We Shall Go on Fighting

John and Louise McComber were a husband-and-wife team of entertainers who operated Chief Poking Fire’s Indian Village and Museum in the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community of Kahnawà:ke during the middle decades of the twentieth century. The success of their Indian-themed tourist attraction was notable for bringing Indigenous entertainment work home and providing economic opportunity to many families in their community. In addition, it made for their distinctive coupling of entertainment work and political activism and enabled them to engage in a variety of issues of importance to Kahnawa’kehró:non, the Rotinonhsión:ni, and First Nations people in Canada in general. Based on a significant archive of McComber family papers and other primary source materials, this paper charts the development of their entertainment work and their political activities, which included efforts within Kahnawà:ke to re-establish traditional government and fight against land expropriation, support for Rotinonhsión:ni land claims and border-crossing rights, opposing forced enfranchisement and other elements of repressive and assimilationist federal Indian policies, and helping to advance the early development of pan-tribal organization in Canada

Media studies · Political activism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Rhetoric and Communication Studies