Ernest R. Rugenstein

Akwesasne: Divided by more than the St. Lawrence River Ernest R. Rugenstein

The history of the division at Akwesasne.

Annie Garrow, a full-blooded Mohawk, was walking down a road she had walked down many times. With her were twenty-four dyed ash splint baskets. She was heading to Hogansburg, a small village in New York. She was still on the reservation, she had relatives that lived all around this part of Akwesasne, but she had crossed an invisible line. An act that would lead to the Supreme Court of the United States of America and change the perceptions of Mohawks had about government jurisdictions and their land. Decades later this jurisdictional paradigm would lead to death and destruction.