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As 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Onaway, we have been taking the opportunity to reflect on the origins and history of the Trust and to take a look back at the impact of Onaway’s partnerships over the decades. This is the story of how the Onaway Trust began.

John’s Journey

Onaway founder John Morris was born in Yorkshire in 1921. He was a highly gifted, compassionate and spiritual young man who from an early age was inspired by the Native American culture and ways of life described in the epic poem, ’The Song of Hiawatha’ and who loved to be surrounded by nature.

As an adult, John met Pilkington Glass heiress Barbara Pilkington through his work as a reporter, with whom he would go on to co-found the Onaway Trust and form a life-long friendship. After  travelling to the Middle East, he became deeply concerned by the dispossession of the Palestinians he met there. With the backing of Barbara Pilkington and with the late King Hussein of Jordan as its patron, John went on to set up a home for disabled Arab refugee children, which served the community for over a decade.

In 1973, at the age of 53, John visited North America and was warmly welcomed by Native American communities such as the Seminoles, Mohawks and Lakota, with whom he lived and formed close bonds. He was inspired by the tribes’ innate wisdom and sacred, intuitive ways of life and found himself in communication with a new spiritual guide or imaginary friend called Golden Eagle. From this point on, John made frequent trips back and forth to the US to spend time with the Native people, his new friends. 

However, it was through these numerous journeys that he learned the difficult truth that the spirit and cultures of the Native American peoples had been catastrophically suppressed, and in many cases lost entirely, due to decades of oppression, discrimination and genocide at the hands of white colonisers and their descendants. John felt a spiritual calling to help the Native peoples to preserve and celebrate their culture and it was from this awakening that the Onaway Trust was born in 1974.

“In former times an Indian, whilst still quite young, was sent out alone on a vision quest. Whatever was revealed to him in dreams and visions would, he believed, serve to shape and guide his future life. Although no longer young, John Morris’ sojourn among the Indians was also, in essence, a ‘vision quest’ and from it he derived both a new direction and a new purpose in life — to speak out for justice for the American Indian.”– Akwesasne Notes, 1982

The Evolution of Onaway

John Morris soon started the Onaway magazine, ‘onaway’ being an Ojibwe word meaning ‘awake’, which he produced from his home in Leeds. The magazine was sent out by post to subscribers and featured articles and photographs which served to educate the British public about the ways of life, world view and struggles of Native peoples. The Onaway magazine and the message it shared received a lot of interest from other Brits who were interested in the Native American way of life and concerned to learn of the despicable treatment of the people at the hands of fellow Europeans. 

All profits went towards the Onaway Trust’s projects, providing seed funding to small projects led by and supporting these Indigenous communities. Copies of the Onaway magazine are available at the Onaway Trust HQ and we have plans to make these available digitally in the near future.

Onaway has always believed in giving a hand-up rather than hand-outs to communities in need, by providing initial seed funding to sustainable, community-led projects which will have a long-term positive impact on communities, rather than one-off grants which have limited benefits if gains are not reinvested back into the project.

The funding provided to projects back in those early days gave some of them the initial boost they needed to help them grow into the successful organisations they are today. For example Survival International, a hugely important international force in the fight for Indigenous rights globally, which runs many vital and game-changing campaigns which have helped to protect tribal lands and save vulnerable Indigenous tribes from being wiped out completely, has close ties with Onaway dating back to the mid 1970s.

The Onaway Trust understands that Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the natural world and that their wellbeing, cultures, rights, ways of life and languages must be protected, not only for their own sake but also for the very future of the planet we all rely on.

The organisation exists to give Native peoples the resources to fight back against the struggles which they face as a result of the oppression, genocide and discrimination dealt to them by those who believe that civilisation and progress are to be achieved through the theft and exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources and the assimilation and subjugation of those who live a more harmonious way of life.

We also aim to help educate the Western world on the benefits that living in a more traditional or environmentally conscious way and embracing Native wisdom has for both ourselves and the health of our planet, ensuring a more promising future for generations to come. It is evident that the Indigenous way of life provides us with many of the solutions we need to fix the problems caused by the Western world’s destructive and selfish behaviour to date.

Over the past 50 years, the Onaway Trust has supported many incredible and deserving projects across the world, from the Americas to Australia, Africa and Asia. In the coming weeks and months we look forward to taking a look back at some of these projects and the impact that they continue to have on Indigenous communities in the present day.

However most importantly, we wish to celebrate the incredible bonds and friendships which have been forged with Native peoples and allies around the world ever since John Morris’s first visit to America in the 1970s.

If you would like to share any memories or stories of the Onaway Trust or the impact that our partnership has had on your community, please feel free to get in touch and help us celebrate this important milestone in the collaboration and respect between our Native and non-Native communities. Thank you.

“Over the years, the work of the Onaway Trust has often meant the difference between the survival and extinction of a number of traditional organisations. […] It is true that they have provided monies for projects and crisis situations when no one else would provide money, and we are very grateful for this because several projects at Akwesasne have survived because of the generosity of this organisation, but it would be wrong to view the work of the Onaway Trust in terms of money. This is an organisation sincerely dedicated to introducing a natural world viewpoint to European people and to trying to help correct long-standing injustices.” – Akwesasne Notes, 1982

The Indigenous Maasai people of Tanzania are fighting for their lands and their lives following a crackdown on protests against forced evictions and land theft. 40 more Maasai have recently been arrested by security forces while holding a peaceful meeting to discuss the government’s use of media to evict them from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This is the latest in a series of eviction attempts which have been carried out since 2009 in order to supposedly protect wildlife from human interference and make way for conservation areas which provide a cover for industries to profit from the land.

Faced with being left without their homes, livelihoods and the resources they need to survive, the Maasai community have been forced to stand up against removal from their ancestral homelands and fight for the essential human rights being denied to them, such as water, healthcare and education.

Land is central to the Maasai culture and way of life, providing everything from grazing land for livestock, to food, medicinal plants, and building materials. If evicted from their homelands, not only do the Maasai forfeit all of this, but they also risk losing their livestock due to insufficient food and water accessibility in their new territory. With livestock acting as the Maasais’ main currency, as well as representing a family’s wealth and status, this loss could be devastating for the community’s wellbeing and way of life.

However, not only are the Maasais’ lives being completely uprooted in the name of conservation, but they are being subjected to horrific treatment in the process. Investigations show that security forces are using excessive force and violence on the community in their attempts to evict them, including shooting, the use of tear gas, and burning down homes. Cattle are stolen and auctioned off by authorities, putting the Maasai in the difficult position of choosing between buying back their own animals at elevated prices or else facing impoverishment without their income source.

In addition, many people have been unlawfully and arbitrarily arrested and convicted of crimes in which they have played no part. Onaway was recently concerned to learn that among those arrested by authorities in Loliondo was the leader of the beekeeping project run by SIDI. The whereabouts of those detained is unknown, leading to concerns over welfare and access to legal support to help them fight their case.

In order to continue their activities unchallenged and to hide the truth about the repression of the Maasai, the government has restricted access to newly demarcated areas. A special permit is now needed to enter the zone where the beekeeping initiative is taking place, meaning that organisers are having difficulty accessing the area and that project activities are being held up as a result. Unsurprisingly, Tanzanian officials have also gone back on their decision to allow MEPs entry to investigate human rights abuses against the Maasai.

The authorities justify these actions by painting a false picture of ‘overpopulated’ Indigenous peoples destroying the ecosystem by overexploiting natural resources and coming into conflict with wildlife. In reality, these evictions are devised in order to take back control of what may be considered by some as ‘unproductive’ land and make way for highly profitable industries such as trophy-hunting, game reserves, and tourism. In June 2022, 70,000 Maasai people were forced to move from their homes in Loliondo, Tanzania, which has now been renamed Loliondo Game Reserve and is exclusively reserved for the use of a private hunting company.

Despite the claims of those profiting from this crisis, the Maasai people live in harmony with nature and are the best possible custodians of their land, having protected its biodiversity for generations, to the benefit of the whole planet. Indigenous peoples possess innate knowledge about how to sustainably utilise natural resources without upsetting the natural balance of the ecosystem and are able to graze their cattle in harmony with the rhythms of the land.

At a time when so many are concerned about the future of the planet, this process of evicting nature’s custodians and handing the land over to exploitative and greedy industries is a highly manipulative and dangerous model which leads well-meaning individuals to support organisations which actually harm the people and the environment that they claim to protect.

Without the free, prior and informed consent of those affected, these evictions constitute nothing less than land theft. The right of Indigenous peoples to their land and resources and the vital and unmistakeable role they play in environmental conservation must urgently be recognised by those in power for the sake of the health of the planet we all rely upon.