From time to time, mostly when posting on First Nations-related issues, I would receive from a reader named Rarihokwats a polite and precise email correction of some statement or detail. That's all the contact we ever had, and I knew nothing of this person, though the name suggested perhaps a traditional Mohawk.
Quite by accident the other day, I came across an appreciation of Rarihokwats, by the Plains Cree journalist Doug Cuthand. Rarihokwats, who died recently, was an American from Michigan who began as a Children's Aid worker and became an advocate for the people he served. He was adopted into the Bear Clan at the Mohawk community of Akwesasne in the 1960s and created the internationally influential Akwesasne Notes. Cuthand calls him "a brilliant researcher":
Rari wasn’t one for the limelight. The majority of his career was spent in the back rooms of organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, the Manitoba Dakota First Nations and other regional organizations. From the 1960s to the present he was involved in the background of most major constitutional and treaty agreements.... He was soft-spoken and had a brilliant mind. He lived a monk-like existence lacking in material ambition.Rarihokwats means "he writes." I'm honoured he wrote to me a time or two.
