Mohawk Refusal Identity: Politics, Colonialism, and Independence

This essay examines the concept of refusal identity among the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, focusing on their resistance to recognition and citizenship from Canadian and US governments. The refusal stems from differing beliefs, such as matrilineal descent versus patrilineal laws, and opposition to resource encroachment. This political stance represents a revolution against colonial behavior, manifesting in actions like tax refusal and voting abstention. Colonial mindsets impact Mohawk cultural values, leading to further refusal as a means of maintaining cultural ideology and independence. The essay references works by Kennan Ferguson, Lisa K. Neuman, Audra Simpson, and Patricia Burke Wood, highlighting the intricacies of Mohawk identity and the need for inclusion of their cultural values to address the issue of refusal. This assignment solution is available on Desklib, where students can find various academic resources and study tools.

Migrants Across
Nations
The idea of Refusal

Identity of Mohawks
▪ The Mohawks are the ethnic natives of the north eastern
frontier of the North American Subcontinent.
▪ The Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke culture focus on the
developing of their own culture and keep them intact by
refusing any kind of support from the government.
▪ The concept of refusal works on the identities in the
local Mohawks which are affected by a number of
factors ranging from the individual identities of the
people to their general group.

Concept of Refusal
▪ The concept of the refusal is the political antithesis to
the idea of recognition.
▪ The recognition helps the individuals to be a part of the
nation and identify with its values.
▪ Recognition that has been given by the Canadian and
US government to the Mohawks have been rejected and
refused by the Mohawks.
▪ The refusal of the Mohawks to accept the identities of
Canadian citizen is the outcome of their identies being
dependent on their idea of state.

Refusal of Citizenship
▪ The modern idea of citizenship has been refuted by the
Mohawks as they refuse to be the citizen of the nation
and abide by their rules in the society.
▪ The Mohawks do not want to have the identity of the
Canadian citizens
▪ They need to have passports with the identity of
Haudenosaunee passport.
▪ This leads to state of perpetual statelessness for the
tribe.

Causes of Refusal
▪ The causes of refusal stem from the differences of the
beliefs between the Mohawks and the Canadian
government laws.
▪ The laws focus on matrilineal descent of the family
among Mohawks on the other hand Canadian laws focus
on patrilineal descent.
▪ They are also against the encroachment of the
resources in the rights of the Mohawk People.

Politics of Refusal
▪ The refusal exists as the political and the social
revolution against the colonial behaviour of the settlers.
▪ The refusal focusses on rebuttal of government norms in
the form of not paying taxes and refusing to vote in the
community.
▪ They also refuse the membership in the governance
until they have proper way of representation in the
governance protecting their rights.

Colonial Issues
▪ The colonial mind-set of the colonizers is one of the
major problems that the Mohawks face in their social
culture.
▪ The colonial ideologies affect the individual cultural
values of the Mohawks which leads to their refusal in
abiding by the social norms.
▪ The colonial mind-set of the people of the Mohawk
tribes are affected by their different values from the
colonist’s ideologies.

Refusal as a way of independence
▪ The refusal of the political dominance is the Mohawk
way of maintaining their own cultural ideology intact.
▪ The politics of refusal brings about a question of the
intricacy of the cultural ideology of the Mohawk identity.
▪ The inclusion of the cultural values of the Mohawks is
one of the prime concerns that will help in the
addressing the issue of refusal.

References
Ferguson, Kennan. "Refusing Settler Colonialism: Simpson's Mohawk
Interruptus." Theory & Event 18, no. 4 (2015).
Neuman, Lisa K. "Mohawk Interruptusa4 : Political Life Across the Borders
of Settler States. Audra Simpson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2014. xiii+ 260 pp." American Ethnologist 42, no. 4 (2015): 783-784.
Simpson, Audra. "The ruse of consent and the anatomy of ‘refusal’: cases
from indigenous North America and Australia." Postcolonial Studies 20,
no. 1 (2017): 18-33.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of
settler states. Duke University Press, 2014.
Wood, Patricia Burke, and David A. Rossiter. "The politics of refusal:
Aboriginal sovereignty and the Northern Gateway pipeline." The Canadian
Geographer/Le Géographe canadien61, no. 2 (2017): 165-177.

Thank You