Brightening the Covenant Chain

Description

TSRG’s Brightening the Covenant Chain (BTCC) revealed globally significant cultures of diplomatic interaction between the British Crown and the Indigenous peoples who dominated Northeastern America up until the 18th century, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, sometimes described as the world’s oldest participatory democracy.

Timed to correspond with the 260^th anniversary of the first ‘special relationship’ between America and Britain, embodied in the ratification of the Treaty of Niagara in 1764, the project worked to ‘brighten’ or rekindle one of the world’s oldest diplomatic relationships.  It shaped the North America we know today and it continues to be ‘brightened’ or renewed by the Royal family.

The project placed a spotlight on the Indigenous diplomatic methods and protocols that bind the British King in an abiding kinship relationship or metaphorical ‘Covenant Chain’ with the Haudenosaunee. These treaty relationships were eroded by ensuing Canadian governments, something many Haudenosaunee people view as a usurpation of their primary nation-to-nation agreements with the Crown.

We have visualised these relationships using a dynamic interactive map of Indigenous settlements and activities in the American northeast called Movement and Common Worlds, which brings to life how early America was defined by Indigenous and non-Indigenous interaction and movement across shared, defended territories and settlements connected via intercultural diplomacy.

BTCC’s ‘Voices at the Edge of the Woods’ soundscapes centralize orality, ritual and ceremony within Haudenosaunee intercultural diplomatic practice across time, foregrounding the importance of ritual, language and sound to diplomacy between the Haudenosaunee and representatives of the British Crown.

Press release and project launch.

People: Joy Porter, Charles Prior, Pekka Hämäläinen, Mark Walters, Dale Turner with artistic and interpretive contributions by Celeste Pedri-Spade and an immersive Soundscape of Haudenosaunee diplomatic orations by Thanyehténhas (Nathan Brinklow), Haohyoh (Ken Maracle) and Sakokwenionkwas (Tom Porter).

Project Partners: Georgian Papers Programme, the Eccles Centre for American Studies, the American Museum and Gardens (Bath), the North American Native Museum, King’s Digital Lab, Johnson Hall Historic Site (New York), and the Northeast Native Research Collaborative

Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Archival): Dr Laura Gillespie
Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Digital): Dr Matthias Wong
Project Administrator: Rachel Dickens