Mohawk people

The Mohawk people (who identify as Kanien'kehá:ka) are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy, and are also known as the “People of the Flint Place.” They are an Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people of North America. They were historically based in the Mohawk Valley in present-day upstate New York west of Albany; their territory ranged to the St. Lawrence River and present-day southern Quebec and eastern Ontario, greater New Jersey, and southward into present-day Pennsylvania, eastward to the Green Mountains of Vermont, and westward to the border with the Oneida Nation's traditional homeland territory. As one of the five original members of the Iroquois League, or Haudenosaunee, the Mohawk were known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door. For hundreds of years, they guarded the Iroquois Confederation against invasion from that direction by tribes from the New England and lower New York areas. Their current major settlements include areas around Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River in Canada and New York.

Nation

Nation (from Latin: natio, "people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock") is a social concept with no uncontroversial definition, but that is most commonly used to designate larger groups or collectives of people with common characteristics attributed to them—including language, traditions, customs (mores), habits (habitus), and ethnicity. A nation, by comparison, is more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group. It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity, and particular interests.

According to Joseph Stalin: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people"; "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation"; and, in its entirety: "a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture."