John Mohawk

Mohawk was a major visionary of the Haudenosaune Confederacy of Nations who played a singularly important role in fashioning the intellectual bridge of the traditional Indian movement toward the national and international community. Firmly based in the traditional Seneca Longhouse, he was a practitioner and master singer and orator. He was a writer, journalist, researcher, and lecturer. A specialist in the field of culture and community economic development and an activist and commentator on the cultural survival of indigenous peoples, Mohawk was a resolute traditionalist, social activist, and negotiator in local and international conflicts. He helped negotiate the conflict between the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and the Miskito people in 1983, and was a peace guide at armed standoffs between Native traditionalists and government agencies in North America.

He was also a co-editor of Exiled in the Land of the Free (with Oren Lyons ), and primary author of A Basic Call to Consciousness (Akwesasne Notes/Farm Publishing Company), the classic collective work of the Haudenosaune Grand Council (c. 1976-77) on the meaning of traditionalism as a guide to political activism. Basic Call to Consciousness is perhaps the most significant volume in the early documents of International Indigenous activism.

He was a Seneca, born into the Turtle clan on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation, located in western New York State. He graduated from Hartwick College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1967, and later earned a Ph.D. from the University of Buffalo.

John Mohawk (30 August 1945 – 13 December 2006) was an American historian, writer, and social activist.