jdmann@labrea.stanford.edu (09/06/89)
/* -------- Written 12:30pm 9/4/89 by David Yarrow(jdmann) ------- */
/* -------- A BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS ------- */
The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World
Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn, 1977
Position Paper #1
SPIRITUALISM: THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The Hau de no sau nee Message to the Western World
The Hau de no sau nee, or Six Nations Confederacy (Iroquois), has
existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is
among the most ancient continuously existing cultures in the world. We
still remember the earliest doings of human beings. We remember the
original instructions of the Creators of Life on this place we call Etenoha
- Mother Earth. We are the spiritual guardians of this place. We are the
Ongwhehonwhe - the Real People.
In the beginning we were told the human beings who walk about on the
Earth have been provided with all the things necessary for life. We were
instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for
all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the
tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the Vegetable
Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways,
spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.
Ours is a Way of Life. We believe all living things are spiritual
beings. Spirit can be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A
blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter - grass matter. The
spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of
grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass.
All things of the world are real, material things. Creation is a true,
material phenomenon, and Creation manifests itself to us through reality.
The spiritual universe, then, is manifest to Man as Creation, the Creation
which support life. We believe that man is real, a part of Creation, and
that his duty is to support Life in conjunction with the other beings.
That is why we call ourselves Ongwhehonwhe - Real People.
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are
to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the
spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving
to the many supporters of our own lives - the corn, beans, squash, the
winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for
these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this
planet will come to an end.
Our roots are deep in the lands where we live. We have a great love for
our country, for our birthplace is there. The soil is rich from the bones
of thousands of our generations. Each of us were created in those lands,
and it is our duty to take great care of them, because from these lands
will spring the future generations of the Ongwhehonwhe. We walk about with
a great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.
We are not a people who demand or ask anything of the Creators of Life,
but instead, we give greetings and thanksgiving that all the forces of Life
are still at work. We deeply understand our relationship to all living
things. To this day, the territories we still hold are filled with trees,
animals, and the other gifts of the Creation. In these places we still
receive our nourishment from our Mother Earth.
We have seen that not all people of the Earth show the same kind of
respect for this world and its beings. The Indo-European people who have
colonized our lands have shown very little respect for the things that
create and support Life. We believe these people ceased their respect for
the world a long time ago. Many thousands of years ago, all the people of
the world believed in the same Way of Life, that of harmony with the
universe. All lived according to the Natural Ways.
Around ten thousand years ago, peoples who spoke Indo-European languages
lived in the area which today we know as the Steppes of Russia. At that
time, they were a Natural World people who lived off the land. They had
developed agriculture, and it is said that they had begun the practice of
animal domestication. Hunters and gatherers who roamed the area probably
acquired animals from the agricultural people, and adopted an enonomy,
based on herding and breeding of animals.
Herding and breeding of animals signaled a basic alteration in the
relationship of humans to other life forms. It set into motion one of the
true revolutions in human history. Until herding, humans depended on
Nature for the reproductive powers of the animal world. With the advent of
herding humans assumed the function which had for all time been the
function of the spirits of the animals. Sometime after this history
records the first appearance of social organization known as "patriarchy."
The area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers was the homeland, in
ancient times, of various peoples, many of whom spoke Semitic languages.
Semitic people were among the first in the world to develop irrigation
technology. This led to the early development of towns, and eventually
cities. The manipulation of the waters, another form of spirit life,
represented another way in which humans developed a technology which
reproduced a function of Nature.
Within these cultures, stratified hierarchal social organization
crystallized. Ancient civilizations developed imperialism, partly because
of the very nature of cities. Cities are obviously population
concentrations. Most importantly though, they are places which must import
the material needs of this concentration from the countryside. This means
that the Natural World must be subjugated, extracted from and exploited in
the interest of the city. To give order to this process, the Semitic world
developed early codes of law. They also developed the idea of monotheism
to serve as spiritual model for their material and political organization.
Much of the history of the ancient world recounts the struggles between
the Indo-Europeans and the Semitic peoples. Over a period of several
millenia, the two cultures clashed and blended. By the second millenia
B.C. some Indo-Europeans, most specifically the Greeks, had adopted the
practice of building cities, thus becoming involved in the process which
they named "Civilization."
Both cultures developed technologies peculiar to civilization. Semitic
peoples invented kilns which enabled the creation of pottery for trade and
storage of surpluses. These early kilns eventually evolved into ovens
which could generate enough heat to smelt metals, notably copper, tin and
bronze. The Indo-Europeans developed a way of smelting iron.
Rome fell heir to these two cultures, and became the place where the
final meshing occurs. Rome is also the true birthplace of Christianity.
The process that has become the culture of the West is historically and
linguistically a Semetic/Indo-European culture, but has been commonly
termed the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Christianity was an absolutely essential element in early development of
this kind of technology. Christianity advocated only one God. It was a
religion which imposed itself exclusively of all other beliefs. The local
people of the European forests were a people who believed in the spirits of
the forest, waters, hills and the land; Christianity attacked those
beliefs, and effectively de-spiritualized the European world. Christian
peoples, who possessed superior weaponry and a need for expansion, were
able to militarily subjugate the tribal peoples of Europe.
Availability of iron led to development of tools which could cut down
the forest, the source of charcoal to make more tools. Newly cleared land
was then turned by the newly developed iorn plow, which was for the first
time pulled by horses. With that technology many fewer people would work
much more land, and many other people were effectively displaced to become
soldiers and landless peasants. The rise of that technology ushered in the
Feudal Age and made possible, eventually, the rise of new cities and
growing trade. It also spelled the beginning of the end of the European
forest, although that process took a long time to complete.
The eventual rise of cities and the concurrent rise of the European
state created the thrust of expansion and search for markets which led men,
such as Columbus, to set sail across the Atlantic. The developement of
sailing vessels and navigation technologies made the European "discovery"
of the Americas inevitable.
The Americas provided Europeans a vast new area for expansion and
material exploitation. Initially, the Americas provided new materials and
even finished materials for the developing world economy which was based on
Indo-European technologies. European civilization has a history of rising
and falling as it technologies reach their material and cultural limits.
The finite Natural world has always provided a kind of built-in
contradiction to Western expansion.
Indo-Europeans attacked every aspect of North America with unparalleled
zeal. Native people were ruthlessly destroyed because they were an
unassimilable elements to the civilizations of the West. Forests provided
materials for larger ships, the land was fresh and fertile for agricultural
surpluses, and some areas provided sources of slave labor for conquering
invaders. By the time of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-Nineteenth
Century, North America was already a leader in the area of the development
of extractive technology.
Hardwood forests of the Northeast were not cleared for the purpose of
providing farmlands. Those forests were destroyed to creat charcoal for
the forges of the iron smelters and blacksmiths. By the 1890's, the West
had turned to coal, a fossil fuel, to provide the energy necessary for the
many new forms of machinery which had been developed. During the first
half of the Twentieth Century, oil had replaced coal as a source of energy.
The Western culture has been horribly exploitative and destructive of
the Natural World. Over 140 species of birds and animals were utterly
destroyed since the European arrival in the Americas, largely because they
were unusable in the eyes of the invaders. The forests were leveled, the
waters polluted, Native people subjected to genocide. Vast herds of
herbivores were reduced to mere handfuls, buffalo nearly became extinct.
Western technology and the people who employed it have been the most
amazingly destructive force in all of human history. No natural disaster
has ever destroyed as much. Not even the Ice Ages counted as many victims.
But like the hardwood forests, fossil fuels are also finite resources.
As the second half of the Twentieth Century has progressed, the people of
the West have begun looking to other forms of energy to motivate their
technology. Their eyes have settled on atomic energy, a form of energy
production which has by-products which are the most poisonous substances
ever know to Man.
Today the species of Man is facing a question of the very survival of
the species. The way of life known as Western Civilization is on a death
path on which their own culture has no viable answers. When faced with the
reality of their own destructiveness, they can only go forward into areas
of more efficient destruction. The appearance of Plutonium on this planet
is the clearest of signals that our species is in trouble. It is a signal
which most Westerners have chosen to ignore.
The air is foul, the waters poisoned, the trees dying, the animals
disappearing. We think even the systems of weather are changing. Our
ancient teaching warned us that if Man interfered with the Natural Laws,
these things would come to be. When the last of the Natural Way of Life is
gone, all hope for human survival will be gone with it. And our Way of
Life is fast disappearing, a victim of these destructive processes.
The other position papers of the Hau de no sau nee outline our analysis
of economic and legal oppression. But our essential message to the world
is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of Native cultures and
people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on
this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the
animal and plant life area also destroying the Native people. And that
process is Western Civilization.
We know that there area many people in the world who can quickly grasp
the intent of our message. But experience has taught us that there are few
who are willing to seek out a method for moving toward any real change.
But if there is to be a future for all beings on this planet, we must begin
to seek the avenues of change.
Processes of colonialism and imperialism which affected the Hau de no
sau nee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The
system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the
system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of
Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that mystified the peoples
of the Earth.
The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or
traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural
World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural
World peoples, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and
egalitarian societies.
It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical
analysis of the West's historical processes to seek out the actual nature
of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced
upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those
processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It
is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and
exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism,
and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true
nature of their lives.
We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every
program, and every process the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere
wrote in his book the PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED that it is the nature of
the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain
relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that
response to oppression.
People living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of
human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to
be extended to the whole Natural World. What is needed is the liberation
of all things that support Life - the air, the waters, the trees - all the
things which support the sacred Web of Life.
We feel that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere can continue
to contribute to the survival potential of the human species. The majority
of our peoples still live in accordance with the traditions which find
their roots in the Mother Earth. But the Native peoples have need of a
forum in which our voice can be heard. And we need alliances with the
other peoples of the world to assist in our struggle to regain and maintain
our ancestral lands and to protect the Way of Life we follow.
We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel
threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural
World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must
be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold
the dignity of Man. But that position is growing in strength, and it
represents a necessary strategy in the evolution of progressive thought.
Traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes
in Western Civilization which hold the promise of unimaginable future
suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political
consciousness. And we, the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are
among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We
are here to impart that message.
=============================================================
COMMENTARY: The Hau de no sau nee, of the Six Nations Confederacy, are
the last suriving sovereign native North American nations; they are
commonly referred to by the Huron-French name "Iroquois League."
This position paper was presented to a UN Commission of Discrimination
Against Native Peoples. It's message is just as true and even more timely
today than at its first presentation exactly 12 years ago.
This message has an added, deepened irony today as Russian, Balkan,
Polish, Chinese, and many other peoples struggle to establish genuine
liberty and democracy. This is because the Hau de no sau nee were provided
inspiration and advice for the European settlers to rebel against colonial
rule and establish the United States of America, the first modern European
political democracy. The original root of liberty can be traced to the
Onondaga Lake shore where the Peacemaker founded the Hau de no sau nee and
buried the hatchet beneath the Tree of Peace.
Today, two centuries later, the USA refuses to recognize the sovereignty
of the Hau de no sau nee, or honor their passports, and tries to impose its
own brand of popular election on the Hau de no sau nee tradition of the
selection of elders under the guidance of clanmothers.
And it was Henry Lewis Morgan's study of the Hau de no sau nee which
inspired Frederick Engels and Karl Marx to expound their communist theory
of economic democracy.
-*+*- David Yarrow, the turtle, for SOLSTICE magazine.
***** SOLSTICE: Perspectives on Health and Environment is a bimonthly
printed at 200 E Main St Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901 804-979-4427
---
Patt Haring | UNITEX : United Nations
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patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange
-=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=-jdmann@labrea.stanford.edu (09/06/89)
/* --------- Written 1am 9/5/89 by David Yarrow(jdmann) --------- */
/* --------- A BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS --------- */
The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World
presented to the United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn, 1977
Position Paper #2
The Obvious Fact of Our Continuing Existence
The Legal History of the Hau de no sau nee
Since the beginning of human time the Hau de no sau nee have occupied
the distinct territories that we call our homelands. That occupation has
been both organized and continuous. We have long defined the borders of
our country, have long maintained the exclusive use-right of the areas
within those borders, and have used those territories as the economic and
cultural definitions of our nation.
Hau de no sau nee are a distinct people, with our own laws and customs,
territories, political organization, and economy. In short, the Hau de no
sau nee, or Six Nations, fits in every way definitions of nationhood.
Ours is one of the most complex social/political structures still
functioning in the world. The Hau de no sau nee council is also one of the
most ancient continuously functioning governments anywhere on this planet.
Our society is one of the most complex anywhere. From our social and
political institutions has come inspiration for some of the most vital
institutions and political philosophies of the modern world.
Hau de no sau nee is governed by a constitution known among Europeans as
the Constitution of the Six Nations and to the Hau de no sau nee as the
Gayanashakgowah, or the Great Law of Peace. It is the oldest functioning
document in the world which contains recognition of the freedoms Western
democracies recently claimed as their own: freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, and the rights of women to participate in government. The
concept of separation of powers in government and of checks and balances of
power within governments are traceable to our Constitution. They are ideas
learned by the colonists as the result of contact with the North American
Native people, specifically the Hau de no sau nee.
The philosophies of the Socialist World, too, are to some extent
traceable to European contact with the Hau de no sau nee. Lewis Henry
Morgan noted the economic structure of the Hau de no sau nee, which he
termed both primitive and communistic. Karl Marx used Morgan's
observations for the development of a model for classless, post-capitalist
society. The modern world has been greatly incluenced by the fact of our
continuing existence.
It may seem strange at this time that we are here, asserting the obvious
fact of our continuing existence. For countless centuries the fact of our
existence was unquestioned, and for all honest human beings, it remains
unquestioned today. We have existed since time immemorial. We have always
conducted our own affairs from our territories, under our own laws and
customs. We have never, under those laws and customs, willingly or fairly
surrendered our territories or our freedoms. Never, in the history of the
Hau de no sau nee, have the Poeple or the government sworn allegiance to a
European sovereign. In that simple fact lies the roots of our oppression
as a people and the purpose of our journey here before the world community.
The problems incurred in the recent "legal history" of the Hau de no sau
nee began long before European contact with Native people. It began, at
least, with the rise of a system called feudalism in Europe, for the only
law which the colonizing countries of Europe ever recognized was feudal
law, a fact which they have obscured from their own people as well as from
Native people for many centuries. The fact, however, remains essential
reality of the legal relationships which exist between Native peoples and
Indo-European societies.
Feudal society in Europe appears to have arisen as the result of a
number of conditions which existed following the dissolution of the Roman
Empire. It was based on a system by which rulers of warrior castes became
strong enough to demand and extract fealty from warriors. There arose,
generally, an administrative center, usually a castle, and around these
were agricultural people who were usually protected from outside aggression
by their "lord," the soveriegn of the manor. It appears likely that new
technologies arose which created economies which made the feudal society
both possible and perhaps inevitable in Europe.
The feudal lord often held dictatorial power over his "subjects,"
especially the peasants. Military protection was necessary because of the
continuous state of "feuding" among the various lords. The "peaceful
people," or peasants, were caught in the middle. The land, and everything
on it, including animals, plants and people, was under the domination or
dominion of the feudal "lord." This lord demanded loyalty and a part of
the peasant's crops as well as some of his/her labor. Feudalism could be
far more brutal and humiliating than is outlined in many histories. Some
feudal lords exercised what was called "the right of the first night," a
custom which referred to the right of a lord to a peasant's bride.
Prior to the rise of feudalism, it is fair to state that most of the
agricultural people of Europe were local tribesmen of various kinds.
Feudalism imposed the concept of sovereign, dictatorial rulers whose rule
was imposed by military might, and gave rise to true European peasantry.
The crystallization of centralized executive power serves to separate
civilized societies from primitive societies. It is immaterial whether
such controls are located in a feudal castle or in the executive offices of
the capitols of nation states. The appearance of the hierarchical state
marks the transition of food cultivators in general to the more specific
definition contained in the concepts of peasantry. When the cultivator
becomes dependent upon and integrated in a society in which he is subject
to demands of people who are defined by a class other than his own, he
becomes appropriately termed a peasant. (1)
The state of medieval European peasants wasn't a pleasant one. Peasants
have no rights, save those granted by their lord. They cannot own land as
a people. Only the Soveriegn owns or possesses sovereignty. Peasants were
often treated as chattel. They were bought, sold and inherited with the
land. They were a people who had been dispossessed of land. At some
points in history, the tribal peoples of Europe became peasants through a
combination of forces, the most direct being military pressure.
A peasant is not a member of a true community of people. His society is
incomplete without the town or city. It is trade with the town or city, an
economic relationship, which defines the early stages of peasantry. As
trade becomes more necessary, for whatever reasons, the tribesman becomes
increasingly less of a tribesman and more of a peasant. The process is
neither immediate nor is it necessarily absolute, but to the degree that a
tribesman becomes dependent, he becomes less of a tribesman. (2)
To a great extent, the process by which people lost their freedom in
Europe was economic in nature. Medieval castles were military forts and
functioned as kinds of storehouses, but they also developed into trade
centers and eventually towns. In the early stages of feudalism the
agricultural worker "traded" his freedom for security from military
aggression. But increasingly, over the centuries, a primary function of
the medieval town became that of the marketplace.
"It is the market, in one form or another, that pulls out from the
compact social relations of self-contained primitive communities some parts
of men's doings and puts people into fields of economic activity that are
increasingly independent of the rest of what goes on in local life. The
local traditional and moral world and the wider and more impersonal world
of the market are in principle distinct, and opposed to each other..." (3)
The European "discovery" of North America led to the transposition of
European medieval law and customs to the Americas. To be sure, Spanish
medieval law differed in some respects from that of France, and both
differed in some respects from that of England, but an understanding of
Medieval Europe is essential to an analysis of European-Hau de no sau nee
legal history and also to any analysis of the process of colonialism.
Medieval Europe is the period of the rise of growing centralization and
consolidation of power by the ruling kinships (kings) over vast territories
which is specific to the North American experience. It is also the period
of the rise and growth of European cities as centers of trade and sources
of political power. The European laws of nations, as they were applied to
the Americas, were medieval laws.
"Europeans used a great variety of means to attain mastery, of which
armed combat was only one. Five priniciples were available to a European
soveriegn for laying claim to legitimate jurisdiction over an American
territory and its people: Papal donation, first discovery, sustained
possession, voluntary self-subjugation by the natives, and armed conquest
successfully maintained. The colony was the means of translating a formal
claim to the effective actuality of government, and it was "colonial" in
both senses of that ambiguous word. The huddled villages of Europeans were
colonies in the sense of being offshoots or reproductions of their parent
societies, and these villages exerted power over larger native populations
in the sense more clearly implied by the world colonialism." (4)
European invaders, from the first, attempted to claim Indians as their
subjects. Where Indian people resisted, as in the case of the Hau de no
sau nee, Europeans rationalized that resistance to be an incapacity for
civilization. The incapacity for civilization rationale became the basis
for the phenomenon in the West which is known today as racism.
Europeans landed on the shores of the Americas and immediately claimed
the territories for their sovereigns. They then attempted, especially in
the case of France and Spain, to make peasants of the Indians. The
English, who had already experimented with the enclosure system and who
thus colonized North America with landless peasants which were driven by a
desperation rooted in their own history, at first simply drove the Indians
off the land by force.
European legal systems had, and apparently have developed, no machinery
to recognize the rights of peoples, other than dictators or sovereigns, to
land. When Europeans came to North America, they attempted to simply make
vassals of the Native leaders. When that failed, they resorted to other
means. The essential thrust of European powers has been an attempt to
convert "...the Indian person from membership in an unassimilable caste to
membership in a social class integrated into Euro-American institutions."
The dispossession of Native people was accomplished by the Europeans in
the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of human history. They were acts
committed, seemingly, by a people without conscience or standards of
behavior. To this day the United States and Canada deny the existence of
the lawful governments of the Hau de no sau nee and other Native nations, a
continuation of the policy of genocide which has marked the process known
as colonialism. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, both
governments and the governments of Latin America deny the commission of
genocide, either physical or cultural.
Their reasoning is patently medieval and racist: "...Civilization is
that quality possessed by people with civil governments, civil government
is Europe's kind of government; Indians did not have Europe's kind of
government, therefore Indians were not civilized. Uncivilized people live
in wild anarchy; therefore Indians did not have government at all. And
THEREFORE Europeans could not have been doing anything wrong - were in fact
performing a noble mission - by bringing government and civilization to the
poor savages." (5)
Today, as in medieval times, the Indo-European government follows a
might makes right policy. Colonialism is a process often misunderstood and
misinterpreted. It is a policy which has long survived the medieval period
in which it was born. Many Western institutions are in fact colonial
institutions of Western culture. Churches, for example, operate in
virtually the same manner as did feudal lords. First, they identify a
people whose loyalty they wish to secure in an expansionist effort. Then
they charter a group to conduct a "mission." If that group is successful,
they become, in effect, the spiritual sovereigns or dictators of those
whose loyalty they command. That process in organized Christianity may
actually be more ancient than the process of political colonialism
described here.
Modern multi-national corporations operate in much the same way. They
identify a market or area which has resources they want. They then obtain
a charter or some form of sanction from a Western government, and they send
what amounts to a colonizing force into the area. If they successfully
penetrate the area, that area becomes a sort of economic colony of the
multi-national. The greatest resistance to that form of penetration has
been mounted by local nationalists.
In North America, educational institutions operate under the same kind
of colonial process. Schools are chartered by a soveriegn (such as the
state or the Bureau of Indian Affairs) to penetrate the Native community.
The purpose in doing so is to integrate Native people into society as
workers and consumers, the Industrial Society's version of peasants. The
sovereign recognizes, and practically allows, no other form of socializing
institution for the young. As in the days of the medieval castle, the
soveriegn demands absolute fealty. Under this peculiar kind of legal
system, the Western sovereign denies the existence of those whose
allegiance he cannot obtain. Some become, by this rationale, illegitimate.
This concept of illegitimacy is then interpreted into official
government policy. In the United States the colonizer has created two
categories of Native peoples: Federally recognized and non-Federally
recognized. In more recent years the government has taken to a policy of
non-recognition of an entity entitled "Urban Indians." In Canada there
exist four legal definitions of Native people. They are divided into
Status, Non-stutus, Metis, and Enfranchised. Both countries carry on the
policy of consistently referring to "Indians and Eskimos," as though
Eskimos were separate and not a Native people of the Western Hemisphere.
The United States and Canada practice blatant colonialism in the areas
affecting political institutions of Native peoples. In 1924 Canada's new
Indian Act established the legal sanction for the imposition of neo-
colonial "elective system" governments within Native peoples' territories.
In the United States the same goal was accomplished with the passage of the
1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Both pieces of legislation provided
compulsory chartered political colonies among Native people. These
"elective systems" owe their existence and fealty to the United States and
Canada, and not to the Native peoples. They are, by definition, colonies
which create classes of political peasants. They are governments only to
the degree an external social caste allows them to be governments. They
are, in most places in Native peoples' territories, the only forms of
government recognized by the colonizers.
Hau de no sau nee have also been subjected to the many forms of
colonialism of Western governments. Our first contact with a Western
people came in 1609 when a French military expedition under Samuel de
Champlain murdered some Mohawk people along the lake which now bears his
name. Later, when the Dutch came, the first treaty (or agreement) which we
made with a European power was the Two Row Treaty in which we clarified our
position - that we are a distinct, free and sovereign people. The Dutch
accepted that agreement.
But European nations have never honored the agreement. Many times France
attempted to dominate the Hau de no sau nee through conquest. England
often used every means possible, including coercion, threats and military
force, to extend her sovereignty over us. Each time we resisted.
The United States entered into solemn treaties with the Hau de no sau
nee, and each time ignored virtually each and every provision of the
treaties which guarantee our rights as separate nations. Only the sections
of the treaties which refer to land cessions, sections which were often
fraudulently obtained, have validity in the eyes of the United States
courts or governments.
The mechanism for colonization of Hau de no sau nee territory is found,
in legal fiction, in the United States Constitution. That document
purports to give Congress power to "regulate commerce with foreign nations
and among the several States, and with Indian tribes." Contrary to every
principle of international law, Congress has expanded that section to an
assertion of "plenary" power, a doctrine which asserts absolute authority
over our territories. This assertion has been repeatedly urged upon our
people, although we never agreed to that relationship, and we have never
been conquered in warfare. Hau de no sau nee are vassals to no people - we
are a free nation, and we never surrendered our rights as a free people.
From the beginning of its existence, the United States has conducted a
reign of terror in Hau de no sau nee territory. Colonial agents entered
our country between 1784 and 1842 and returned to Washington with treaties
for cessions of land fraudulently obtained with persons not authorized to
make land transfers. The Hau de no sau nee council, which is the only
legitimate body authorized to conduct land transactions, never signed any
agreements surrendering the territories.
The United States occupied the lands under threats of war, although
there were no acts which justified war measures. When Hau de no sau nee
gathered evidence to prove treaties were fraudulent and therefore illegal
under any interpretation of the law, the United States courts countered by
inventing the Political Question Doctrine. This doctrine basically asserts
that Congress cannot commit fraud and the courts cannot question Congress'
political judgement, although the United States courts find congressional
acts in other areas of law to be unconstitutional regularly.
Because Hau de no sau nee refused to sell the land, the United States
simply refused to recognize our government. Instead, they recognized those
colonized individuals who would agree to sell the land and whose loyalties
lie with Washington. In 1848 the United States simply recognized an
"elective system" on the Seneca Nation lands, creating a colonial
government on the largest of our remaining territories in what is called by
the colonizers "New York State."
There followed a long list of moves by the United States to exterminate
the Hau de no sau nee. There were treaties which entirely dispossessed,
for all practical purposes, the Cayuga and Oneida nations in their
ancestral lands. There were treaties, such as the Treaty of 1797, which
recognized the sale by individuals of the territory of the Kanienkehaka, an
area of nine million acres of land exchanged for the sum of one thousand
dollars. There were attempts from 1821 to 1842 to remove Hau de no sau nee
from their territories called by the colonists "New York" to other areas
now called Wisconsin and Kansas. These efforts resulted in the
displacement of some of our people to those areas. In 1851 there was an
attempt to evict Seneca people from their lands at Tonawanda.
In 1886 there was an attempt to divide Hau de no sau nee into severalty
under the Dawes Act, an attempt which was not entirely successful. In 1924
the United States passed a Citizenship Act which attempted to give United
States citizenship to all Native peoples. Hau de no sau nee strongly
rejected the concept that we could ever be United States citizens. We are
Hau de no sau nee citizens. But the feudal laws of the colonizers have
been relentless.
Also in 1924 Canada militarily invaded our territories on the Grand
River and forcibly installed a colonial government there. The episode was
repeated by Canada in 1934 on our territories at the Thames River community
of Oneida.
In 1948 and 1950 Congress passed laws giving civil and criminal
jurisdiction to New York State, although Congress was never given such
jurisdiction by Hau de no sau nee. In 1958 Congress passed Public Law 88-
533, the Kinzua Dam Act, which resulted in flooding of almost all the
inhabitable lands of the Seneca at Alleghany, and virtually destroyed the
Native communities and culture there. That act also provided for the
termination of the Seneca Nation, a process which would have ended even the
colonial government there, and which would have moved the denial of our
existence a little closer to reality.
In addition to these kinds of legal colonization, Hau de no sau nee have
been subjected to every other kind of colonization imaginable. Churches,
school systems and every form of Western penetration have made political,
economic and cultural peasants of some our populations. The continuing
denial of our political existence has been accomplished by an almost
overwhelming psychological, economic and spiritual attack by the colonial
institutions of the West.
For over 300 years our people have been under a virual state of siege.
During this entire time we have never once given up our struggle. Our
strategies have, of necessity, changed. But the will and determination to
continue on remains the same. Throughout these years, European historians
have recorded the position of the Hau de no sau nee.
During the 1920's one of our leaders, a man named Deskaheh, came to this
city to seek help for his people. At that time the international body
which existed did not truly represent the world community. Many cultures
and nations were not recognized. Now, fifty years later, we have returned,
and our message remains the same.
Our elders have watched the rebirth of this international institution.
In 1949 a delegation of Hau de no sau nee attended the foundation ceremony
for the United Nations building in New York City. In 1974 our people
journeyed to Sweden to take part in an international conference on the
Environment and Ecology. All through these times we have taken notice of
the changes which occurred within this institution.
Now we find ourselves in Geneva, Switzerland once again. For those of
us present, and the many at home, we have assumed the duty of carrying on
our peoples' struggle. Invested in the names we carry today are the lives
of thousands of generations of both the past and the future. On their
behalf, also, we ask that the Non-Governmental Organizations join us in our
struggle to obtain our full rights and protection under the rules of
international law and the World Community.
=============================================================
COMMENTARY: Hau de no sau nee are unique among North American native
nations in that they retain their sovereignty while all the others lost
theirs. Their soveriegnty, though continually challenged, is recognized
today by the United States and New York State governments.
In January, 1988 this recognition was noted by the erection of signs on
Interstate 81 just south of the City of Syracuse, New York which state
clearly for all travelers to read: Onondaga Nation Territory. Thus, on the
200th anniversary of the first treaty between Onondaga Nation and New York
State, New York publicly recognized the continuing existence of a sovereign
native nation at the heart of the state.
In the last 20 years Hau de no sau nee have begun the difficult task of
rebuilding their culture after nearly 200 centuries of attempts at
colonization. They still maintain their traditional governments and
practice their traditional spiritual ceremonies.
It is highly significant that the United Nations, World Congress, World
Parliament, and every other major international political body have no
native American nations represented. Of the six inhabited continents,
three - North America, South America and Australia - have no representation
of indigenous peoples and their legitimate governments in any international
discussions of the future of the planet.
Native cultures are unique in several respects. For one, they are non-
industrialized cultures which do not share modern definitions of political
and economic identity common to industrialized nations. For another, many
such as the Hau de no sau nee, are matrilineal and matriarchal societies.
And nearly all observe a spiritual culture based on respect for the Earth
as Mother. It seems these are values greatly needed on the international
scene today as the world debates strategies for survival in the face of a
mounting global environmental crisis.
-*+*- David Yarrow, the turtle, for SOLSTICE magazine (igc!jdmann).
***** SOLSTICE Perspectives on Health and Environment, is a bimonthly
printed at 200 E. Main St Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901; 804-979-4427
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