Onondaga Nation Faithkeeper Oren Lyons: He'll share a lifetime's worth of personal papers and documents with researchers at Syracuse University. Tintype taken three years ago, at the Haudenosaunee Wooden Stick Festival at Onondaga Lake. Credit: Michael Greenlar | Central Current

Oren Lyons, joined by a helpful nephew, made a stop not long ago at a log cabin where Lyons used to live, on the Onondaga Nation. To get there requires going “up in the woods,” Lyons said, and it had been so long since he revisited the place that the path to the front door was covered with tall grass.

He was there on a quest: As part of an extraordinary “joint stewardship agreement,” Lyons — now 95 — is turning over a lifetime’s worth of letters, notes, documents, artwork and photographs to the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University Libraries.

Those items — significant in volume, to put it mildly — ended up packed away at many places around the region, leaving Lyons and his friends to seek them out. At the old cabin, where the late Bill Moyers once interviewed Lyons, the Onondaga faithkeeper pushed open the door and walked over to a stack of cardboard boxes, stuffed with papers. He picked up a crinkled, water-stained document that happened to be on top.

It was a letter to Lyons sent roughly 40 years ago, by then-President Ronald Reagan.

“I’m a pack rat,” said Lyons, always reluctant to throw anything out — a trait that in this case is a gift to all of us. SU Chancellor Kent Syverud — who is stepping down at the end of this scholastic year after serving since 2014 in the university’s top job — puts it this way:

Lyons, Syverud said, “has had the most amazing life of any alumnus I’ve ever met in terms of the history he’s been involved with and the role he’s played in it.”

A fraction of the papers, artwork and photos of Oren Lyons, awaiting transfer from the Eden home of Debra Kolodczak. Credit: Image courtesy Debra Kolodczak

The chancellor and Lyons speak of each other as longtime friends. There is no doubt, they both say, that the warmth of their connection helped lead to an agreement that will be celebrated today with a noon ceremony on campus.

Syverud recalls — shortly after his arrival at SU — how he met legendary Syracuse lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Jr., who offered an immediate piece of advice:

Oren Lyons, Simmons’ old friend and a lacrosse teammate in the 1950s, was a guy Syverud should know.

Both Lyons and Syverud said the foundation for that relationship was set down by Syverud’s predecessor as chancellor, Nancy Cantor, who oversaw the 2005 creation of the “Haudenosaunee Promise” program — which provides sweeping SU scholarships to any qualifying students from within the Six Nations.

“That opened the door for us,” Lyons said. He saw that gesture as a significant bridge to the Onondagas, who hadn’t always felt that sense of welcome from the university — and Lyons was pleased when Syverud made an effort to sustain the bond strengthened by Cantor.

“He’s been terrific,” Lyons said of Syverud. Over the years, they’d “get together a lot,” Lyons said, often for meals at the chancellor’s residence that would include Ruth Chen — an SU professor and the chancellor’s wife — as well as Simmons.

At some point, based on that kinship, they began talking about the need to find the right spot for Lyons’ papers.

You immediately sense the scope and power of that collection when speaking with David Seaman, the university’s dean of libraries, and Phil Arnold, a professor and a core faculty member in SU’s Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

Lacrosse legends Oren Lyons and Roy Simmons, friends for over seven decades, together earlier this month, when they received the Alfie Jacques Ambassador Award at Bellevue Country Club. Credit: Michael Greenlar | Central Current

Along with Betty Lyons of the American Indian Law Alliance, they were central to the negotiations that led to SU becoming caretakers for the papers. In the most critical part of the arrangement, an agreement was struck for Lyons, his family and the Onondaga people to retain actual ownership of the collection.

Arnold and Seaman said skilled researchers and archivists will soon begin sifting through all the documents, and anything of sacred meaning — or involving topical legal or diplomatic importance — will immediately be returned to the nation. Oren’s son Rex and Sid Hill — the spiritual leader, or Tadodaho of the Haudenosaunee — will be deeply involved in those decisions.

That will still leave a vast assortment of correspondence, documents, images and artwork at SU, a collection Arnold predicts will be of enduring importance to scholars and researchers.

“He’s been almost everywhere and he keeps everything,” Arnold said of Lyons. “I challenge anyone to think of another Native American diplomatic leader who has been so at the forefront (over the past 75 years) of so many transformative moments.”

The breadth of that history is staggering, Arnold said. It runs parallel to a sweeping Indigenous movement to reassert cultural rights and distinct identity after centuries of losing all too much. Lyons calls himself a “runner,” meaning an emissary sent to historic flash points either by Onondaga leadership or by the Haudenosaunee Grand Council.

“The people Oren is connected with and knows are remarkable,” Arnold said, “and it’s all in these papers. People will be using this collection for generations.”

Among the crew from the Onondaga Nation that helped moved nine pallets of Oren Lyons’ papers from a house in Eden: Debra Kolodczak, homeowner and longtime colleague, in gold jacket; Oren Lyons (top, center) with his son Rex in front of him; the husband-and-wife team of Sandy Bigtree and Phil Arnold are in right of second row, and Betty Lyons of the American Indian Law Alliance is directly in front of Arnold. Credit: Courtesy Debra Kolodczak

For instance: As they shared a meal this week, Arnold asked Lyons if he had ever met the late Robert Redford.

“Oh my,” Lyons said. “He was a good friend.”

Lyons has corresponded with presidents, and Arnold said Lyons met the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Lyons is an accomplished artist who counted a legion of celestial writers and artists and musicians as friends, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono — who joined Lyons on a 1971 visit to Onondaga, during a time of tension with the state over the intrusion of Interstate 81 on Indigenous land.

Lyons was at Wounded Knee and Oka at moments of conflict, bloodshed and Indigenous crisis. He addressed the United Nations and joined Hill in speaking at Muhammad Ali’s memorial service. Lyons was also a multi-talented athlete who helped found the Haudenosaunee Nationals — a lacrosse program of profound spiritual and diplomatic meaning within the Six Nations.

One of the great dreams of Lyons’ life is the idea of the Nationals playing lacrosse at the 2028 Olympics, in Los Angeles — and his lacrosse correspondence, potentially going back to the days when he was a teammate of Simmons and Jim Brown, will be another element of this collection.

He is also a guy familiar in an everyday way for many decades around greater Syracuse, a guy you might see drinking coffee in the morning at the Firekeepers restaurant or pushing a shopping cart on weekends through the produce section at Green Hills Farms.

As Seaman said: The SU archives are home to the collections of many extraordinary figures, “but few more honored or interesting than Oren Lyons.”

Syracuse University Professor Phil Arnold: A key player in collecting papers of Oren Lyons – and working out an arrangement to bring them to Syracuse University. Credit: Michael Greenlar | Central Current

Even so, Phil Arnold admits he was surprised to see the papers end up at SU. He always assumed Lyons would donate those materials to the SUNY University at Buffalo, where Lyons taught for decades in the company of such Indigenous scholars as John Mohawk, Barry White, Yvonne Dion-Buffalo and Rick Hill. Arnold credits Cantor and Syverud with building a relationship that led to SU becoming the final choice, though Lyons said the reason is intertwined with how he assumed the larger mission of his life.

“I didn’t have a childhood,” he said. His father walked away from their family when Lyons was in the seventh grade. The boy left school to hunt and work, to help his mother feed her children. Lyons would eventually serve in the U.S. Army with the 82nd Airborne, and he came home to work and to resume his passion, in whatever free time he had: Playing goaltender at Onondaga, in box lacrosse.

It was during that time — on a day when Lyons competed against a team of college players, from Syracuse — that he was approached by then-SU coach Roy Simmons Sr., who asked if Lyons would consider playing lacrosse for SU.

Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons (right) and Leon Shenandoah (left), who’d become Tadadaho of the Haudenosaunee with Yoko Ono and John Lennon, at the Onondaga Nation, 1971. Credit: Courtesy Rex Lyons

“They got a goaltender,” Lyons said, “and I got an education.”

The ramifications, he said, affected all that he became. Few Onondagas, in those days, felt embraced by the university on Piety Hill in Syracuse. Lyons earned a fine arts degree, but he was also a subtle observer of the way the people around him navigated the world beyond Haudenosaunee territory — lessons that continued when he worked for a time as an artist in New York City.

It was those skills — the gift of offering a passionate and eloquent voice of Indigenous concern, at hard moments — that eventually caused Onondaga leaders to ask Lyons and a lifetime friend, the late Chief Irving Powless Jr., to serve as diplomats and spokespeople in dealing with the endless challenges, pressures and demands forced upon them by the society and culture outside their borders.

Onondaga Nation Faithkeeper Oren Lyons listens to speakers. at a rally commemorating Indigenous children forced into residential schools. Credit: Michael Greenlar | Central Current

Lyons, recalling those early days, laughed softly. He remembers being told by his elders: “You guys know how to talk to these people.”

That changed his life. It would lead eventually to his role as a global voice of guidance and warning on environmental sanity. In a sense, he said, that happened because of what he began to learn about human dynamics at SU. And the steps taken by Cantor and Syverud, he said, opened up far more opportunities for new generations of young people from Haudenosaunee territories.

All of it factored into his decisions with his papers, a collection that he said is far less about him than it is about his culture and the teachings of the Haudenosaunee.

“The wisdom people attribute to me” really begins with Onondaga clan mothers and chiefs, Lyons said. All he’s done, he said, is to serve as a voice for their priorities — and it was his education in every sense at Syracuse that helped him transform the stories and practical knowledge he absorbed at Onondaga into this lifetime collection of documents, art and photographs.

A collection, he noted wryly, that still needs some organizing.

Arnold seconds the point: “This only marks the beginning of sorting these papers.” Just getting them together was a monumental task. To offer one example, Debra Kolodczak — who studied under Lyons at UB, and then became a colleague — volunteered a long time ago to store the documents of Lyons and several other scholars at her Erie County home in Eden, thinking she would have those boxes at most for “two or three years.”

Two or three years, in the way these things go, turned out to be 18. But a few months ago, a U-Haul truck arrived from Syracuse, accompanied by Lyons, his son Rex, Arnold, Betty Lyons and many other friends and volunteers. They soon loaded up about nine pallets worth of papers, documents and more for eventual delivery to SU.

“I’m kind of an in-kind storage donor,” said Kolodczak, laughing. She emphasized she’s excited about “Syracuse taking this on,” and she’s already offered her help to SU in sorting through the items.

Everyone agrees the most important element of the arrangement is that — while the collection will be available to scholars – Lyons and the Onondagas retain ownership. Seaman said the papers will be kept in special collections, on the climate-and-temperature-controlled sixth floor of Bird Library, which ties into another dream for Lyons:

Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons with Debra Kolodczak – a student and later a colleague at the University at Buffalo – who stored many of his papers, for many years. The dog’s name is Echo. Credit: Courtesy Debra Kolodczak

He hopes someday the Onondaga Nation has a magnificent library of its own, with similar technological conditions that are perfect for preserving Indigenous documents and sacred items — and on the day when that finally happens, he said, this collection will travel home.

Yet at 95, at a time when he knows certain choices cannot wait, Lyons is happy with where this record of his monumental life is going, right now.

“Syracuse has been good to us,” he said. “That’s why they get my papers.”

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Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Central Current. He has been an Upstate journalist for more than 50 years. He held his first reporting job as a teenager and worked for newspapers in Dunkirk, Niagara...