Road To Your Name - Season 8, Episode 5: A conversation with Don Lynch on genealogy and kinship
Road To Your Name
Season 8, Episode 5
Guest: Don Lynch, author and member of the Six Nations Genealogy Society and the Six Nations Library Board
This episode was recorded in December 2025.
It’s All in the Dash — Genealogy, Family Stories, and the Anderson Legacy with Don Lynch
Season 8, Episode 5
Guest: Don Lynch, author and member of the Six Nations Genealogy Society and the Six Nations Library Board
This episode was recorded in December 2025.
It’s All in the Dash — Genealogy, Family Stories, and the Anderson Legacy with Don Lynch
Episode Description
In this episode, Lisa sits down with Don Lynch, a member of the Ohsweken Genealogical Society and chair of the Six Nations Public Library Board, for a warm and wide-ranging conversation about family history, oral tradition, and why it matters to document the stories before they’re gone.
Don brings a collector’s instinct and a storyteller’s heart to genealogy. He’s less interested in names and dates than in “the dash” between them — the real lives people lived. And his own family turns out to be a remarkable thread through Indigenous history: his great-aunt Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture was the first Indigenous woman to become a registered nurse in Canada and the first Indigenous woman from Canada to serve in the United States military during the First World War. His uncle Arnold Anderson was a chemical engineer on the Manhattan Project and a founding member — and first executive director — of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES).
From a grandmother who got her name because an uncle forgot what she was supposed to be called, to a grandfather who became a teacher after being injured by a jealous co-worker, to two Anderson brothers — one with a wooden leg, one with a glass eye — Don’s family stories are a reminder that every family has this kind of richness waiting to be found. This episode is an invitation to go looking.
What We Talk About
- The Ohsweken Genealogical Society — who comes to meetings, what happens there, and how people with nothing but a name can walk out with a thread to pull on
- Don’s philosophy: it’s not the birth date or death date that matters — it’s the dash in between
- How Don’s family became Andersons — tracing back to a mysterious adoption from the Tuscarora Reserve in New York State
- His mother, who graduated from McMaster University in 1935 as the first Indigenous woman to do so, and the scholarship named in her honor
- His Uncle Arnold — chemical engineer on the Manhattan Project and founding member and first executive director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), with a scholarship now named after him
- His great-aunt Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture, the first Indigenous woman to become a registered nurse in Canada, who had to train in the United States because of the Indian Act, and went on to serve in France during World War One
- How a workplace injury turned Don’s grandfather from a farm laborer into a teacher — and how that accident changed the course of an entire family’s educational legacy
- The story of Mohawk Joe and Delaware Joe: lifelong enemies with the same name, a near-fatal fight, a flight to the Panama Canal, and an unresolved feud
- How Don’s grandmother became “Minnie Essie” instead of Charlotte because an uncle forgot her name when he went to register her birth
- Using ancestry.ca through the Six Nations Public Library — free, in-person, and more useful than people realize
- The Mohawk Kinship Project at the Six Nations Library, which traces the mother’s line through large visual charts available by appointment
- DNA testing services: what they can and can’t do for Indigenous families, and why Don has reservations about submitting personal data
- How posting a single family photograph on the library website led to a California man hiring a detective, tracking down a relative he didn’t know existed, and reuniting a family across the border
- Practical advice on photographs: label them now, digitize old ones, print digital ones, and never lend an original
- Photo restoration tools Don uses — Topaz and HitPaw — and how to colorize old black and white images
- Why oral tradition makes it especially urgent for Indigenous families to write stories down — and how one missed generation can mean a story is lost forever
Notable Family Members Mentioned
Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (1890–1996) — Don’s great-aunt. Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk), Six Nations of the Grand River. The first Indigenous woman to become a registered nurse in Canada, the first Indigenous woman from Canada to serve in the United States military, and the first Indigenous woman to vote in a Canadian federal election. Barred from Canadian nursing schools by the Indian Act, she trained at the New Rochelle Nursing School in New York and graduated at the top of her class in 1914. She served as a surgical nurse at Base Hospital 23 in Vittel, France, during World War One. She returned to Six Nations and worked as a nurse and midwife on the reserve until 1955. She passed away in 1996 at the age of 105, the last surviving Six Nations WWI veteran. A street and park in Brantford, Ontario bear her name.
Arnold “A.T.” Anderson (1915–1983) — Don’s uncle. Six Nations. Chemical engineer at Union Carbide who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War Two, helping to process uranium-235 for the development of the atomic bomb. He held a chemistry degree from McMaster University. After the war, he received presidential commendations from Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for his advisory work on Indigenous policy. In 1977, he co-founded the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) with six other Indigenous scientists and engineers and served as its first executive director. A scholarship in his name — the A.T. Anderson Memorial Scholarship — continues to support Indigenous students in STEM fields.
Guest
Don Lynch — Member of the Ohsweken Genealogical Society and Chair of the Six Nations Public Library Board. Author of the memoir The Metal Man, Drunken Pigeons, and Me (2022), available on Amazon.
Resources Mentioned
- Ohsweken Genealogical Society — meets the second Saturday of each month at Woodland Cultural Centre. Facebook: Ohsweken Genealogical Society
- Six Nations Public Library — free in-library access to ancestry.ca; home of the Mohawk Kinship Project (call ahead to view the kinship charts)
- The Metal Man, Drunken Pigeons, and Me by Don Lynch (2022) — available on Amazon
- Footpaths Through History by Penny Warner — the story of artist James Beaver
- CBC Marketplace DNA testing segment — search “Marketplace DNA test” on YouTube
- Photo restoration tools mentioned: Topaz, HitPaw
- ancestry.ca and 23andMe — discussed with context on their limitations for Indigenous research
- Aboriginal Legal Services — aboriginallegal.ca
- Support the show: click Donate at the top of the ALS homepage
- Facebook: Road to Your Name
Road to Your Name is produced by Aboriginal Legal Services and hosted by Lisa VanEvery, Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan. Recorded on Haudenosaunee territory with technical assistance from True Seed Media. Nia:wen for listening.
Creators and Guests
Host
Lisa VanEvery
Lisa has worked for Aboriginal Legal Services for sixteen years. She began hosting the Road To Your Name Podcast in December 2020.
