Oronhyatekha

Oronhyatekha (10 August 1841 – 3 March 1907), ("Burning Sky" or "Burning Cloud" in the Mohawk language, also carried the baptismal name Peter Martin), was a Mohawk physician, scholar, and a unique figure in the history of British colonialism. He was the first known aboriginal Oxford scholar; the second aboriginal medical doctor in Canada;[1] a successful CEO of a multinational financial institution; a native statesman; an athlete of international standing; and an outspoken champion of the rights of women, children, and minorities. While all this would be remarkable in any age, that he achieved it during the Victorian era when racism and assimilation were official state policies, has made him a figure approaching legend in some aboriginal circles.

Biography

Born 10 August 1841 on the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation near Brantford, Ontario, he attended the Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. After graduating, he taught for a year among the Indians and then entered Kenyon College.[2][1]

Oronhyatekha was selected at the age of twenty by the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora Nations) to give the welcoming address to the Prince of Wales during his visit to New World. Prince Edward was sufficiently impressed that he urged the young Oronhyatekha to attend the University of Oxford. Oronhyatekha matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1861.

In 1863, Oronhyatekha returned to Canada to marry Ellen Hill, and took a medical degree at the University of Toronto. As his medical practice grew, he also became a figure of increasing importance in Victorian Canada. In 1871, be became a member of Canada's National Rifle Team, and in 1874, was elected the President of the Grand Council of Canadian Chiefs, the highest ranking native statesman in North America.

In 1878, he applied to become a member of the Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal and financial institution associated with the Orange Order. Although the Foresters' statutes explicitly limited its membership to white men and Orangemen, Oronhyatekha was not only inducted as a member, but rose to become Supreme Chief Ranger of Foresters, the organisation's international CEO, in 1881, a position that he held for a record 26 years. During his tenure, he transformed the order into one of the wealthiest fraternal financial institutions in the Victorian world; today, it counts more than one-million members in North America and the European Union.

While heading the Foresters, he built one of the first North American museums created by a Native individual.[3] It was housed in the Foresters Temple in Toronto, until shortly after his death, and contained natural history artifacts, items from Canadian Native groups, and from cultures around the world. The artifacts were transferred to the Royal Ontario Museum. In the early 2000s, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Woodland Cultural Centre curated a show of his objects entitled Mohawk Ideals: Victorian Values.

He was the Worshipful Master of Richardson Masonic Lodge in Stouffville Ontario in 1894.

Ironically, the one achievement of which Oronhyatekha was most proud was the enterprise his contemporaries regarded as his only significant failure. In 1904, he created an orphanage on the Bay of Quinte, Ontario, which was universally seen as extravagant and excessive by Victorian standards. It opened for operations in 1906, and Oronhyatekha described it as his life's crowning achievement. He did not live to see it closed the following year, as he died in 1907.

References

  1. ^ a b Gayle M. Comeau-Vasilopoulos (2000). "Oronhyatekha". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. University of Toronto. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6976. 
  2. ^  "Oronhyatekha". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 
  3. ^ Michelle A Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010; Trudy Nicks, "Dr. Oronhyatekha's History Lessons: Reading Museum Collections as Texts," Reading Beyond Words. Contexts for Native History. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003, 459-489.

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