jdmann@labrea.stanford.edu (09/20/89)
/* Written 1:30pm 9/18/89 by David Yarrow(jdmann) in gen.nativeam */
/* -- ENVIRONMENTAL BELIEFS OF NATIVE AMERICANS TAKE ON GLOBAL CLOUT -- */
Source: Syr Herald, monday, Sept 18 by Vincent Golphin, staff writer
SYRACUSE, NY - The Iroquois have several stories that explain how the
world began. One recounts how the leader of the heavens cast woman onto the
as-yet-unformed earth. She eventually came upon the land and made it
fertile. Another tells how God planted and raised people, like other living
things, from the soil of the earth. The tales differ in details but have a
common theme - the earth is a fertile mother, the font of life.
Native American religious beliefs and outrage over global abuse and
destruction of the environment have spawned a new movement in the fight
against the world's environmental problems - Earthwalk.
In the forefront are six central New Yorkers - Onondaga Chiefs Oren
Lyons and Leon Shenandoah, Clanmother Alice Papineau, Mohawk Chief Jake
Swamp, Clanmother Judy Swamp, and the Swamp's son, Glenn.
Earthwalk was born in a two-day international meeting on the environment
held last April at Kurrajong, New South Wales, Australia. The meeting
involved more than 200 native people from the United States, Australia and
Africa. The event was a first - a talk between descendants of the original
inhabitants of the US, Australia and Africa, and descendants of Europeans
who seized and settled their lands.
What people said to each other and their challenge to the white world was
subject of a videotape shown at Pebble Hill Church. Shenandoah, Papineau
and Patricia Chuse, Director of the Center for International Cooperation in
Washington, VA, which sponsored the Australian conference also spoke.
"It's not unusual for us to be involved in these discussions because we
just see it as a continuation of our way," Lyons said. "We're kind of
startled by all of the attention given to Indians now. They were trying to
kill us for the past 400 years. Now, all of a sudden, people around the
world are saying, 'Hey! We want to hear what you have to say!'" Lyons said
the Earthwalk meeting was a powerful encounter between whites, blacks and
Indians. "It was pretty painful for a lot of people," he said. "I see it as
having some far-reaching effects for Australia, then the world at large."
Lyons returned Saturday from an international conference on environment
with American and Soviet scientists at Sundance, actor Robert Redford's
retreat in Utah. Lyons is also on the steering and planning committees for
a Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on the role of media
to save the environment. The meeting will be Jan. 7 in Moscow.
Native Americans and other native peoples warn that efforts to conquer
the environment rather than live with it in harmony will kill Mother Earth.
Because of those views on the Earth and the environment, the participants
of Earthwalk called for:
* The UN and the International Labor Organization to officially recognize
the indigenous beings as people;
* Recognition of indigenous peoples' sovereign rights to land and life;
* Recogntion of indigenous peoples' right to determine representation;
* Atonement and reconciliation between indigenous peoples and those who
settled on their lands;
* Rewrite of histories to accurately reflect participation and historical
views of native peoples.
* Support & promotion of a Declaration of 1992 as "The Year of Indigenous
Peoples."
* Joining of hands of all peoples to repair and protect the Earth and the
environment for the welfare of the seven generations yet to come.
Walter and Betsy Haswell of LaFayette were among whites at the Earthwalk
conference. Walter said exchanges at the meeting and their visits to the
Australian cities of Sherbourne, Brisbane and Sydney made them more aware
of environmental abuse and earned them new friends who share concern for
the world. A former vice president of Crucible Steel Co., he said he and
his wife have been involved in the movement to save the environment for
more than 20 years.
Lyons said he was surprised how each of the native cultures seem to have
similar legends and the same concerns for the future of the Earth. He said
these common visions stem from the closeness to the land which indigenous
people still hold in common.
Chuse said the influence of the Earthwalk conference is just beginning.
Transcripts of the talks may become a book. Organizers are working on a
second conference in Africa in 1990 or 1991. Chuse said Lyons and other
indigenous speakers have begun to recieve more invitations to international
conferences on the environment because of an increased awareness of the
need for the involvement of native peoples on the issue.
=============================================================
COMMENTARY: Onondaga Nation is "Keeper of the Council Fire," capitol
of North America's oldest democracy: the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations
Confederacy of the Iroquois League. They are the last surviving sovereign
nations of the Red Race in North America. They were never conquered by the
US, but instead, in 1784 signed the George Washington Covenant Treaty in
which the US agreed to recognize their sovereignty and protect them from
loss of their lands.
Haudenosaunee government was studied as the world's only living model of
democracy by Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Rutledge, James Monroe
and other Founding Fathers of the USA. Haudenosaunee leaders met many times
with colonial leaders from 1740 to 1776 to advise the colonists to unite.
Yet today they, along with Australian aborigines, are not recognized and
seated in the UN.
Haudenosaunee religion and culture are based on awareness and respect for
the Earth as Mother and living being. They are among the Earth's surviving
possessors of non-industrial consciousness and culture which does not split
spirit from matter, and spirituality from government - traditions extending
back thousands of years beyond the dawn of written European history.
In 1871 Lewis Henry Morgan, corporate lawyer in Rochester, NY, published
"Ancient Society," a study and analysis of Haudenosaunee culture. In London
Karl Marx and Frederich Engels read his book and used its data as their
starting point to research primitive peoples - the basis for Engel's
"Origin of Family, Private Property and the State."
Thus Haudenosaunee culture inspired both American political democracy and
Soviet economic democracy. Both attempts remain flawed and imperfect today.
To Haudenosaunee, both American and Soviet culture, government and economy
are expressions of an industrial consciousness deliberately rejected.
What a meaningful irony that on Jan. 7, 1990 Soviet and Haudenosaunee
will host a conference on the global environmental crisis: the greatest and
the smallest nations on Earth. Yet, if a vice president of a steel company
can join aboriginal peoples at Earthwalk, why can't native and industrial
nations join in the UN?
*-+-* David Yarrow, the turtle, for SOLSTICE magazine
***** SOLSTICE: Perspectives on Health and Environment, is published
bimonthly at 200 E. Main St Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901 804-979-4427
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