Abstract

This article is about Laura Miriam Cornelius (Minnie Kellogg) who is credited with being, among her generation, the best active Native language speaker and best orator of the Iroquois. After graduating from Grafton Hall, for twelve years she drifted from one college to another, travelling to Europe, as well as Stanford University, Barnard College, the New York School of Philanthropy (later the Columbia University School of Social Work), Cornell University, and the University of Wisconsin. One of the original three theorists of the Society of American Indians (along with Arthur C. Parker and Dennison Wheelock), the press compared Cornelius’ ideas to those of Booker T. Washington in her call for “self help” for American Indians. Equity, self sufficiency, and special consideration of individual tribal resources and needs are the marks of her theoretical work. In her book, Our Democracy and the American Indian: A Comprehensive Presentation of the Indian Situation As It Is Today, Cornelius criticizes Indian Services for destroying natural American Indian leadership, fostering dependence and pauperization. Cornelius “Lolomi’ plan, a Hopi term meaning “perfect goodness be upon you,” was her other major theoretical construction for restoring traditional values, the clan system, tribal sovereignty, and sustainable community development in the context of local environment. She held all American Indian nations shared a unique power of abstraction; seasoned oratorial skills, and a special sense of humor that were to be incorporated into lifestyle and honoring traditional wisdom of elders. As a leader in the American Indian community, Cornellius was known to sometimes hold uncompromising positions with a stamina of argument. Yet her traditional values and knowledge helped transform legal actors and activities of American Indians into the 21st century. Cornelius was unable to stay at any one university, as her vision of non accumulated sharing and communal living could not be tamed. She passed on in 1949.