Notes soon became one of the Native North American papers with the largest circulation and served as the flagship periodical of the American Indian radical sovereignty movement through the end of the Cold War. Through a close-reading of content, multi-sited archival research, and mapping out of the biographies of key activists, this study goes beyond establishing that the Notes was transnational in its geography, politics of production, and coverage, and will investigate whether the newspaper developed from an organ into a catalyst for Cold War Native transnational protest. Using a framework from Performance Studies, the article argues that, in its coverage, Akwesasne Notes both recorded and provided scripts for protest performances that challenged and articulated alternatives to the current Native American/First Nations status and rights. Thereby and through its circulation across and beyond settler colonial borders, the Notes helped catalyse transnational alliances for American Indian sovereignty that over time spanned the Western hemisphere, reached across the Atlantic, and entered the United Nations.