Indian battles are still being fought in communities and courtrooms across New York and the nation. Sovereignty, land claims, border rights, taxation and gambling are some of the issues that have resulted in legal battles and, in some cases, even bloodshed as Native Americans attempt to preserve their culture, treaty rights and land.

A document that has been crucial to the Six Nations of New York in arguing their sovereignty and legal rights has been published in facsimile and paperback editions by Cornell University Press, with an introduction by Robert W. Venables, senior lecturer in the American Indian Program at Cornell. The Six Nations of New York: The 1892 United States Census Bulletin (Cornell Press, 1995) presents a detailed portrait of the people of the Six Nations -- Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras, whose ancestral homeland stretches across New York.

These nations formed a peaceful alliance probably 200 years before the first Europeans encountered their prosperous villages. (The members of the Six Nations are known to most whites as the Iroquois, but they prefer to use the term Haudenosaunee, or People of the Longhouse, whose traditional dwellings symbolize their multifamily communal living pattern as well as their multinational confederacy, Venables explained.)

Venables teaches a popular two-semester undergraduate course sequence whose enrollment is over 500 students each semester. Cross-listed under American Indian Studies and the Department of Rural Sociology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the course provides an overview of Indian societies, histories and cultures in the fall semester and an investigation of contemporary issues for American Indians in the spring semester. This spring, the paperback edition of The Six Nations will be used in the class.

How does a 100-year-old report have relevance today?

"The Six Nations is one of the most important white documents on the Iroquois, who were using it quite a bit in their own research to defend treaty rights and land claims in the 1970s and '80s," Venables said. "There are a lot of important statements in it that contemporary Americans need to handle."

The 1892 Six Nations report was published as part of the Eleventh Census of 1890, at a time when the U.S. government was trying to break up tribal land and force Native Americans to assimilate into the larger culture. That Census was significant, Venables said, because it marked the official closing of the frontier; so many non-Indians were occupying Western territories that the government decided the term "frontier" was no longer applicable.

In that context, the federal government planned to use The Six Nations report to bolster its argument that Indians were in the process of being assimilated and the reservations could be broken apart without their protest. U.S. Army Gen. (ret.) Henry B. Carrington, special agent, spent months among each of the Six Nations, cataloguing in minute detail population, births, deaths, diseases, religious denominations (Indians who followed old traditions were referred to as "pagans"), property, even the number of livestock, sewing machines and pianos.

Ironically, Venables said, even though the authors of the report admittedly favored assimilation, they concluded that the Six Nations could not be forced into the U.S. mainstream because their treaty and legal rights were intact.

"The Six Nations are to American Indian life what the Greeks and Romans in ancient history were to the nations bordering on the Mediterranean," wrote Thomas Donaldson, expert special agent, in the report's introduction. "Their generalship in war was of the highest, their civilization and cultivation, for their surroundings, the most advanced, and their economies of life the most applicable and fit of all the American race within the present boundaries of the United States and Canada. . . . The conclusion is irresistible that the Six Nations are nations by treaty and law. . . "

In his published introduction and in classroom sessions, Venables reviews the dark side of American history -- the Indians' treatment by the Europeans and then the Americans. It is a history marked by cruelty, deceit, bloodshed and numerous treaties, some of them imposed on the Six Nations against their will and then broken when the greed of government and speculators overcame honor.

This history is important, Venables argues, because those actions still reverberate today and because U.S. citizens have an obligation to abide by the terms of treaties made with Native Americans.

"Those treaties are newer than the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they have a higher status in the law than an act of Congress," Venables said. "More importantly, treaty rights are the stocks and bonds that Indians pass to the next generation. They are our contract."

Venables emphasizes the ways the Iroquois adapted to parts of white culture in an effort to accommodate to a changing world. Indians are still adapting to non-Indian culture, sometimes in controversial activities such as gambling casinos on reservations. Venables recommends that state and federal governments support more positive economic activities such as the establishment of free trade zones and opening national chain stores on reservations.

Before coming to Cornell in 1988, Venables served from 1982 as director of special projects for the American Indian Community House and before that was curator at the Museum of the American Indian, both in New York City.

Through his research, Venables recognized the importance of The Six Nations report and learned there are very few original copies in existence. He went to Ron LaFrance, the late former director of Cornell's American Indian Program, who supported the project. The New York Historical Society in New York City allowed Cornell Press use of its pristine copy to make photostats, which were produced with high quality by ICS Press in Ithaca.

Roger Haydon, sponsoring editor of the project at Cornell Press, said 1,000 copies of the $50 facsimile edition were produced on clay-coated paper with fold-out maps and illustrations tipped in, a costly hand process. A less expensive paperback edition in the same format size also was produced for classroom use. Cornell Press' Richard Rosenbaum, who designed the jacket cover, formatted this edition to accommodate the maps and illustrations in a regular print run.

Venables tries in his classroom discussions to place Native American history in a global context.

"All over the world, there are well-intentioned people having to deal with the consequences of conquest," he said, citing the examples of Bedouin tribes in Israel and native Africans in South Africa. "U.S. history from 1492 to 1890 was -- from the American Indian point of view -- like Bosnia, a horrible slaughter. Why do we need to think about it?

"If we don't deal with the horrors of the past," he replied to his own question, "we don't deal with our own humanity. Every generation, every race, every culture, every religion, every era has its dark side. Knowing history, we can look at the present day with more understanding, so if we don't like what's going on, we can change it."

This is especially important for his students to understand, Venables said. "If young people see all the mayhem of the past, they won't be so confused about the present."

He adds, "The reason Native American culture is so interesting to look at is that it provides an alternative viewpoint. The Western attitude is one of progression, but the Native American view is based on balance. The 21st century will be about understanding different ideals of spirituality. For us, it will be filled with peoples not part of the Judeo-Christian ethic, and if we can't learn to deal with that, we won't do very well globally."