Billy Friend is the elected Chief, currently serving a four-year term. The Wyandotte Nation issues its own tribal vehicle tags and operates its own housing authority. It has a ten-man police department providing 24-hour law enforcement response to the Nation and surrounding area.[1]
In 2022, 6,883 people are enrolled members of the nation.[2] Only about 25 percent of the tribe lives within the state of Oklahoma. In 2011, that was 1,218 of 4,957 members.[1] Enrollment is based in lineal descent; that is, the tribe has no minimum blood quantum requirement.
Economic development
The tribe operates the Bearskin Fitness Center, the Wyandotte Nation Environmental Department, and the Bearskin Health and Wellness Center. The Turtle Speaks is the tribal newspaper.[3]
The tribe owns the Wyandotte Nation Casino in Wyandotte, Oklahoma.[4] It owns a truck stop, a fuel station, and a smoke shop. They issue their own tribal vehicle tags.[1]
The tribe's annual powwow is held in Oklahoma during the first weekend of September and features contest dancing, gourd dancing, and a social stomp dance.[7]
History
In its own language, the tribe is called Wendat, renamed Wyandotte after merging with other related groups. It consists of Iroquoian-speaking Indians from the eastern woodlands. The name is thought to mean "dwellers on a peninsula" or "islanders".[8]
The first Wendat Confederacy was created around 1400 CE, when the Attignawantan (Bear Nation) and Attigingueenongnahac (Cord People) combined forces. They, in turn, were joined by the Arendaronon (People of the Rocks), Ataronchronon (People of One Lodge), and the Tahontaenrat (Deer Nation). Scholars once believed these peoples to be remnant bands of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, who established villages located near present-day Montreal visited by early French explorers.[9] Archaeologists have excavated large, 16th-century settlement sites north of Lake Ontario, suggesting that this may have been a site of the coalescence of the Wendat people. They later migrated to the area near Georgian Bay, where they were encountered by French explorers in the early 17th century.
French explorers encountered the Wyandotte around 1536 and dubbed them the Huron. They were fierce enemies of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, then based in present-day New York. Obliterated by smallpox epidemics, the Wendat Confederacy became seriously weakened during the early decades of the early seventeenth century. In 1649, it was defeated by the Iroquois and most members migrated southwest for safety, where they settled with Odawa and Illinois tribes.[8] Others moved east into Quebec.
Remnants of the associated Wendat and Petun peoples came together as a new group, which became known as the Wyandot or Wyandotte. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Wyandotte people had moved into the Ohio River Valley, extending into areas of what would become West Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan. Around 1745, large groups settled near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. After the American Revolution, a treaty signed with the United States in 1785 confirmed their landholdings. However, the 1795 Treaty of Greenville greatly reduced its size.[8]
The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs reduced the Wyandotte lands drastically, leaving the people only small parcels in Ohio. In 1842, the Wyandotte nation all of its land east of the Mississippi River, under pressure of the United States government policy to remove the Native Americans to the West.[8] It made a treaty with the U.S. government by which it was to be compensated for its lands.
In 1893, the Dawes Act required that the tribal communal holdings in the Indian Territory be divided into individual allotments. The land was divided among the 241 tribal members listed on the Dawes Rolls. The Wyandotte members in Oklahoma retained some tribal structure, and still had control of the communal property of the Huron Cemetery, by then annexed into Kansas City, Kansas.[8]
Reorganization as a nation
In 1937, seizing the opportunity presented by the US Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1934 to regain tribal structure and self-government, the Wyandotte members organized into the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma,[8] later changing its name to simply Wyandotte Nation, and achieved federal recognition.[11] The act enabled Native Americans to hold property in common again, and to develop self-government and sovereignty.
Termination efforts
On August 1, 1956, the US Congress passed Public Law ch. 843, 70 Stat. 893 to terminate the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma as part of the federal Indian termination policy. Three years were allotted for completion of termination.[12] One of the stipulations required that a parcel of land in Kansas City, Kansas, reserved as the Huron Cemetery, which had been awarded to the Wyandot by treaty on 31 January 1855, was to be sold by the United States. Litigation was filed by a group of Absentee Wyandot against the United States and Kansas City, prohibiting the federal government from fulfilling the terms of the termination statute and ultimately preventing termination of the Wyandotte Nation.[13] The Bureau of Land Management records confirm that the Federal Register never published the termination of the Wyandotte lands and thus they were never officially terminated.[14]
When Congress restored the other Oklahoma Tribes, it included the Wyandotte in the repeal. On May 15, 1978, in a single Act titled Public Law 95-281, the termination laws were repealed, and the three tribes were reinstated with all rights and privileges they had prior to termination.[15]
For decades, the Huron Cemetery (also known as Huron Park Cemetery, and now formally known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground) was a source of controversy between the Wyandotte Nation and individual Wyandot descendants in Kansas. The former wanted to sell the property for redevelopment. Kansas City was also eager for that development, as the city had annexed all of the property in the area. By 1907 it was a prime site, near a new Carnegie Library, the Grund Hotel, and the Masonic Temple under reconstruction after a fire.
In 1906, the Wyandotte Nation authorized the U.S. Secretary of Interior to sell the cemetery, with the bodies to be reinterred at nearby Quindaro Cemetery. This proposal was opposed by Lyda Conley (Wyandot) and her two sisters in Kansas City, who launched what became a multiyear campaign to preserve the burying ground. They gained much support. In 1916, Senator Charles Curtis (Kaw/Osage/Prairie Potawatomi} of Kansas, who was a Kaw Native American, championed a successful bill to protect the cemetery as a national park and provide some funds for maintenance. Ironically, this dispute over the cemetery saved the tribe from termination during the 1950s.
Over the years, the Wyandotte Nation continued to explore ways to increase revenues for the tribe, including the redevelopment of the Huron Cemetery. Descendants in Kansas vigorously resisted these efforts. In 1971, the cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1998, the Wyandotte Nation and the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, an unrecognized tribe, reached an agreement to preserve the Huron Cemetery for religious, cultural, and related uses appropriate to its sacred history and use.
Wendat Confederacy
In August 1999, the Wyandotte Nation joined the contemporary Wendat Confederacy, together with the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake (Quebec), and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation in Michigan. The tribes pledged to provide mutual aid to each other in a spirit of peace, kinship, and unity.[16]
This followed an important meeting of Huronia reconciliation in Midland, Ontario, Canada, attended by representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy, Wyandotte nations, British, French, Dutch, Anglican Church and Catholic Jesuit brothers. The weekend of events was organized by the Huronia Reconciliation Committee.[17]
The Wyandot people are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of North America, and speakers of an Iroquoian language, Wyandot.
The Seneca are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called “The Keepers of the Western Door.”
Wyandot is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot or Wyandotte, descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat.
The Odawa are an Indigenous American people who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, now in jurisdictions of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Their territory long preceded the creation of the current border between the two countries in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Peoria are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.
Wendake is the current name for two urban reserves, Wendake 7 and Wendake 7A, of the Huron-Wendat Nation in the Canadian province of Quebec. They are enclaves entirely surrounded by the La Haute-Saint-Charles borough of Quebec City, within the former city of Loretteville. One of the Seven Nations of Canada, the settlement was formerly known as Village-des-Hurons, and also as (Jeune)-Lorette.
The Huron-Wendat Nation is an Iroquoian-speaking nation that was established in the 17th century. In the French language, used by most members of the First Nation, they are known as the Nation Huronne-Wendat. The French gave the nickname “Huron” to the Wendat, from the French word "hure" meaning “boar's head” because of the hairstyle of Huron men, who had their hair standing in bristles on their heads. Wendat (Quendat) was their confederacy name, meaning “people of the island” or "dwellers on a peninsula."
The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma is one of four federally recognized Native American tribes of Odawa people in the United States. Its Algonquian-speaking ancestors had migrated gradually from the Atlantic coast and Great Lakes areas, reaching what are now the states of Michigan and Ohio in the 18th century. In the late 1830s the United States removed the Ottawa to west of the Mississippi River, first to Iowa, then to Kansas in what was Indian Territory.
John L. Steckley is a Canadian scholar specializing in Native American studies and the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Steckley has a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto. He taught at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, from 1983 until his retirement in June 2015.
Eliza Burton "Lyda" Conley was a Wyandot Native American and an American lawyer. She was the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar Association. She was notable for her campaign to prevent the sale and development of the Huron Cemetery in Kansas City, now known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. She challenged the government in court, and in 1909 she was the first Native American woman admitted to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Seneca–Cayuga Nation is one of three federally recognized tribes of Seneca people in the United States. It includes the Cayuga people and is based in Oklahoma, United States. The tribe had more than 5,000 people in 2011. They have a tribal jurisdictional area in the northeast corner of Oklahoma and are headquartered in Grove. They are descended from Iroquoian peoples who had relocated to Ohio from New York state in the mid-18th century.
The Northwestern Confederacy, or Northwestern Indian Confederacy, was a loose confederacy of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region of the United States created after the American Revolutionary War. Formally, the confederacy referred to itself as the United Indian Nations, at their Confederate Council. It was known infrequently as the Miami Confederacy since many contemporaneous federal officials overestimated the influence and numerical strength of the Miami tribes based on the size of their principal city, Kekionga.
The Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, also known as Huron Park Cemetery, is now formally known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. It was established c. 1843, soon after the Wyandot had arrived following removal from Ohio. The tribe settled in the area for years, with many in 1855 accepting allotment of lands in Kansas in severalty. The majority of the Wyandot removed to Oklahoma in 1867, where they maintained tribal institutions and communal property. As a federally recognized tribe, they had legal control over the communal property of Huron Cemetery. For more than 100 years, the property has been controversial between the federally recognized Wyandotte Nation, based in Oklahoma, which wanted to sell it for redevelopment, and the much smaller, unrecognized Wyandot Nation of Kansas, which wanted to preserve the burying ground.
The Petun, also known as the Tobacco people or Tionontati, were an indigenous Iroquoian people of the woodlands of eastern North America. Their last known traditional homeland was south of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, in what is today's Canadian province of Ontario.
Wyandot may refer to:
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Huronia is a historical region in the province of Ontario, Canada. It is positioned between lakes Simcoe, Ontario, and Huron. Similarly to the latter, it takes its name from the Wendat or Huron, an Iroquoian-speaking people, who lived there from prehistoric times until 1649 during the Beaver Wars when they were defeated and displaced by the Five Nations of the Iroquois who lived in New York.
The Wyandot Nation of Kansas is an self-identifying tribe and nonprofit organization headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas. They identify as being Wyandot.
Matthew Mudeater was a chief of the Wyandotte Nation. A farmer by trade, Mudeater was a prominent member of his tribe and played a key role in gaining United States citizenship for his people. When tensions began to rise in the Wyandotte home of Kansas, he led much of his people to settle in the Indian Territory.
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