Understanding this history is essential to understanding what Parker was doing when he worked as a negotiator and interpreter for Seneca leaders — and what he was doing when he later occupied the Commissioner’s chair.

He was not approaching these roles naively, without a clear-eyed understanding of the system he was engaging with.

He was approaching them with the specific, personal knowledge of what the system had done to people he loved and a community he belonged to, and with a calculated understanding of where leverage might be found to make the system produce different outcomes.

The forest cemetery in Buffalo where his remains were eventually interred stands a relatively short distance from the reservation where he was born.