The Haudenosaunee Visit the Susquehanna River
Before the Europeans came over to Turtle Island, indigenous Nations used to inhabit all the lands along the Susquehanna River. On October 14, 2011, Thatotaho-Sid Hill, Chief Jake Edwards from the Onondaga Nation, David Arquette, Director of HETF, and Ann Dapice from the Lenape Nation visited the confluence of the Susquehanna River, where the North branch, West branch and South Branch all come together near the town of Sunbury, south of Lewisburg. There standing on the ridge over seeing the Susquehanna below imagining many nations of Indigenous Peoples like the Lenape, Delawares, Shawnees,Shinnecocks, nanticotes, Conoy, Tutelos and Haudenosaunee gathering in this one spot trading and living and hunting and creating peace with each other to continue our existence for the future generations.
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Preserving Elders Knowledge
As we know, when an elder passes on they take with them a life time of knowledge. Their memories and life experiences are lost to all. True, a lucky few have been blessed with the retelling of these stories but that is usually reserved for the close friends and family members. Some times a great story surfaces at family gatherings or sad to 
say,"funerals". When this happens we wish we could have captured that memory for children and unborn children to hear. After all this is our history. Each Elder has similar stories waiting to be told. If only we could save the history as a way to benefit all our people. This is why Onondaga like other Nations has started a process to record our oral stories and memories. We realize the lose of this knowledge is the lose of ourselves. We used to abide by the saying,"that is not our way" until the the stories needed to be retold and no one was able to retell it.
Time passes and new problems show themselves. As a Nation we must adapt to the new problems. Recording or video taping is a means of solving this problem. We hope to ask our elders to volunteer their memoirs and life experiences. We also know our elders aren't too mobile so we will go to them if they wish. Hopefully the general response will enrich our children's knowledge of who our elders are and also show them the life styles our elders grew up with. This knowledge will help solidify the children's wellbeing of who they are. It will also enrich the community as a whole. The stories and memories will be stored as a DVD to be kept at our Onondaga Elementary School library. Copies in DVD and VHS will be available upon request.
THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK!
Many cities in Niagara County get their water from the Niagara River, but where does the water come from before it reaches the municipal water intakes and what comes in most go out? The waste water produced goes through a treatment facility before getting returned back into the water below the intakes.
Many people dump unused medications down the toilet. What they are unaware of, is the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are stable under a wide range of environmental conditions. So siting in water does not change the drug, but will change how strong it is by delusion. Many people do not realize that the medications in trace amounts will cause the water to be classified as non-drinkable.
In Indian Country, with ground water and septic tanks will produce a focused point of contamination that gets recycled through the the system of septic field-to-ground water and back to the septic field. If it is a broad spectrum antibiotic, then you could kill or weaken the bacteria in the septic tank that can cause an increase in e-coli.
As you can see it starts to develop a cycle of other health concerns. Some places consider instead of dumping it down the toilet to crush it up and put it in your trash which gets shipped to the local landfill. Once it gets wet you still have the same problem of the leachate containing the medication. So ask how they plan on disposing of the medications.
Keeping pharmaceutical medications out of your drinking water does take planning and coordination from local, state and federal agencies. The weblink below will give you the results of a well organized effort to keep safe drinking water.
Alberta Tar Sands and the Environmental Effects on Indigenous North American Culture
The Canadian province of Alberta is among the most naturally pristine areas is in North America. This area, which includes the Canadian Rocky Mountains and several wildlife reserves, is host to a variety of flora and fauna such that are culturally significant to the Aboriginal people in the area. Since time immemorial Alberta has been the traditional territory of the Black Foot Confederacy and the Athepaskan (Dene) people. These Indigenous Nations continue to act as stewards of the land healing and protecting its’ wellbeing for generations to come.