ONCHIOTA, N.Y. (WCAX) – Change is in the air for a North Country organization. This Indigenous Peoples Day, our Alek LaShomb visited the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center to learn what artifacts say about the people who first walked the mountainous terrain.
“When I come home, I am astounded and amazed at the amount of work my grandfather did,” said David Fadden, the owner and director of the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center.
For 70 years, Fadden’s family has kept Adirondack Indigenous history alive in Onchiota at the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center.
“We are a matrilineal society, where our identities, our names, our clans goes through the mother. So, that is something that isn’t widely known,” Fadden said.
Fadden says his grandparents were part of the generation that experienced the United States’ forced assimilation policies that he says slowly eroded their language and culture.
“He became a school teacher. His first job was at Tuscarora Indian Reservation near Niagara Falls,” Fadden said. “It was there he made it his life’s work to reinstill a sense of pride among our own youth about being Indigenous, learning your language, your culture.”
A mission that birthed the cultural center, which sought to educate and dispel long-held beliefs about early Adirondacks residents.
“To say we didn’t stay here year-round, simply, I never agreed with it because I live here year-round and it’s cold but you acclimate and you get warm clothing,” Fadden said.
Evidence that is backed up by various artifacts at the center, like an arrowhead from Saranac Lake.
“It was just a man walking down a trail and he thought it was a leaf and he picked it up and it very definitely is a flint arrowhead,” Fadden said.
It’s one of many artifacts found by not only hikers but also researchers at schools like Paul Smith’s College.
Curt Stager, a professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s, says they’ve found evidence suggesting people were in the Adirondacks before there were trees, roughly 13,000 years ago.
“People were here hunting, probably caribou, and they left some of their stone hunting implements in the area. There is one beautiful projectile point from Tupper Lake was found there and others in the area, too, including some artifacts we found on the campus of Paul Smith’s College,” Stager said.
Now, after 70 years, Fadden says it’s time for an expansion. They will move the center down the road to a roughly 300-acre property.
Indigenous language will be etched into the conservation easement.
“That is our job to help share a little bit of our culture with hopes that there will be a clear understanding of a history of this region and also a shared future that we have together,” Fadden said.
