Whose Grand Island Is it?

Grand Island is under the 'g' in Niagara Falls

I was camped out in the Grand Island Library parking lot, trapped in my car by driving rain and cringing with each thunder clap.  There was still 45 minutes until closing time and I knew that rain of this magnitude couldn’t hold up forever.  Besides, I had a book to read, no one to pick up and a cozy, safe car.

La Grande Ile, as the French explorers called it in the 1600s, is a funny place.  It is a large island in the center of the Niagara River, but the river is so skinny on either side it looks more like a puzzle piece, slipped between the U.S. and Canada, than a separate entity.  

The highway bridges connect the island so seamlessly that you don’t feel like you’re on an island, just another stretch of highway.  The highlight of the island for most families around here is Martin’s Fantasy Island, an small but fun amusement and water park.

For the Seneca Tribe, the island was prime fishing and hunting ground, worth taking from the Attawandron Tribe that lived on the land more than 400 years ago.  After the tribe settled into a century long routine, the British usurped Grand Island as part of The Treaty of Cessation, signed with the French in 1794, at the end of the French and Indian War.

New York State purchased Grand Island from the Seneca Nation in 1815 for $1000.  As part of the deal, they agreed to an ongoing payment of $500 annually (the payment is still due, every year, by June).  The Seneca also retained the right to hunt and fish on the island.  

But in 2002 the Senecas had second thoughts, apparently it took them a while to mull over the decision and check out the fine print, and charged New York with violating the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 which states that all Native American land deals needed the consent of the federal government.  The ensuing drama threatened the property of 2,000 residents of the island - talk about ‘History Comes Alive’!  The 4th graders, learning about the history of New York State,  must have had an exciting social studies period that year.

A trial court rejected their claim, big surprise, on the grounds that the land was already “owned” by Great Britain, due to the 1764 Treaty.  The court claimed that the Senecas didn’t really own the land in 1815 but the agreement was worked out in order to avoid trouble.  So I want to know how exactly the French came to “own” the land and thereby concede it to the British in the first place?  

The Senecas appealed and brought their case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was denied in 2006.   

After 10 more minutes of torrential downpour there was a pause, only for a moment, but long enough for me to slip off my flats and splash barefoot through the flooded parking lot to the safety of the vestibule.     

It was almost 5:00 and the librarians were getting nervous, what if the thunder and lightening scared us into trying to stay late?  They sent a volunteer through the shelves to remind us they were closing in 5 minutes and we would be turned out into the storm; after all rules are rules.

I picked up my book, Americas Membership Libraries, wrapped it in the plastic bag the librarian offered and puddle hopped back to the car.

By the time I drove back across the Grand Island Bridge the storm had blown east, the sun broke through the clouds and the evening unfolded, clean and refreshed.  I looked back at the island in my rear view mirror and thought of how it must have looked centuries ago when there was no bridge, no highway and no ferris wheel.

The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies. — Mary Brave Bird

Poof! Instant City

Carnegie Library, Guthrie, Oklahoma

So today I’m back in Oklahoma, racing along the plain, scoping out the ‘available’ land and finally pitching my tent and staking a lot near the railroad tracks in Guthrie, Oklahoma.  It is April 11, 1889.  According to Benjamin Harrison’s land run plan, otherwise know as finders keepers, or first come, first serve, I am now a landowner and in Guthrie.  9,999 other adventurous settlers also arrived on that same afternoon.  A reporter for Harper’s Weekly wrote, “Unlike Rome, the city of Guthrie was built in a day.”

Before long the ambitious settlers moved out of their tents and started building a model city.  Within months Guthrie was know as the “queen of the prairie” and began the work that would result in a picture perfect Victorian downtown made up of smart stone and brick buildings and offered city water, electricity and even underground carriage parking - fancy.  Two years after the land run and tent city, Guthrie opened their own, rather elaborate, Carnegie Library.

The Old Carnegie Library still stands in Guthrie but has been re-purposed as the Oklahoma Territorial Museum.  The Carnegie Foundation was not all that impressed by the building’s fancy dome or ornamental fireplace - a little high and mighty, in their opinion, but Guthrie had an image to uphold and stuck to their fancy vision.  The legacy is a classically beautiful building that houses artifacts, paitings and photographs from Oklahoma’s wild and crazy past.

A year later Oklahoma became an official territory of the United States and Guthrie became the capital.  Guthrie grew and prospered for the next 16 years when Oklahoma became the 46th state and Guthrie served as its capital.  The first state governor was sworn in on the steps of the stately Carnegie Library.  Guthrie is now the largest urban historic district in the country and a National Historic Landmark, but only thanks to Oklahoma City.  

Oklahoma City usurped Guthrie as the state capital in 1910 in a stealthy midnight operation conducted by the governor. He actually grabbed the state seal and rode off in the night to Oklahoma City - when everyone woke up in the morning, presto - a new capital.  But here is the very cool thing about this unconventional change of government...because everyone started going to Oklahoma City, Guthrie was preserved, as a living time capsule.  It is probably because of the exodus to Oklahoma City that the Carnegie Library and the downtown center have not been demolished.  They left behind a lovely Victorian enclave that welcomes tourists and historians.

The dark underbelly of the story was the effect of settlement on the Native American Tribes in Oklahoma.   The National Park Service explains,  “In the tents and shanties that sheltered all the new citizens of Oklahoma,
that first night on their new lands must have been simply divine. For the American Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes - who thought they had a permanent home in Oklahoma - that same night must have been full of sadness, anger, and despair.”  A perfect example of win-lose thinking.

Win-Win Thinking

The treatment of Native American people in our country is heartbreaking.
It doesn’t matter what part of the country you pick, from New York to Florida to Oklahoma, the behavior of our government and our citizens has been appalling.  The mother of all the atrocities committed against Native Americans was the Trail of Tears.

• 46,000 Native Americans were forced off their land, tribe by tribe, in southeastern US.
• Thousands died of starvation, disease and exposure during a tortuous forced march to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
• 25 million acres of Native American land, in the southern US, was opened for white settlement.
• 50 years later their new Indian Territory was pulled out from under them and and given to settlers during the land run.

When Europeans arrived in their ‘new world’ they saw opportunities everywhere, and like little kids in a candy store they started grabbing everything they could get their hands on.  They had many choices along the way.  They had a choice between competition and cooperation.  They had a choice between peace and war.  They had a choice between domination and collaboration.  They had a choice to work on a win-win agreement or a zero-sum victory.  They consistently choose the latter, leaving death and destruction in their wake - I suppose that is what conquerors do, they conquer.
But we no longer need to conquer, it is old news.  And we can choose better way.

Win-win thinking (Steven Covey’s “habit #4” from his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), explains a different approach.  Win-win “result in mutual benefits for all parties”, everyone looks for a chance to help each other, not just because they’re nice but because it feels right and good AND they can still get what they want.   Zig Ziglar famously said, "you will get everything in life that you want if you just help enough other people get what they want."  Conquering is unnecessary.

When you win and someone else loses, it might feels good to come out on top momentarily, but a bitter taste is leftover.  But if you look for a way to win that allows, or even helps, others to win, you still get what you want, plus you feel good, and it ratchets the experience up to a new level (think of the Grinch’s heart).  It doesn’t mean turning into a saint, either.  Remember you want to win too, you just don’t have to do it at the expense of someone.

You’ll need a few ingredient for the win-win game:   

• Integrity - stick to your values and beliefs, if it feels right it probably is.
• Maturity - speak up but be considerate of other people’s feelings.
• Abundance Mentality - remember there is enough for everyone. 

Greed and power are not on the list.
What can we do to help others win (besides giving Oklahoma and major sections of the Southeastern US back to the Native Americans)?  A million little things each day:

Let a car into traffic, smile and saying good morning to everyone you pass, buy someone a coffee, tell a joke, hold the door, really listen when other people talk, walk away from gossip, put off what you want to do for 15 minutes to help someone else, share your discoveries (or your cookies) - almost every action you do involves the choice to help other win or to just look out for yourself.

Try it for a day, I promise you will feel better, and I bet you will still get everything you want (or more) AND so will someone else.

Then maybe Steven Covey could stop by for a chat with Bureau of Indian Affairs Director, Michael S. Black and see what we can do about Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Land Run

Oklahoma Land Run 1889

Culture Shock Alert....we’re headed to Oklahoma.  After a week at the New York Public Library I was ready for a change so I made a big one and ended up in Guthrie, Oklahoma where the library is actually older than the state.  
Before we get to the library you have to know a little about Oklahoma’s, and Guthrie’s, quirky history (believe me, quirky is an understatement, I couldn’t even make this stuff up!).

After the Civil War the US was in a big hurry to get southern Indian tribes off their land so it could be used for farming and mining.  Not surprisingly the tribes (Chickasaw, Cherokee, Chocktaw, Creek and Seminole) weren’t that excited about leaving their ancestral homeland, so our government rounded them up and marched them off by force.  To make up for any bad feelings they promised the tribes that they would have their own territory  “for as long as the stars shall shine and the rivers may flow” (and sadly the Native Americans believed them - not like they had a lot of choices).  They were marched to the Indian Territory (later to be known as Oklahoma) because the administration figured that no one would ever want to settle way out in the middle of nowhere on land that was worthless.  (I guess they didn’t foresee the oil boom that would quickly lead to Oklahoma “becoming the largest oil producing entity in the world”.)
  
Before the government knew what was happening the country’s boundaries exploded and settlers were popping up across the nation, all the way to California.  Settlers were hungry for land, any land, and the chance to strike it rich.  Congress was starting to sweat under the pressure.  So they did what politicians do; they went back on their word and came up with a scheme to take the Indian Territory back from the Native Americans.  

Although the politics got pretty complicated, the short story is that the territory was divided into 160 acres land plots and each Indian “head of household” became a proud landowner of less land than they started with - once again the Native Americans were cheated and betrayed and all the “unassigned lands” that the government suddenly owned could be “improved” and paid for by eager settlers.

According to the National Park Service, before the Land Run of 1889, Guthrie was literally a railroad station and  a post office.  Guthrie sprang into existence in SIX hours on April 22,  when 10,000 new citizens swarmed into town, set up their tents and claimed their land, thanks to Benjamin Harrison.  A land run, to my amazement, was exactly that...50,000 settlers lined up on the border and at 12 noon, after the firing of a canon, they took off to stake their claim on land somewhere in the 2 million available acres of the territory - exactly like that terrifying moment when your toddler lines up at the beginning of an easter egg hunt surrounded by greedy hoards of big kids.  The runners ran into a lot of people that would later be called “sooners” who somehow had beaten them into the territory and already claimed choice parcels of land - which kept the local land offices very busy.

I know, there is no library in sight, I’m getting there, come back tomorrow and I’ll finish this unreal story.