By DENISE RAYMO
AKWESASNE — When PCBs from manufacturing plants damaged the ecosystem along the St. Lawrence River, it also took cultural identity from some St. Regis Mohawk men.
Fishing was the traditional means to support and feed an Indian family on the Akwesasne reservation, said Tony David, program manager for water resources for the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe's Environmental Division.
But during the 1970s to mid-'80s, the release of tons of polychlorinated biphenyl by General Motors, Reynolds Metals and Alcoa into the rivers leading to Akwesasne damaged the ecosystem and destroyed the fishing trade.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation now recommends that no one eat the fish that comes from these waters.
David said the contamination, to Indian men relying on the fishing trade, "ruined his currency, his means of support for his family and their food."
At the same time, the traditional relationship between grandfathers, fathers and grandsons was altered because there was no longer the activity of fishing to share and learn from their elders.
"You've lost that knowledge, and it's very hard to regain."
And that gap in strong generational ties might be manifesting itself in some of the illegal activities and violence in and around Akwesasne that make the headlines, he said.
"My personal belief is that the loss of that subsistence of culture contributes to our current problems.
"We're hoping to get it back, but the loss of cultural identity creates a void and an opportunity for bad things, and that's what's going on."
David enjoys strong cultural bonds because his father, uncles from both sides of the family and an aunt were ironworkers — skilled professionals who are all celebrated every year at a festival at Akwesasne.
But his desire to see a strengthening of those ties for future generations of Akwesasne men is important to him for another reason; his great-great-grandfather attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which forcibly assimilated Indian children into white American society between 1879 and 1918.
E-mail Denise A. Raymo at: draymo@pressrepublican.com
