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When Michelle Schenandoah was in seventh grade, she was excited when she saw a section in her United States history textbook that featured Native Americans. It was a moment she had been waiting for all her life: the chance to learn about her people’s cultures and history in the American education system.

But after reading the chapter, Schenandoah said she found herself disappointed.

“There were only two pages … It had maybe two black- and-white photos of the Lakota people on the plains with teepees,” Schenandoah, a member of the Oneida Nation’s Wolf Clan, said. “It was pretty much the story of the ‘Disappearing Indian.’”

Schenandoah had similar experiences throughout the rest of her education at Cornell University, Syracuse University and New York Law School. This lack of representation led Schenandoah to found Rematriation, a non-profit organization and former magazine that works to uplift Indigenous women’s voices and share generations of accumulated knowledge.

This past weekend, Rematriation partnered with SU’s Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice and the SU Libraries Special Collections Research Center to host an academic symposium on Haudenosaunee and Indigenous matrilineality.

Matrilineality is a societal structure in which family heritage follows the mother’s line, not the father’s. In the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, made up of the Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora — husbands join their wife’s clan when they’re married, and their children also become part of that clan.

Dr. Scott Manning Stevens, director of CGICEJ, said matrilineality goes well beyond its written definition, especially in Indigenous cultures.

“It’s recognizing the centrality of women in our society…It’s about the equality between men and women…warriors and hunters often go to men. But in our societies, anything to do with village life was often the purview of women,” Stevens, who is a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, said. “Yes, we have chiefs that are male. But clan mothers select those chiefs.”

In the centuries since European colonizers first arrived in North America, Stevens and the Rematriation team believes that gender balance has been lost in patriarchal western society, causing women to be relegated to inferior societal roles with little influence in decision making processes.

To combat this shift and help solve other global issues like climate change and growing political divisions, Schenandoah said events like the symposium are vital to shine a light on Indigenous knowledge that has been out of the public eye.

“When we look at the U.S. government today, we can see all these imbalances happening. People’s voices not being represented or heard, one force being stronger than another and a lot of unfairness and inequity happening,” Schenandoah said. “We know how to create balance within our structure of governance and how we care for the people.”

The symposium began on Feb. 28 with an opening discussion, where speakers examined how matrilineality helped Indigenous cultures achieve balance in the past and why it was largely lost when Europeans arrived.

Jamie Jacobs, head curator of the Rock Foundation Collection at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, used an 800-year-old clay pot from an ancient Haudenosaunee village to show how shifts toward materialism slowly weakened matrilineal influence because of colonialism.

As a member of the Seneca Nation’s Turtle Clan, Jamie Jacobs said his ancestors had to relocate about every 20 years when firewood, clay and other essential materials ran out. He explained that Haudenosaunee women were instrumental in deciding where their villages would relocate to, because they knew the best areas for clay, how to extract it and how to create pottery for storing food and water.

It became a tradition for mothers to pass this skill and knowledge down to their daughters for the survival of future generations, Jamie Jacobs said.

To juxtapose the clay pot, Jamie Jacobs also showed a photo of a 17th-century brass pot made by Europeans, noting how the stronger material ultimately made matrilineal knowledge about clay less necessary. Because it was easier for young Haudenosaunee women to trade for European-made brass pots than harvest clay, women’s role in crafting began to disappear.

Jamie Jacobs said the switch from clay to brass indicated a subtle shift to a patriarchal system that still lingers in Indigenous communities today. He said in many ways, the goal of the symposium was to help attendees transition back to the matrilineal lifestyle their ancestors had.

“Metaphorically, many of us are coming in today as brass pots,” Jamie Jacobs said in the session. “The motivation should be to rematriate the old knowledge that we used to have.”

Over the course of the three-day symposium, SU and Rematriation hosted 22 events that taught attendees about how to access Indigenous archives for research, the importance of Indigenous knowledge and perspective in modern times and how to elevate matrilineality and Indigenous customs through film and media, among other topics.

Devery Jacobs, an actress from the Mohawk Bear Clan, spoke with a panel to an almost-sold-out crowd of 700 people at SU’s National Veterans Resource Center to close the symposium. She described the power of television shows like Reservation Dogs and Marvel’s Echo — both of which she starred in — that tell Indigenous stories, after rare representation in American media.

“By pointing the camera at whose stories are ‘important,’ and having a lack of our stories on screen, it’s been subconsciously telling us we are unimportant,” Devery Jacobs said.

Devery Jacobs said she believes Hollywood may be falling back into old habits, as President Donald Trump’s crackdowns on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility may limit opportunities for minority groups in the entertainment industry.

“With our administration rolling back DEI initiatives, that is now reflected in studios and networks saying, ‘We now want to go back to white stories, to straight stories,’” Devery Jacobs said.

In wake of this shift, Jalyn Jimerson, Rematriation’s production assistant and a member of the Cayuga Nation’s Bear Clan, said events like the symposium are more critical than ever as they share Indigenous knowledge that can help the entire country, including people who aren’t Indigenous.

“The more people start to realize our teachings and what we know isn’t just for us, it’s for everybody else to live in a life of balance…I think the world will start to become a better place,” Jimerson said.

Schenandoah said she wants to see the legacy and impact of the symposium carry on long after the weekend, especially for Indigenous students and community members who are in need of support and deserve recognition.

“(I hope) they were able to see themselves reflected in others and that they recognize that they too have the right to be in relationship with the earth,” Schenandoah said. “That they too have the right to have their voice heard and have their work continue to blossom and feel like it’s welcomed in the world.”

Published on March 6, 2025 at 12:22 am