Loss of Voice at Oneida Indian Nation: Traditional Methods of Social Control in a Contemporary Native Community
Abstract
This ethnographic study explores how contemporary Oneida people are using traditional beliefs and practices that are prescribed and enshrined in Haudenosaunee oral traditions to further their political ends. The current tribal government seeks to engender control over its citizens, affairs, and properties by using traditions of oral history to claim legitimacy. An overarching contention is over the process of governance as engendered by the process of consensus. This traditional Haudenosaunee practice is at the heart of the matter of the legitimacy of modern tribal government as it is used by the Oneida Nation of New York, including the use of banishment as a form of social control to ground its authority. "Loss of voice" has resulted in the disenrollment of those Oneida people who have been banished after questioning the current tribal government's legitimacy and practices. This essay reviews the actions of the Oneida Indian Nation as an evolving tribal authority as it attempts to reconcile the role of tradition, examining how authority is maintained in ongoing governance of contemporary tribal development.