Bernard Parker was a traditional chief in good standing with the Six
Nations Iroquois confederacy. His tenure was marked by controversy during
which Seneca entrepreneurs and others competed for profits in the trade in
reservation sales to non-Indians in sales of tobacco and motor fuels to
non-Indians. Chief Parker favored regulation of such businesses by Indian
governments and in the public interest. His political enemies raised a
number of objections to his authority in public but not in the Six Nations
government where the credentials of traditional chiefs have been decided
for centuries. He was a tireless defender of the principle that the
profits of such transactions should benefit the Indian nations and not be
limited to the benefit of the individual entrepreneurs or their
organizations alone. He also stood in opposition to Senecas who sought
to profit from ecologicaly destructive schemes, such as dumping of toxic
wastes on Indian reservations in defiance of Indian governments. These
issues have generated enormous propaganda efforts in recent years which
sought to depose Chief Parker and to deny the traditional governments the
right to determine their own membership. Some such efforts are currently
before the U.S. courts which could invade the powers of Indian nations to
determine their own membership, an obvious invasion of Indian sovereignty.
His term of office withstood a variety of claims, common within the
framework of Indian politics, of profit-taking and corruption which sought
to impugn his personal integrity. He was a hard working individual of
generally unquestioned integrity whose work engendered great respect among
the traditional chiefs and community of the Six Nations Iroquois
Confederacy. Legalistic arguments about his standing, properly the
business of the Six Nations Confederacy council, have been raised in
public forums but not in the Six Nations Council where he was a fully
accepted member in good standing.
He will be sorely missed.