Midwinter ceremonies mark the start of the Haudenosaunee new year

Midwinter ceremonies mark the start of the new year for Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) this week.

When the Seven Dancers, or Pleiades star cluster, are mid-sky, the following new moon marks the time for Midwinter ceremonies to begin, though some say it wasn't always this way. 

Tehota'kerá:ton Green, who is Wolf clan, Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, carries out ceremonies in the Mohawk Longhouse in Six Nations, Ont.

He said there were three times these ceremonies could be held in winter.

"There was a Seneca chief named Sganyodaiyo' (Handsome Lake)," he said.

"He encouraged the people to not have their Midwinter ceremonies around the time that the Christians were celebrating their ceremonies because in certain ceremonies we want the Creator, Creation, Sky World to hear what it is that we're doing."

The Christmas and New Year's celebrations brought with them alcohol and parties thought to drown out the songs, the voices and chants of Indigenous people, he said.

So rather than using the new moon that follows wahsontehskó:wa (winter solstice), the Haudenosaunee began to use the new moon that occurs after the new year or when the Seven Dancers are mid-sky.

Each of the Six Nations that make up the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Kanien'kehá:ka, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, Tuscarora) is distinct and has its own language and traditions. Midwinter ceremonies begin this week in some Longhouses and happen over four to five days, depending on the Longhouse.

Over those days, the speaker in the Longhouse will open with the Thanksgiving Address, there are songs and dancing meant to give thanks to the people and the natural world, ashes are turned over as a symbolic representation of replenishing the Earth and babies are given their traditional names. Traditional feasts occur on each day.

Cultural shifts

In the late 1700s, Handsome Lake saw the displacement of his people, theft of land and wars with colonists, disease and alcohol abuse. This prompted his message for the people, called the Karihwí:io or "good word," which combined Christian ideology with traditional Haudenosaunee teachings.

His teachings were controversial and are not accepted among all Haudenosaunee, but they impacted modern Longhouse practices.

Tehahenteh Miller, a Kanien'kehá:ka knowledge keeper from Six Nations, Ont., said there were three main aspects of Haudenosaunee culture that were interrupted.

There was a shift to single-dwelling homes, changing from a collective to one that prioritized individual interests; a shift to a society where men instead of women held the power, which also changed how people sat in the Longhouse – women on one side and men on the other, separated by clans; lastly, Haudenosaunee people had no prior concept of hell — the concept of repentance for one's sins and the consequence of heaven or hell was foreign to them before colonization. 

"We don't have a heaven per se. We have the Milky Way where all our ancestors have gone, and that's where we say we are going," Miller said.

The 1779 Sullivan Campaign ordered by George Washington destroyed around 40 Haudenosaunee villages in New York state, effectively disempowering the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

According to Aronhiaies Herne from Akwesasne, a Mohawk territory that straddles the Canadian/American border and Ontario/Quebec boundaries, it was the "praying towns," the Haudenosaunee communities that had accepted Christianity, that were saved during the Sullivan Campaign.

"It's interesting that Christianity was meant to destroy us, but it actually kept us alive through that time," said Herne.

During this time, ceremonies were forced underground.

He said he sees the residual effects of Christianity today.

There's a fear from the older ones to share traditional information and a determination to practice ceremonies exactly as their ancestors had done, he said.

"We should not be sacrificing respect and love and compassion for protocols or for what we believe," he said.

"What I believe should not allow me to hurt somebody else. We're all the same people. Most of us were raised the same way. Most of us went through the same struggles and the same trauma. We've gotten so good at divisions, right? And now like we're lacking in the unity part even in ceremony."

He said he has seen a recent uptick in Longhouse attendance since the discovery of unmarked burials at former residential school sites in Canada.

"In our community we had a lot of people that were starting to find out that they don't want to be religious anymore, they don't want to be Catholic anymore," he said.

"So, they were trying to find a way to come back to Longhouse."

Green said for a culture to continue it must adapt.

"We're doing our best to go back on the path that they made for us, our grandparents of old times — to do the best we can today to put these ceremonies through," he said. 

"If we fall short somewhere, our words and what we're doing will be tied to the way they used to do things."