The Onondaga (Onöñda’gega’ or the People of the Hills) are one of the original five constituent nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy. Their traditional homeland is in and around Onondaga County, New York. Known as Gana’dagwëni:io’geh to the other Iroquois tribes, this name allows people to know the difference when talking about Onondaga in Six Nations, Ontario or near Syracuse, New York. Being centrally located, they were considered the "Keepers of the Fire" (Kayečisnakwe’nì·yu’ in Tuscarora) in the figurative longhouse. The Cayuga and Seneca had territory to their west and the Oneida and Mohawk to their east. For this reason, the League of the Iroquois historically met at the Iroquois government's capital at Onondaga, as indeed the traditional chiefs do today.

An early date for the Onondaga comes from attempting to date an oral tradition related to The Great Peacemaker, a Huron, who approached the Onondaga and others to found the Haudenosaunee. The dates he lived are not fixed but when the Seneca nation debated joining the Haudenosaunee based on his teachings there is a tradition of a solar eclipse happening. The most likely eclipse for this event was in 1142AD which actually fell over the land of the Seneca.Carbon dating of particular sites of Onondaga habitation shows dates starting close to 1200AD ± 60 years with growth for hundreds of years.

A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.

According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "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 common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "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." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.