Over the past 20 years, David Cornelius has made it his mission to "break up misconceptions" about Native Americans.

Cornelius, a 56-year-old Schenectady resident, volunteers as a genealogist at the Iroquois Indian Museum at Howes Cave, and has just started a series of Native American culture and heritage programs.

The programs will run on the first Thursday of each month at the Moon and River Café on Ferry Street in Schenectady, beginning at 7 p.m. This week’s discussion is on Native food sources, said Cornelius.
He got the idea for the series, he said, "from who I am." His mother, Phyllis Weaver, descended from Pilgrims; his father, Charles Cornelius, was Native American, he said.
"I see myself trying to build this up as a clearinghouse for Natives to come and talk or give demonstrations," Cornelius said of the program. He starts a discussion lasting about an hour, followed by an hour-long question-and-answer session. "I’m doing this because no one else is," he said.
"I always knew I was Indian" I couldn’t get away from that," Cornelius said.

Cornelius’s interest in his heritage stems, in part, to the experiences of his grandmother, he said.
"Having been persecuted, my grandmother didn’t want to talk about being Indian, even though her color gave her away," Cornelius said. His grandmother’s father was a tenant farmer and blacksmith, he said, and, because Indians could not own land at the time, her father was forced to rent land; consequently, the family moved a lot.

Each time the family moved, Cornelius said, his grandmother was held back a grade in school. She told him that, at age 13, she was only in the third grade, he said. Cornelius said he believes this was likely because of her color.
"They were treated differently because they were Indians," he said.
That’s what got him interested in Native studies, he said. He began studying his genealogy, trying to figure out who he was, he said. "From genealogy," he said, "is history."
He realized that he "should be able to get a degree in this," he said.
The Empire State College allows students to design their own programs, he said. "So I did." Cornelius earned a bachelor’s degree last year in Colonial and Native American Studies.
Once you start learning about Native culture, Cornelius said, "you can really appreciate it." Stories play an important part of the culture, he said, and all stories have a moral.
Most stories, he said, are based on something that actually happened, but the story is "colorized" to make it more interesting. Cornelius plans to add color literally to some traditional stories through painting them, he said.
"I look at stories and try to determine what inspired the stories," he said. "If you interpret it correctly, you learn the history."

Raising awareness
"I don’t do anything in a small way," Cornelius told The Enterprise. In addition to his work at the Iroquois Indian Museum, he said, he is retired from the United States Post Office, was active in Guilderland soccer and started the referee program, and is writing a book.
The book will be a novel based on the struggles of the Oneida tribe, which was burned out of its home in 1780 in Oriskany, near Rome, by the Iroquois, he said. The attack on the Oneida came as a result of an attack in 1779 made by General John Sullivan on the neutral nations, of which the Iroquois were a part. Sullivan’s campaign was to "terrorize" the Indians to keep them out of the Revolutionary War, Cornelius explained.

The Oneidas migrated to Schenectady after their village was destroyed, he said. There they lived in a barracks for continental soldiers, he said, but, when the soldiers arrived, the Oneida people were forced out into the winter, where they were freezing and starving to death. They then moved north to Palmerstown, where they were able to hunt and feed themselves, Cornelius said.
"They not only learned the land, they farmed it," he said.
Cornelius explained that Indians didn’t hunt in the manner that is standard today. "They would go get a deer," he said. "They knew where the deer were" They prepared the area where the deer lived."
They would also prepare an area where berries would grow, he said. "White people think they just went in the woods and found this stuff," Cornelius said. "There was a lack of understanding between cultures," he added.
Meat was generally eaten only in the winter, Cornelius explained. "I think it was the best way to keep it" from spoiling, he said. In the summer, they would eat fish, poultry, and foods they would grow and harvest themselves, he said.
"They didn’t go fishing," he said, "They went and got fish" They knew where the fish were; they made a place for them."
Cornelius himself, loves to fish, he said. He used to be a trout-fishing guide, he said. "I knew where there were pools of fish that existed, and I went there," he said. His favorite spot, he said, is about 15 miles "deep in the woods" on the Cold River.
Other than fish, he said, "I haven’t killed anything since I was a kid."