The Two Row Wampum, Haldimand Deed, and Grand River Tract

Rick Monture is a member of the Mohawk nation, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.  He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of English & Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University where he teaches classes on Haudenosaunee history and oral traditions, Indigenous literature, and Bob Dylan.  He is also a Community Scholar with Six Nations Polytechnic and a former member of the Steering Committee that established the Deyohahage / Indigenous Knowledge Centre, based at Six Nations.  Rick is an active community volunteer and is a board member with the Grand River Post Secondary Education Office, as well as a founding member of the Old Council House Restoration Committee that is now undertaking to restore and preserve the Six Nations Council House that was built by the Grand River Confederacy Chiefs in 1863.  He currently holds a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada award for a project that undertakes to examine the events that led to the overthrow of the traditional government, by Ottawa, to implement an elected council system in 1924.  His book We Share our Matters: Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River, was published by the University of Manitoba Press in 2014 and is an examination of the Grand River Haudenosaunee’s assertions of sovereignty and social justice through letters, political activism, literature and film.  Rick lives at Six Nations with his family.