A RESEARCH PROJECT
A RESEARCH PROJECT
As previously stated in the project page, this is mostly all knowledge I had gathered during my college studies. In my second year, to fulfill some basic degree requirements for the Writing & Rhetoric major, I attended two separate courses which focused on Indigenous societies. One on the history of Indigenous Religions which also detailed some aspects of Haudenosaunee culture and their 1,000 year-old political institution of a Consensus Democracy. And the other course focused on the world-changing Suffragist movement, and some of the contributions made by the Haudenosaunee Nation Clan Mothers in its origins and generational development.
Today, I wish I had been taught so much of this knowledge long before, and I believe this knowledge should still be made more accessible for all, today.
If you want to know some more about the origins and academic side of this project, you might enjoy this book, about the integral origins of the Suffragist Movement in Haudenosaunee Worldview, or this book, about the urgency of Indigenous Values in the modern world. Each is authored by one of my incredible college professors, who helped to inspire this project ten years ago.
The following writing includes many of the efforts from my never-submitted senior Honors Capstone project, as well as certain edits which I have made in the years since. It is a work in progress. I will update this page periodically, as I continue writing this piece.
While this is basically entirely all knowledge I had gathered during class times and through assignments, and while the analytical critique and (quasi)-anthropological lens used or alluded to has been developed and shared by dedicated researchers, progressive academics, and stalwart activists alike, the efforts of this writing are original and were designed to meet the criteria of my senior Capstone project. If I ever submit this piece for formal publication (which I don't yet see myself doing, at least not in the near future), I will first do my diligence to responsibly cite all my sources and secure permissions from the proper authorities, including my professors and the Six Tribes' networks.
As I began this project ten years ago, I was diagnosed with neurological Lyme disease. I had suffered from years of unexplained daily migraines, and chronic fatigue that only continued to worsen. As a result, I had to leave the University, and I never had the chance to complete my degree, or my Capstone project, or to present any of these efforts to my advisors or the Honor's Program Panel for graduation. I forfeited my merit-based tuition scholarship, and my privileges in the Honors program. But, at least I still have my health today.
It is a pleasure to share these efforts with my readers here, today.
The original project focused on the role and implications of discourse in literacy studies. This focus contrasts the more conventional study of literacy as certain levels of linguistic competence or excellence. To study discourse "as (a) literacy" has gained academic preference in recent decades. The basic idea is that in addition to linguistics, morpheme, or grammar, at the foundation of both language and communication is also always identity, behavior, mannerisms, beliefs, and viewpoints. This additional lens of analysis aids in locating the deeper origins and capacity of understanding and competence as "a praxis" developed from within the dynamic and phenomenology of, for example, author and audience, and especially as context and content originating in human experience as a shared reality. Especially, academics have found that this lens demonstrates a thoroughness of academic accountability within and parallel to the more conventional avenues of literacy study of linguistics.
My original project combined ideas from contemporary American 'literacy and discourse' scholar James Paul Gee, and mid-20th century Brazilian pedagogue and 'equality of praxis' activist Paulo Friere. I was developing a section on Haudenosaunee democratic discourse, ancestral worldview, and heritage storytelling which was going to be one of four total sections, and probably would have presented second in line, in the project. The other three sections were (loosely) (1) literacy as discourse, (3) ecology as discourse, and (4) pedagogy and justice as discourse.
After I took my medical leave of absence, and a couple years off from writing, the project was later influenced by a transfer-credit Writing course I took in NYC in the City College program, which focused on styles of writing employed in Ancient Greek rhetoric and philosophy. I sought to compare and contrast the Ancient Grecian concept of logos, ethos, and pathos with the Ancient Haudenosaunee ethics of reciprocal exchange, sacred dutifulness, and living relations. And, I wanted to discuss how the ancient origins of Rhetoric demonstrate the profound inherency of discourse as a conventional understanding in literacy studies.
The project was again influenced later on by assistant work I did for my dear family friends in the final months of editing their now recently published book, which discusses the unpublished manuscripts of French Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his perspectives on integral humanity, ethics, morality, and truth. I helped to locate several hundred quotes in the French manuscript, to secure permission for the 'unofficial' translations. As a result, I read a few thousand of Jean-Paul Sartre's original words, and had the unmatched privilege to consider his profound remarks and unique expressions. The experience changed me, and my sense of common vocabulary, dramatically. As it is, "the unconditioned conditional", endures. You can find the book, here.
While, my art and studio website may not be the ideal platform for this discussion, my art and creativity has nonetheless been profoundly influenced by my research on indigenous ancestral worldview, the collaborative origins of American democracy, and heritage storytelling; and by unconventional perspectives on literacy and discourse; and by 20th century existential thought. My research has also influenced my consideration and sense for visual art as an exigent means for profound non-verbal discourse. And it has influenced my creative efforts to conceptualize and communicate creative meaning and purpose, and has especially molded my perspectives on how my artistry and creativity may demonstrate the use of symbology and the mythic framework as integral pieces of progressive natural order in the world.
When someone asks me, or even when I've asked myself, "why do you make this art?" I often pause to consider if my words can do it justice - even as someone collegiately trained in writing. I want respond by saying, "I feel that these vestigial shapes and these repetitive designs describe purpose and meaning. That the patterning expresses and evokes an integral creativity by using this universal language of potential and effectuality. As it were, our ancestors learned this language long ago, and taught it to us. In my own unique way, I want to continue this legacy, and to share this spontaneous and universal heritage with others."
And so, I wish to provide my readers with portions of this profound lens, which deeply influences my artistic expression and creative process. I have retitled the project and the sections and edited several sections to better reflect the exigency of a shortened text, and of this art studio website, and to demonstrate more relevant and appropriate accountability and transparency for the project and the readers.
Here, is a link to the original interview I conducted for this research project. Included is some writing describing my interest in the research, and my impressions of what I had learned, several years after leaving the university. It is also very much a work in progress.
Thank you, to everyone who shared their experiences, to my professors and their families, and to my peers and friends, who helped in gathering this information, and telling this story.
The Free Democratic State, Matrilineal Philosophy, and the Great Spirit: The Creative Influence of Praxis, Concept, and Discourse
A History to Begin With
The Haudenosaunee Nation, a name which means “People of the Longhouse”, originated on the Northeastern Coastline of the continental U.S. Today, the Nation is also often referred to by the Jesuit-French-given name the "Iroquois" Nation. For over a millennium, the Haudenosaunee have implemented a complex process of democracy in their Matrilineal societies, which functions as a "Consensus". To date, the democracy still serves the Nation and its Six Tribes in peace, and the Haudenosaunee Nation continues to uphold their ancestral Great Law of Peace. The Six Tribes are the Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. In their past, there was an epoch of tumultuous war between the five Tribes that were soon to make up their Nation, with the sixth (the Tuscarora) added after the English colonies formed. They ended their ancestral war hundreds of years before the settlers arrived, with a tournament competition of lacrosse and a formal Peace Treaty. Each Nation also buried their weapons beneath a particular Fir Tree, identifiable by five inter-connected leaf-needle growths. This species of Fir Tree in English is called the Eastern White Pine, and it represents the center of their Nation, and the peace between the Tribes, and each leaf-needle represents one of the Tribes. As an evergreen species of tree, it stays green for all four seasons. They have lived in peaceful ways within their Nation ever since.
The Haudenosaunee Nation democracy was so old, successful, and impressive that in the 18th century the U.S. Founding Fathers obliged to confer with the Tribes' leaders and receive their council (though, less so with the Matriarchy itself, regrettably). The Six Tribes' philosophy and ethics of governance proved instrumental in drafting and finalizing the United States' Declaration of Independence; later, again in U.S. history, their Six Tribes' philosophies proved instrumental in writing and amending the Constitution of the United States of America; and, later once again in developing the Encyclopedia of Woman's Rights, written by the Suffragist leaders who regularly conferred with the Haudenosaunee Matriarchy, as both groups were deeply aligned.
While the accessibility of knowledge surrounding such profound collaborations has been largely tucked away in stone sculptures that line the ceiling of the Congress building, and while the formal and official documentation of these meetings is even less accessible to the public, the rich ancestral practices of devoted oral history keeping by the Tribes lives on, today. More on historical accountability and accredation of these world-changing collaborations, in the final sections.
The Democratic State and Free Will
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Founding Fathers and the Suffragists faced the culturally unprecedented and groundbreaking (though, historically reiterated) obstacle in the Western World, of how to credibly and meritoriously integrate the age-old concept of free will with contemporary democracy. Given the education gap between and among the social societies and economic classes at this time in history, free will was more often regarded at worst as a spineless philosophical ideation, and at best as a privilege of the religious. And somewhere between these two extremes towered the Ancient Greek and Latin writings by infamous philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, and Cicero. These "Great" ancients had produced some of the most influential political writings in history, and which often deeply expounded the timeless wisdom of natural order within the free Democratic State. Democracy was considered a "higher" form of government, that required the advanced capacity to mediate conflicts and disagreements through equal, just, and peaceful means. In these more ancient times in history, democracy was also considered a "power" originating and descending from "the Gods", and it originated in all creatures and their co-current incarnations by the Divine power of the Natural World. Both for humans and for Gods (and the God's incarnations), democracy was inherently a sacred process and an embodiment of peaceful order.
In conjunction with the Ancient philosophers' lifelong focus and investigation into politics, Divinity, Natural Law, Truth, and Justice, they were also deeply critical throughout their lifetimes about both the Grecian or Roman "public", and the looming and power-driven "aristocracy". They often doubted the cunning and guile of the public to harness the "divine powers" of democracy, and criticized the aristocracy for its corruption. Cicero later abandoned his loyalty to democracy and became the first, and arguably most effectual Autocrat of the First Roman Empire. Cicero was many centuries past the founding Rhetoricians' famous era, however, and opposing his treachery and violence, the writings of the Ancients often gravely warned of the dominon of the very systemic centralized power and unchecked governance that Cicero later adopted into power.
Aristotle had also especially warned of the inescapability of interrupted equality in the corrupting power of "the coin". He observed that even righteous and just payment for labor was filtered through a misunderstood and "symbolically" appropriated monetized economic order. And that the public's lack of education and awareness about the corrupting power of appropriated symbolic exchange was often a source of recurring corruption, such as with poverty, thievery, slavery, and ritual discrimination in society.
Well, this was all public information to any well-educated person, at least. And as powerful and profound as all this information was in the 18th century, it was thousands of years old, and coming from that far-off, somewhere-back-in-time way that old-wisdom does, and unremittingly indicating the long-lost "birthplace" of Western Democracy. In a prodigious move for the budding era, Americans had fought and won a seven-year war for their sovereignty from the English Crown, and after this act of revolution the Founding Fathers were determined to uphold true justice and truth for their citizenry. The Founders developed a democratic process rooted in the philosophies of the Ancient Grecian rhetoricians, and they defended Liberty as at the core of its lawfulness, and on both secular and philosophical grounds. Later in the 19th and 20th centuries, during revisions of the Constitution, the Suffragettes were determined to extend their forefathers' Liberties to all excluded from being lawfully acknowledged as "full persons", namely: women and African Americans. Both of the groups intended to develop a rhetoric that could persuade the masses (even, of the world) to faithfully extend such true and lawful justice, in the form of fraternity and sorority, to the farthest corners of the territories governed by the free democratic state. As it would come to be, such an invitation has taken many generations to be drafted, sealed, and adopted by American society and many still await its providence, today.
The Founders intended to institute independence and self-established sovereignty with a conventionally philosophical, yet unconventionally secular free democratic state. All while nonetheless governing a diversely religious society with varying levels of education, and all the while amongst a transglobal ancestral world entrenching itself in brutal and bloody Imperial policy. To the great fortune of the Founders, the Haudenosaunee Nation's centuries-long, non-Grecian-born, thriving Democratic process proved to be especially suited, productive, and convenient in refining their points. Through use of professional Tribe translators, the Haudenosaunee Nation's Tribal Chiefs and various other leaders dispensed their knowledge to the English speakers. From what I remember, this collaboration effectively lasted less than a generation, but the exact time frame has only been officially and formally noted in some documentation that I have no access to, presently. It may instead, have been much less or more.
Tribe Ethics and Morality on Western Liberty, Commerce, and Ownership
The Tribes lent the Founding Fathers their Worldview, knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral experience in ethics and morality, in particular. As it was, the Founders were in need of extensive political, philosophical, and spiritual differentiation from the policy and organization of the English Crown, and they faced the impending threats of an unrelenting war. The Chiefs, with their millenium old democratic legacy and having already successfully mitigated tensions between neighboring Nations throughout their history, were intent to assist the Founders with navigating the complexities of Democracy and peaceful intervention, and under the duress of the imminent threat of war.
Before we continue, a note of distinction: ontologically, ethics differs from morality in minute but distinct ways, namely ethics denotes a philosophical and theoretical set of understandings, while morality denotes an existential occurrence and some form of "reciprocal exchange" (Arnold). For many, morality and ethics are experienced and upheld either through a religious institution, or a spiritual practice, or a philosophical tradition or convention. As an important note of distinction between religions, philosophies, and spiritualities, in formal academic terms, "spiritualities" and "philosophies" engage ethical and moral conceptualizing and exchange without the aspect of devotion to or management of a common institution, such as a church; whereas "religions" differ in that an established institution is expected to direct all ethical discourse.
In the Six Tribes' society, the ethics and morality of free will in particular extended through the distinctions of diverse personal and social responsibilities (scientific, agricultural, medicinal, philosophical, spiritual, political, and cultural). Unlike in the social development of the Western world, in the Tribal societies free will had been widely culturally accepted as an inherent existential reality. Most especially as an experience of responsibility in a diverse world. For the Six Tribes' social and political purposes today and in their heritage past, “responsibility” indicates a distinct reciprocal relationship among and between people in the world, much as in exigency, dependency, or contingency. While this term still holds similar connotations to “free will” as in common sense, trustworthiness, and even burden, it distinguishes itself by the implications of inherency of circumstance as a referential relationship of imperative and obligation. [Consider, the universal "imperative of the unconditioned conditional” (Sartre, Morality and Ethics)]. In this regard, "responsibility" rather than "free will" is most accurately used by the Six Tribes and scholars alike to consider, review, and guard the role and power of contribution, involvement, and participation in the Haudenosaunee consensus democracy.
Naturally developing from this distinction, in the Six Tribes' Worldview and politics, free will is decidedly not a “lawful right” and decidedly not the extension or “choice” of a governing institution. Interestingly, during collaborations with the Founders, this presented a profound confluence of both agreement and disagreement. Surely, both groups agreed on the urgency and need to protect the developing colonies from the daunting and near-inevitable dangers of the Crown's centralized power. However, the Chiefs openly criticized the Founders for denying what they considered inherent and necessary democratic affordances to the public, to protect the budding Nation. Primarily, the Chiefs forewarned that a declaration of free will extended from a political “body” was a pretense, and risked abstracting and even mocking the inherency of democracy as a practice and experience of reciprocal humanity. They argued that "to grant" free will, which was considered an inherency in living experience, was equal to "denying" free will. And moreover, that any such “freedom" as "granted power” might only ever be effective in the singular framework of one's own personal power, but would not be capable of sustaining a collective framework of equality within diversity. The Chiefs also asserted that the Founders' ambition was in many ways an aggressive tactic often used as a final resort in wartime, to enact violence and to imprison captives, and while these actions were honorable in some respects and circumstances, they held no valid place in the core framework of the democratic process. The Chiefs finally warned that the ambition to declare such a power from a political body surely lacked the profound influence of deeper cultural and ethical inherency, and in fact would inevitably lead to internal discord. They affirmed from their own experience in consensus, that to conceptualize and grant "liberties" or "rights" would most likely only promote a philosophical discourse of ethics, without the the crucial intervention of praxis, or freedom and choice in action, as a moral engagement. The Chiefs assured the Founders that the lawful preservation of duty as responsible and reciprocal dependence and contingency, would promote a moral experience of equality and the vital democratic literacy of praxis.
The Chiefs' position spontaneously echoed the timeless wisdom of the Ancient Greek rhetoricians. For example, especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (each a student of the former, and generation past the latter) dedicated the entire span of their lives and their livelihoods to understanding the tribute powers of politics and ruling or governing bodies. About democracy, they derived how it uniquely reflected the inherent natural laws of the organized world. Aristotle especially earned infamy for his written works and especially plays criticizing his contemporaries who had sought to define democracy as a mere manifestation of the human mind, or as anything less than the divine order of the world. For Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle and for many of their admirers, Democracy was not only the equivalent but the very same as Natural Law, and Grecian society might only strive to understand it, and abide it, in order to develop and preserve their way of life. I am unaware of the depths in which the Founders decided to share the Ancient Greek philosophies, with the Tribes. However, the Ancient Greek rhetoricians were also highly critical of democracy and the public's ability to harness its affordances, and I can imagine the Founders took great pleasure in testing and verifying the experiences, perspectives, and sagacity of the Chiefs.
For example, “the Greats" took many rhetorical liberties to exhibit, especially through play writing and character discourse, the internal and external influence of power, labor, skill, justice, and corruption in all different levels of society. Often, their writings determined the interpersonal influence of "the coin" a bastardized symbol of corruption. And through character debate, they described inherited money an impetuous, appropriated, and often illegitimate form of power. In that day and age, the inherency of the symbology of metal monies was widely accepted as mythological, or a type of narrative, or a kind of social "subscription" to the meaning of symbolism, and thusly regarded as born by influence and impressionability. The baseline of the Greats' criticism determined that the true value of power as earnings had been maintained only before its appropriation. After such a corruption, the inherent value of the influence and "the mythology" dwelled only in the origins of the labor and efforts of the public, namely the 'logos', 'ethos', and 'pathos' (logic, character/ethics, and emotion). [Over the duration of this investigation, I will develop an informal reference to these thee ancient rhetorical techniques from a contemporary social lens which I consider a more progressive one (though no more or less valuable), respectively as, 'accountability', 'accessibility', and 'responsibility', or "AAR".] While many of their creative efforts shone illuminating light on the democratic process, after many decades of the Greats' deep criticisms, and unyielding employment the honorable Socratic method to investigate their concerns, many of their successors and descendants felt unsure of where even the Greats stood in their positions on Democracy, by the end of their lives. Though, I would like to consider they were loyal to the bitter end.
As for the collaborations between the Chiefs and the Founders, the impressionability of semantics played a different and more immediate role. While the Founders were equally concerned in some respects, for example over the violence of the English Crown and its aggressive use of appropriated colonial monies, the Founders also lacked the widespread influence of deeper reforming power over many of the more blatantly corrupt aspects of their own societies. For the Founders to claim influence of democratic power, the Chiefs expected more than good rhetoric, papers, and ink, and the Chiefs refused to rescind their objections to the Founders' more tenuous ambitions. As evidence of cultural indecency and the forewarned impending internal discord, and as evidence of the dangers of instituting an appropriated law, they accused the American politicians of wrongful subjugation of Africans as slaves, and wrongful subjugation of women as property and non-persons in the eyes of the law. The Chiefs warned that these American ways would devastatingly sabotage the Founders' enterprise to sustain their new democratic state. The two groups ultimately formed a weak alliance, and the Founders assured the Haudenosaunee Nations' safety in their own territories, and made a few weak promises of future reform. (It is important to note, that a few generations later the American government broke their treaty and seized these territories and committed ethnocide and genocide, and to reinforce this militant campaign they renamed each of these territories after a Roman military conquest from the ancient past. Hence today, "Syracuse", "Rome", "Troy", "Cicero", "Geneva", Ithaca", etc.)
During these political discussions, the Chiefs were deeply resolved that the Western concept of "personal ownership" and its devastating Capitalist imitations might only continue to operate to disrespect and disregard the inherency of democracy as a collective commitment to freedom, praxis, and equality. From their perspective, both the ethical and moral experience of democracy describe a based praxis of reciprocality, and not a singular or personal concept of ownership or property. This can be interpreted as a more stoic philosophy, which naturally compliments a worldview with the widespread acceptance of free will as the inherent responsibility or duty to the living world. For the Haudenosaunee people, this framework described why “democratic laws” are not the simplistic extension of "freedoms", or "rights”, or “liberties”, but instead natural democratic laws are the very exigency, or urgency of equality as contingent praxis. On the surface, this might have seemed to be an issue of semantics, but in the depths was an expanding ontological and ideological discourse, which would ultimately influence the tremendous future of the American Nation. As it would be, for right and for wrong, and for good and for bad, the Founders maintained that nonetheless their role as revolutionary leaders was to indeed extend such Liberty as a lawful right.
The Chiefs' critical position did not simply dismiss the Founders' political goals, and it inevitably led to some profound discourse amongst the Founders themselves, and the connected upper classes and ruling families who were made privy to the collaboration. The better politicians deepened their reverence for the Six Tribes, and especially for their profound system of democratic laws and peaceful cultural values. Many of the American politicians and their families wished to abolish slavery, and further reform and remedy the widespread devastation generated by the unimpeded slave trade to the continents and neighboring islands. And, more generally they wished to provide deeper security and safety to women and African Americans in the new Nation so that everyone's needs might be justly and equally represented in the democratic process. However, the worse of the political detractors maintained decaying forgeries of treatise, and rotten prejudice, and disregarded and even doubted the Chiefs' stoicism and eventually resorted to belittling the Tribes' languages and linguistics at their core. Many went as far as accusing the Chiefs of hoax and fraud, or guilty of imitation and dummy lookalikes of their own hostile dupes and piracy.
For the Founders and also later the Suffragettes who did extend reverence and faith in the Tribes' ways, it was evident that the Haudenosaunee Nation maintained its profound democratic lawfulness as a natural result of complex and highly advanced cultural, philosophical, Spiritual, and democratic practices. For example, in their accomplishments of a lasting consensus process to uphold long standing peace between the Tribes, their democratic extension of equal membership laws for both genders, their land-nourishing and adaptive agricultural methods, their advanced studies of shamanic medicine and vast knowledge of herbal remedies (especially, remedies yet unknown to the West), their advanced mythology passed forward for thousands of years to teach and develop profound philosophical ideals and goals, their unique cultural and spiritual practices in resourceful and peaceful co-habitation among the wilds of the Earth, and their lasting fortitude and profound strength in diversity as they continued to thrive with the surrounding Nations, Tribes, cultures, and races among the world. And yet, even this long list of accomplishments could not persuade the American challengers to embrace the inherency of the Six Tribes' vision for the free democratic state. Ultimately, it was the bare ethics and morality of responsibility in a diverse world that both united and divided the two groups.
For the Founders who would not extend their confidence in the ways of the Haudenosaunee Nation, several cultural influences are notable. Many governing rulers and law-abiding citizens alike regarded the Tribes' Earth-centric cultural adaptations, law-making, and spiritual beliefs in deep contrast to the 'God-Eye' view of their American society. The vast and diverse American society had both originated in and been appropriated by the complex and often exploitative domestic and colonial ambitions of the English Crown. Historically, the Crown had unapologetically and deeply rooted itself in a religious agenda of domination that carelessly and recklessly promoted dogma under the guise of legal practice, as well as promoted ritual sexism and racism through a discriminatory framework of pseudo-religious though fully institutionalized social customs. And, had more often sought to indiscriminately "Satanize" the entirety of the Earthly-realm, with the singular "remedy" to seek the holy in the skies. Additionally, for the American challengers, the concept of entrusting women with genuine professional duties, such as the daily agricultural labor common for the Tribes' woman members, was regarded as a "Christian sin". As women were held in the basest social standing of "religious property", such a gender-equal evaluation was considered no better than a song and a dance with the Devil himself. Moreover, even while the Six Tribes had developed advanced methods for living and thriving in harmony and peaceful accord even among the wilds of the Earth, the political detractors themselves had grown fat, old, and bored and openly esteemed exhausting resources and damaging ecosystems even beyond repair.
In addition to this lengthy and odious list of political and economic corruption, the American challengers regarded the Tribes' Spirituality and heritage practice of co-habitation with the Earth's elements, seasons, and the inherent cycles of birth, death, and rebirth in deep contrast to the more widespread Western ethical commitments to dedicate personal efforts to a Christian lifestyle by remedying an 'interrupted moral life' at once infiltrated by ancestral and original sin. More on this crucial point, in the next section. The worst of the political detractors also unrolled their tongue-in-cheek notions of commerce to endorse the hostility and rancor of slavery and man's claim of woman as property. Such indolent, desultorious, and narcotic individuals most often referenced, to secure their positions, the unrequited and bastard birth of Capitalism with its origins in the 16th century development of cross-continental human trafficking, and the development of private banks, which had been guaranteed power by the Crown through the formation of public prisons.
For the American societies, the concept of accepting and let alone preserving social and ecological diversity contrasted the more general acceptance of capitalism, materialism, and the symbolic and mythological role of monies (papers or coin). After centuries old legal decree of the English Crown, and as a wide-spread commercial framework and (anti-)social value in Western society, thwarting and denying diversity had been escalated to outright blood-thirsty competition for survival between races, sexes, and economic classes. This escalation aggravated the general contention and competition between sexes, races, and working families, and slowly replaced the heritage holistic family-oriented and need-based trade with a divisive, theoretical, and untested capitalist "mythological" framework, which would popularize the idea of inherency of commerce as some form or another of guaranteed personal ownership. Though, poverty and lack would still persist for the coming centuries, often due to continued exploitation, discrimination, waste, and domination left unchecked and unguarded by Capitalist economics. Ultimately, both sides would have their say in U.S. history, while the Haudenosaunee would be subjected to the brutality of genocide, ethnocide, ecocide, and later, widespread devastating measures of deculturation through mandatory "Christian" boarding schools for children of all ages. More on this in the following sections.
Needless to say, with all of these obstacles, criticisms, and public dismissals of the moral and ethical ways of the Six Nations, the Chiefs and the advocates for the core values of their democratic process faced a threatening and often dangerous battle ahead. Ultimately, after the revolutionary war, and after the implementation of the U.S. Constitution, the common-place prejudice, discrimination, displacement, and appropriation of Native peoples and their societies and ways persisted among the American courts and the masses. It was ultimately only the Suffragettes who returned to the Clan Mothers' Council to extend American trust and personal loyalty. Over many generations, the two groups of women collaborated often, and for a long time only in secret and under the cover of darkness, for fear of retribution. Be that as it was, their efforts proved very productive. As it had always been under the Great Law of Peace, in the Haudenosaunee Nation there was no stealing, no violence, and most relevant to the Suffragists' cause, no rape. Women and children were safe day and night, and everyone was expected to be respected, dutiful, and protected. I will continue this discussion, three sections down.
The Haudenosaunee Worldview and the Pivotal Role of Duty and Guardianship
The Six Tribes maintained their highest Spiritual and political identification as Guardians of the land, a role bestowed to all humans by the Great Spirit. They built every aspect of their communities around this concept and tradition. The tradition of the Guardians has been passed down over thousands of years through heritage oral histories and mythologies. Primarily, the oral tradition demonstrates a core value in the First Nations to honor living sacredness in the world by upholding distinct duty to the natural world. In Indigenous worldview, "duty" is a sacred effort which is shared by all creatures. Duty expresses living connectedness as a unique lawfulness upheld and bestowed to all living creatures by the Great Spirit. Duty can be considered a type of law, and it is a sacred effort made to and by all creatures, elements, and natural forces, functioning in a reciprocal relationship, or as a "relatedness". In the Six Tribes' tradition, Humans have been bestowed by the Great Spirit the distinct role of "Guardians", and they have the duty to look after the collective activity of the Earth continuum and to ensure that all "forms of life" thrive and uphold their sacred duty to the Great Spirit. Apart from humans, other creatures have been bestowed different sacred duties, and often in a more localized manner, and these efforts are equally valuable and also reciprocal, but are not the same as Guardianship. In Guardianship, the lawfulness of the natural world extends as the shared or collective duty among humans to care for all living relations, and includes ways to live and to die in a good way, to make and keep good promises, and above all to provide safety and security to all of Earth's creatures. While it was a profoundly sacred and Spiritual role, it was also philosophical and deeply rooted and diversified by their Worldview.
In general terms, a worldview is a framework of beliefs, understandings, and perspectives about the purpose and meaning of life and the larger world. A worldview functions as a lens for interpreting, questioning, and collaborating in a shared reality. The Worldview of the Six Tribes was largely comprised of the ancestral and cultural concepts and practices regarding shamanism, ecosystem and species studies, and the democratic process. At the core of their Worldview was the spiritual and philosophical methodology and existential experience of inherency, purpose, and sacredness of the Earth. With a complex scientific heritage, but without a formal institution for science as it is known best in the Western world, such epistemological studies were instead in their ancestral languages colloquially referred to as “people” studies or “peoplehood”, and this concept included the study of all animals, plants, and elemental forces, as well as the celestial bodies. In this colloquial sense, "people" described groups known to Western science as "species", "orders", "groups", and "classifications". The Guardians had been given the distinct duty by the Great Spirit to protect all manifestations in the world as "people" who were sacred to the Great Spirit. Today, the Tribes continue to teach their children about the inherent association of the sacred natural world through the colloquial expression of peoples, such as the queen (or Clan Mother) of the berry people, the strawberry, and the king (or, Chief) of the forest people, the deer. In their Worldview, Guardianship naturally served the inherency of personal and social development.
The role of Guardianship was also rooted and diversified by their social and democratic concepts and practices involving non-violence, social and ecological justice, membership laws (in English this is citizenry), sustainable methodology (in English, we colloquially say industry), shamanism and herbal medicine, and part of the core of the Six Nations' societal concept and practice: to honor the seventh generation, of the future. Advancing concepts of membership through dutifulness proved to be a highly productive method for the Tribes to designate, develop, and pass forward complex roles and identities within society. Concepts of membership and duty were profoundly extended beyond the human social structure, and All life was regarded as associated and deeply connected, but also responsible to and for the laws set forth by the Great Spirit. This extended social and political structure adapted an ethical framework which valued the spiritual and material contributions made to the world by all humans, animals, plants, insects, fungi, and all the elemental forces, too. The sense of obliged duty among the world is also a spontaneously shared worldview of all Indigenous cultures across the globe. Today, this age-old Indigenous worldview survives poignantly in the Constitution of Bolivia and the Constitution of Ecuador, which explicitly grant legal Liberties to the Earth System itself (or Herself), in the form of obliged sustainability policy, and the obliged abidance to all past and impending efforts of environmental justice. I will further discuss the deeper philosophy behind this global Indigenous Worldview, as well as the economic implications of this concept of “association between all life”, five sections down.
The Six Tribes practiced complex sustainability methods in their daily living, which today are scientifically endorsed. From renewable and self-cycling agricultural networks, to efficient and waste-free homestead living, to seasonal Clan-migratory adaptations, all of their methods were always deeply integrated with their Spiritual objectives and philosophical pedagogies, to form and uphold their Worldview. These profound practices were regularly reinforced over all the centuries that they could openly practice their heritage and ancestral traditions, and especially their shamanic beliefs, ceremonies, and rituals. These heritage practices included daily, monthly, bi-annual, and annual sacred ceremonies, which had spanned back millennia. The millennia old legacy of these traditions served as a duty of their societies to the Great Spirit to uphold democratic peace. Among so many spiritual, political, and cultural purposes, ultimately these ceremonies and rituals profoundly upheld the role bestowed to them by the Great Spirit, as Guardians of the land.
The Six Tribes had developed a complex symbolic and mythological framework to express some of the core bearing of their spiritual beliefs. In particular, the Tribes' spiritual beliefs centered around a diverse and complex belief in an inherent network of interconnectedness that expressed itself through all manifestations of the Earth system. Two examples of this framework include, “the seven directions” and “the mirroring of the cosmos and the Earth.” The seven directions are the equivalent of “North, East, South, West, Above, Below, and Center”, and as a whole express principles such as unity and dichotomy, distance and nearness, and especially orientation as the relatedness of all manifestations of the Earth in their reciprocal purposefulness. The mirroring of the Earth and the cosmos can be pictured in a symmetrical diagram as in an hourglass. This mythic framework describes the principle of the inherency of the natural world as a purposeful, reciprocal, and consummate design. This manifest principle expresses how the natural world operates to constitute reciprocal existential values, such as by expressing dutifulness and obligation through the Laws of the Great Spirit. These are only two examples among many more diverse and complex symbolic and mythic frameworks developed by the Clans.
These frameworks describe a spiritual network which extends as a continuous cycle of birth, renewal, death, and rebirth in and between all manifestations in the world. All manifestations of the Earth were particularly sacred to the Tribes, as all manifestations had been bestowed duty by the Great Spirit. In formal Religions Studies today, this belief is referred to as "hierophany" and it means "the manifestation of the sacred". Hierophany contrasts the more commonly known Western concepts of the sacred removed from the Earth, such as with “the ascendance of Jesus Christ,” or sempiternal and eternal realms such as "Eden", "purgatory" and “the Heavens” in Judeo-Christian beliefs. Also in formal Religions Studies, it is more appropriate to formally refer to the Six Tribes' core beliefs, ceremonies, and rituals as a Spirituality and as a philosophy, but not more technically developed as a Religion, as the Tribes' societies had never constructed “a formal institution” to direct and manage, or to devote their form of worship and complex Spiritual practices.
Moreover, in the Six Tribes' Spirituality, the concept of sacredness extended an entire spectrum of belief. Briefly, let me first say that I am not aware of many details and complexities. Over the last ten years I have (more loosely) gathered the following understandings about key aspects of their ancient and ancestral beliefs and worship. To start, the Great Spirit bestowed purpose and understanding in and between all things. Awareness, compassion, empathy, sympathy, and care were the sacred abilities and crafts of all creatures, though none held the same duty for expressing their providence as Guardians. This existential differentiation was rooted in a shamanic concept of allegiance, and standardized values such as obligation and bond. This allegiance described deeper existential values which profoundly extended beyond more limiting beliefs such as “exclusivity”, “sameness”, and "excellence". It described a respectful way of behaving and appreciating a fully living world, and it described the inherent "activeness" or "Life" of the Great Spirit within all manifestations. The Tribes' wide-spread acceptance of a cyclical spiritual inherency in the world promoted the concept of a contiguously (continually touching) connected natural world, which informed and deepened their Worldview. Today, Native peoples across the United States of America still promote these profound cultural concepts and societal advancements through the more colloquial concept of “continuum”. Briefly defined, a continuum is "a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct". This concept is actively promoted through the professional fields of pedagogy and education, ecological justice and social justice, as well as herbal medicine and shamanism. More on this concept, six sections down.
As a direct result of this core concept of meaningful spiritual and philosophical inherency in life, the Six Tribes held very different, if not minimal concepts of "domination structures" such as in oppression, monopoly, and hierarchy. This of course deeply contrasted the conqueror's perspective and language, as well as the English Crown and its “God-Eye” view of the Western world. Especially as “the Christian” had been both “born” and “granted” life and love by “the "supreme" power of the “Almighty" God. Also unlike in Western religious worship, the Tribes had never developed an all-condemning nor dour belief in inherent evil, not in themselves, other creatures, or anywhere in the world. And, especially not in a Supernatural being such as “Satan” or “the Devil”. Nor, did such condemnation exist in their sacred creation myth of Sky Woman, nor did they worship any eternal realm of “Heaven” or of “Hell”. Instead, the Tribes honored their ancestral lineages with the intention to uphold their Worldview. Moreover, as the Great Spirit extended “All duties within the World”, and as Life resided as the Great Spirit in all things, so the Guardians demonstrated their fortitude and ambition by devoting their personal and collective efforts to peace, and ensuring such peace would extend to the seventh generation. The combination of the Six Tribes' deeply spiritual and philosophical practice of Guardianship, their ancestral legends and storytelling, and especially their creation myth of Sky Woman only served the inherency of sacredness on the Earth.
The Tribes' creation myth of Sky Woman was about freedom, adventure, and purpose. The Tribes maintained a firm belief in the self-renewing order of the natural world, even in its seeming chaos, and they also maintained a firm belief in its inherent intelligence...
[As of yet, I am still searching for most of the details. This is all I have to share, for now. I want to find the right information, before I make it and my amateur interpretations public. I am really looking forward to learning more about these profound spiritual developments, and I hope you will forgive me for my brevity. There is a bit more I can share, that is only related... As I also only understand on a surface level, in other Native American territories many Clans maintain the concept of reincarnation. Through this process, All life is cyclical, and may be at once bound to and released from the ethereal and earthly realms by birth, renewal, death, and rebirth. Many Clans have thusly determined the ontological existence of "three spirits" within All things: the incarnate spirit, the reincarnate spirit, and the Great Spirt. The first spirit (incarnate) transitions in and between the material and ethereal realms both in life and after death in physical and then Spirit form, the second spirit (reincarnate) is attached to the first and might continue to experience and re-experience the Great Cycle through rebirth, and the third (the Great Spirit) is the shared in All things and it is the Great Spirit and it is always connected to the first two spirits and to the Great Cycle as All things. Unlike in other world religions, which held concepts of reincarnation to otherwise determine the process (or Great Cycle) as "inescapable" or "mandatory" or even some kind of "enslavement of the soul", instead for this Indigenous system of belief reincarnation is more "voluntary", still obliged, but voluntary. It may be, if anything, more similar (though not the same) to lesser-known ancient Egyptian beliefs in reincarnation which considered it the greatest honor, and only those select few with "the purest hearts" might be granted this boon from the Gods to return to the Earth in a new lifetime. Again, I digress.]
For the Six Tribes, in both philosophical and spiritual senses, All things existed in the Great Spirit, just as the Great Spirit existed in All things. All things held the inherency to demonstrate, experience, and even arrange right and wrong, or good and bad, or even life and death. In the clans, experiences of strife and suffering evoked advanced practices with herbal medicines, and developed the ancestral and wide-spread understanding and acceptance of the inherency of purposefulness on the sacred Earth. This cultural dedication to purposefulness through adversity is often regarded as a form of Stoicism, as it shares many virtuous principles with the philosophies birthed by the Ancient Greek Stoics. In the Tribes' Worldview, those individuals with the abilities, offerings, or gifts, such as healers and shamans, but also Clan Mothers and Chiefs, upheld the duty to maintain and protect development and advantages in society, especially those developed by ancestral efforts and wisdoms. The colloquial concepts to describe societal development and uphold Guardianship as duties passed through the Matrilineal line, and often returned to their shamanic origins. Such concepts include but are not limited to observation, perspective, experimentation, evidence, test, trial, perception, reflection, intention, and intuition. Across the world, these concepts have profoundly developed the shamanic tradition, as they influence the exigent experiences on the border of effectuality and potentiality.
Especially as the Six Tribes had not organized a formal religious institution for worship, their societies readily developed both spiritual and philosophical discourses to develop, influence, and pass forward collective values across generations. Tribe leaders, such as Clan Mothers, Chiefs, and Shamans, also known as Wise Women and Wise Men, especially upheld the duties to remedy any injury or damage in society. Especially, those inflicted by the profound cyclical challenges of the natural world, such as from disharmony, discord, and disorder. Apart from addressing the surreptitious changes of the natural world, duties of Clan Mothers and Chiefs also included meeting social and personal needs and struggles. Personal and social struggles included injury or damages acquired from (forgive me for the long list, but the comprehensiveness will speak for itself) the more common psychological complexities of mental or emotional depression, anxiety, dissociation, absurdity, illusion, outrage, and horror; and then, the more common social complexities of misunderstanding, violence, shame, mortification, alienation, and isolation. While these duties extended naturally through social order, membership roles, and Guardianship, especially Shamans, Chiefs, and Clan Mothers upheld the sacred duties in addressing and remedying all of the afore-mentioned personal and social struggles and injuries. I will return to this discussion, in the following sections. Always among all things the Great Spirit abided through Life's diversity to demonstrate peace, equality, justice, and profound purpose.
In many ways, the intricacies and complexities of the Tribes' customs and studies, especially the shamanic ones, are out of my breadth of personal understanding, especially as a foreigner. Nonetheless, I have been influenced and informed by the comprehensible social and pedagogical advancements present in their ancestral practices and legacies. Especially, insofar as the Tribe societies developed meaningful customs to extend their concepts of equality into the ecosystem. Today this is promoted as a concept of "continuum", which in the Western world is also considered the highest level of scientific understanding in ecological and evolutionary sciences. The Tribes also promote a deeply advanced sociological, mythic, and Spiritual value-based paradigm, which contrasts paradigms in the Western world, with frameworks which mostly develop the concept of an "economy", which centers around a "commerce" and exchanges "personal property". Contemporary advancements in sustainable industry and renewable resources, such as those made by the environmental organization "360", have been deeply influenced by organizers from indigenous societies who have described how to integrate their worldviews into Western paradigms. This particularly has affected territories that still recognize the value and inherency of Indigenous political influence. This development at 360 is an especially relevant accomplishment in the global effort to include indigenous voices, tradition, and philosophy in political organizations, as these contributions have been groundbreaking and monumental for the field. It is also deeply relevant in its social accessibility, while the more formal or professional study of science and social development may be out of reach for many people, still the concept of a worldview is all-inclusive and a profoundly universal paradigm. In contemporary integrative worldview, this universal concept of continuum merges democracy with scientific and ethical thought, and aids in bridging the inter-cultural rhetorical gap of living a profound moral life and practicing diverse spiritual traditions.
The Haudenosaunee Consensus Democracy
The Haudenosaunee Democratic process incorporates the esteemed system of democratic consensus. This means that every law and policy change passes through a voting process, and only from results that are unanimous, might laws progress. In other places in the world, throughout history consensus democracies have been profoundly influential markers of powerful societies and of advanced societal values. However, most of these systems of political thought would ultimately face a latent demise. Often from improper maintenance by successor generations, and often due to intercepting forces of insurmountable discord such as war, drought, or famine, and as with many ancient cultural practices were lost to time. However, the Six Tribes have stayed dedicated to their methods for over a millenium. Their consensus democracy incorporates a voting process that carries the heritage philosophical, spiritual, ethical, and moral responsibility of Guardians. It obliges participation of all adult members of society. The efficacy of the democratic process depends on the administration's ability to uphold the Nation's Worldview, as well as each member's confidence in their role as responsible Guardians. As an integral point of democratic intervention, all expressions of agreement and disagreement are considered inherent to the democratic process, and actively serve as vital indicators and strategies for its natural development.
In the the Six Tribes' organization of administration, the honor of being named Chief and the honor of retiring from this position might only be extended from the highest positions of administration. While, to many of the Western mind this might not seem profoundly democratic, to the Tribes it was profound, and the inherency of their consensus democracy. The core administrative leaders were always women, and they held the appointment of “Clan Mothers” on the "Clan Mothers' Council". Clan Mothers had the sole prerogative to determine the collection of individuals who would represent all the needs of the Tribe, as Chiefs. This exclusive power served the inherency of their consensus democracy as a heritage framework of social values which centered around a manifest sacredness of the role of mothers, in society. All voting members of society therefore aimed to protect the inherency of childbirth, child rearing, rite of passage, dutifulness of the Guardians, and the greater concept of creation in their heritage tradition. The heritage framework of values observed and determined that as only women carried life in the womb for nine months, and then after birth affirmed the role of primary caregiving for the first year and more, only women might represent the cyclical and most incipient and primary exigency of administration to represent the origins and future of an entire Tribe. This form of Matrilineal process was distinctly not a hierarchy, but instead upheld the reciprocal nature of Guardians and People among the world as a natural social order deeply rooted in responsibilities and duties of a living continuum. It was a direct expression of their Worldview, and it functioned to preserve peace and uphold equality. The Matrilineal process served as an homage to virtue and to the heritage of the future and the past, and especially to preserving the integral origins of the seventh generation.
The ultimate democratic goal of the Six Tribes' formal consensus process is colloquially referred to as reaching a state of "One Mind". For over millenium, the formal democratic consensus meetings have been initiated and concluded with a ritual which directs all participants to honor this sacred state of "One Mind". This state is considered sacred, and it has always served as the core means for the Six Tribes to abide the democratic process from within their Worldview. All members within voting society, which included both men and women, honored the ethics and morality of the consensus by participating in this process, in order to formally agree and consent to new laws being passed, or old laws amended. Reaching a consensus might have taken minutes or seasons, and it demonstrated great fortitude and resilience in their society. When inquired about, the Clan Mothers described to the Suffragette leaders that reaching unanimous decisions was sacred and natural, as it was within diversity that everyone might experience equality and share the same Worldview. It also signified the integral accomplishments of the Haudenosaunee Peoples' relations, as all creatures, successfully upholding the sacred duties set forth by the Great Spirit. This aspect of the Six tribes integral democratic reciprocity served as a pivotal point of peaceful mediation, as a means for acknowledging the democratic duty of an entire ecosystem.
To the Haudenosaunee Nation, the sacred state of "One Mind" is considered in its direct or interpretive expression the profound experience of gratitude. All creatures experienced this providence of gratitude as the means for the Great Spirit to uphold and bestow the duties of the world. In their Worldview, gratitude was the unification of the Spiritual, philosophical, social, psychological, cultural, and heritage experience of the living world and of democracy. Today, the Clan Councils of the Haudenosaunee Nation maintain this practice, and each of their administrative meetings, community events, or public or private ceremonies or rituals also always includes a traditional Spiritual "Thanks-giving Address". During this address, in old ancestral manner, all attendees express how they have reached the sacred state of "one mind", and give oral examples of how their gratitude has formed this state of inner and outer consensus. I had attended some of these ceremonies as a college student, and I found the experience profoundly democratic, influential, meaningful, and valuable. And especially as a young American, scholarship student, and voting woman who so often felt more dismissed in a powerful bipartisan government, than heard.
Clan Mothers' Council and Suffragettes
While Matrilineal societies and also Matriarchal political systems have existed in history elsewhere in the world, and were familiar to at least the more honest history books in the libraries of the Founding Fathers, the Clan Mothers' council was nonetheless a profoundly foreign concept, let alone cultural or political practice, at the time. It was ultimately only the Suffragettes who sought the deeper knowledge of the Tribes' social advancements as a Matrilineal society, and the purpose of the Clan Mothers' Council. Over many decades and multiple generations, the Suffragettes collaborated with and learned from the Clan Mothers, both through oral history recounting and from personal experiences in their society and democratic processes. Over time, the Suffragettes affirmed and yearned over how the Six Tribes' societies were wholly dependent on both genders' contributions. The Suffragettes deeply revered the Clan Mothers' Council for its dedication to the lifetime accomplishments of all members of society, especially through their old ancestral legacies.
As a natural extension of the Tribes' democracy, and as an inherent feature of their Worldview, both men and women could present claims, hold political office, and vote. This procedural measure was especially relevant to the Suffragettes, as it presented profound evidence that all women, men, and children should rightfully benefit from greater responsibilities in society. In the SIx Tribes, all members of society made the effort to uphold their sacred duty as the World's Guardians, and to protect the duties of all its Peoples. As a direct result of their dependence on all members of society, and their dedicated Worldview, the Clans did not use or produce anything in excess. Instead, their societies went to great lengths to preserve health, cleanliness, principle, and virtue in their homes and communities. The very Western concept of waste was regarded mostly as an exaggeration of corruption, devastation, and lack, and not in most ways any legitimate result of principled social or natural order. As it was, in the Clan's deeply sustainable practices of reciprocal resource consumption and provision, the unusable remains, dross, or debris produced during traditional processes was always efficiently recycled and disposed of without damaging the community or environment. More to the point, these "unusable remains" were certainly never excessive, and most importantly were not reduced to the impetuous concept of "waste", and instead such inherent aspects of the reciprocal framework maintained their Worldview.
The Clan Mothers assured the Suffragettes: resources were not wasted, labor was not wasted, and nor were women wasted. Through the Haudenosaunee Peoples' regard for the inherency of the living world and the Great Law of Peace, the Six Tribes had maintained this sustainable pedagogy of equality through praxis, for thousands of years. The Suffragettes respected the Six Tribes' for their meticulous devotion to preserving their peaceful and productive ancestral methods and for their profound judiciousness regarding their purpose and place within an ecosystem, as its Guardians. The Suffragettes were assured that the Tribal societies were especially dependent on everyone because of everyone's acceptance, satisfaction, and devotion to the Haudenosaunee Worldview. All members within their societies were more than satisfied with these standards, they were deeply grateful and intended to continue upholding their ancestral Worldview as it continued to promote peace as equality within diversity. The Clan Mothers affirmed that it was by upholding their sacred duties and responsibilities to the natural order in the continuum of the World, that their societies and their peace might forever endure.
The Clan Mothers deeply sympathized with the Suffragettes, and explained that the honorable struggle the Western women faced was not invisible to them, yet it was truly foreign. As it was, the Clans upheld distinct differences between the responsibilities of men, women, and children, and so their concepts and ideologies regarding "equality" were profoundly different from Western ones. As a critical point of democratic intervention, equality had developed beyond the concept of "samesness", and Tribe members rarely sought this avenue as a point of democratic intervention. This social and epistemological distinctiveness had been widely accepted and promoted through the Matrilineal line, so that by this point in history most gender, coming-of-age, and maturity conflicts were rarely concerns over “sameness”. More often, contemporary and ancestral concerns and struggles for law-making or policy change regarded manners, complaints, and questions of how to guarantee equal opportunities for distinctly different and diverse members in society.Colloquially, responsibilities were distinguished between the 'fields' and the 'forests'. Women tended the fields and prepared meals, and men hunted, sewed clothing, and tended to communal structures. Both genders were expected to teach children these skills as they would come of age. Just as an elder might not readily assume the responsibilities of a hunter, nor would a child readily assume the responsibilities of a Chief, the Clan Mothers did not 'bestow' or 'uphold' the 'same responsibilities' for different members of society. Just as an elder might not readily assume the responsibilities of a hunter, nor would a child readily assume the responsibilities of a Chief, the Clan Mothers did not 'bestow' or 'uphold' the 'same responsibilities' for different members of society. While duty and respect extended through the matrilineal line, and functioned to promote productivity and order, but duty also especially signified creativity, celebration, and fun, as well as the equal share of peaceful creativity and originality, in society. More on this, in just a moment. The cultural concepts of "duty", "work", or "labor" were explicitly distinguished as equal to concepts of "fairness", "peacefulness", "playfulness", as well as "healthy competition". For example, the "work" of a field maiden, or the "labor" young forest hunter, were considered profoundly equal to the "duty" of an elder telling jokes, recounting stories, or playing games on the homestead, to pass the long day. All Clan members upheld this obligation to provide and maintain equal access to work and to resources as they were dutifully, but also ritually gathered and prepared for the family and the Tribe. All members of society worked as long as their bodies were able, and all members of society participated in sports, games, and peaceful competition.
Over the generations of these profound collaborations, the Clan Mothers continued to express that especially the Western concept of personal ownership, and especially as it extended out to indicate property rights, deeply contrasted the Tribes' cultural and ethical inherency of a Worldview. The Suffragettes and their political families and social circles were more often interested in burgeoning Capitalism and its competitiveness as a means for a new power structure in American society. They considered it an opportunity to address the concerns of equal gender and race rights to commerce. Meanwhile, for the Haudenosaunee, commerce was mostly material, and much less theoretical (although still often Spiritual in its nature). And competition was used mainly as an outlet for play, such as with their heritage sport Lacrosse, or to honor inter-Tribal disputes. The Tribes maintained no dire concepts of personal ownership, but they did maintain the heritage of dutiful responsibility passed down within Clans through the Matrilineal line. Moreover, all labor and resources were fairly portioned and shared between the Clans and among the Clan members, passing from the Matrilineal line. Land, labor, and resources needed to be expressly cultivated in order to be justly promoted through the Matrilineal line. These methods may be likened to a form of communal ownership, or even to early communism. The Clan Mothers' Council presided over all concerns of familial inheritance as generations progressed.
The Six Tribes' formal trade and commerce involved mostly material goods, however they also profoundly expressed the symbolic trade of monies as non-material "goods" in ceremonial efforts to honor ancestral lineage. They passed forward sacred legends surrounding the origins of their symbolic monies taking the form of artisan and meticulously crafted beads, made from white and purple seashells, called wampum. Wampum often served to honor and respect the Clan Mothers and Chiefs, and to distinguish their role as leaders in ceremonial processes, rites of passage, and more general ritual. This ceremonial form of exchange held some similar significance, albeit admittedly minor, to Western laws for collecting familial or ancestral inheritance, or to Western Religious uses of monies as symbolic value, such as for honoring Kings or priests as they ritually collected support and funds to run institutions for rule and worship. Nonetheless, the two societies organized and worshiped very differently. Commerce between the Haudenosaunee was primarily a collaborative and again, "reciprocal" process which functioned to uphold the Great Law of Peace. It served the needs of the Clans, and upheld their sustainable homestead living, shamanic traditions, and sacred peace. Wampum also upheld their societal traditions in storytelling as a means for passing forward values though ancestral legends and complex mythologies. Given these profound cultural distinctions, today the Haudenosaunee Nation continues to dispute "the formal" land treaties made by the colonies and their ancestors. They maintain that not only had many of these treaties been broken and dishonored by the colonists, but also that their ancestors should always have been afforded access to a court of law and the use of a proper translator for who was versed in their culture, practices, and languages. Without the proper affordances, their ancestors had instead contended with gender discrimination and racial prejudice, and had been coerced with violence to illegitimately participate in historic acts of treatise. The Haudenosaunee Nation proudly stands against how their ancestors were forced into compliance with Western values which debased the central meanings in their societies, and their livelihoods.
Throughout the collaborations in the 19th century, the Clan Mothers advised the Suffragettes that only with a Worldview, only with a framework of equality through diversity, could a society genuinely appraise the inherent responsible exigency of sacred life and the progression of the cyclical interconnectivity in the natural living world. The Clan Mothers gave the Suffragettes a deep warning, that without an American Worldview the American people might only live everyday disconnected from the world and their relations by devastation, waste, selfishness, and violence, and that these abuses and corruptions would eventually consume their people. As described in earlier sections, in the Six Tribes' Worldview, the lawful concepts of equality and freedom were not formally referred to as rights. Instead, lawful concepts of equality and freedom were described existentially, stoically, and spiritually as the praxis of dutiful and responsible reciprocal exigency within Guardians, and within all creatures, elements, and forces in the natural world. The Clan Mothers reassured the Suffragettes that this contrast or shift in perspective was not a simple issue of semantics, and it instead described an expanding ontological and ideological experience and discourse. Both sides knew and had experienced the truth and wisdom of their conferral and advice, but also that such a profound accomplishment would take dedication and time, and even generations. And so, the two groups continued to collaborate for many generations.
The Suffragettes explained to the Clan Mothers that the American struggle was largely rooted in ideological arguments, mostly about the ethical and moral value of contributions that both men and women made in society. They explained that this struggle was colloquially referred to even in the educated and upper classes as a “struggle of free will”. Furthermore, that the Western society's regard for man's free will was often illegitimately deemed superior and somehow more valuable than woman's free will. The Suffragettes explained that their society had endured the extreme violence of domination and submission for generations, and desperately needed to integrate the profound unity of societal diversity. They described how women often faced severe danger and threats of rape and violence at the hands of men even in their own families, but also especially in public and at nighttime. And, that this violence was surely not by the efforts of women, nor by their free will or choice, but that they suffered for generations as victims. They explained how men were spuriously admired and even commemorated for being stronger than women, and less fearful than women. While, women were demeaned as weaker than men, and more fearful. The Suffragettes believed that more important than the competitions and comparisons of male versus female strength or weakness, or fearfulness or piousness, both in politics and religion, woman's fears were more often provoked by violence than not, and otherwise were equal to man's. The Suffragettes intended for and expected woman's sacredness, free will, and strengths to be appropriately recognized and represented in both politics and religion.
The Suffragettes explained to the Clan Mothers that in the Christian religion's creation myth, the Almighty God had sacrificed the freedom and pleasure of the First Woman's body in the sempiternal world of Eden, to enduring a painful childbirth here on Earth. And, that His sacrifice was both a punishment and a mercy to All of Humanity for the First Woman disobeying His commands regarding sin and evil in Eden. The Suffragettes did not believe that a painful childbirth was punishment for all of humanity, and they believed that this religious attention was illegitimate. For these philosophical and religious reasons, the Suffragettes had determined that their Western society had developed devastating tendencies for selfishness, violence, and wastefulness. The Suffragists explained to the Clan Mothers that their group represented justice, peace, equality, and what they understood to be a way of life with a Worldview. And, that they were trying to integrate their Worldview in American democratic processes. They explained that in their minds and hearts they believed this cause was just, righteous, and holy. The Clan Mothers deeply supported the Suffragist leaders and the movement and they offered their support to the best of their abilities. The groups met together on a regular basis for many decades, and through multiple generations to discuss their complex goals and agendas.
The Clan Mothers and other supportive Tribe women and men made vital contributions to the writing of “The History of Woman's Suffrage”, which was a 900-page book co-authored and largely written by Suffragist leader Matilda Joselyn Gauge (largely, meaning both physically and also in many of the more creative efforts). Major contributions and edits were also made by her two co-authors and the co-leaders of the Suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. However, of the leaders it was mostly Matilda Joselyn Gauge who personally spent years collaborating with the Clan Mothers and Tribe women to further the Suffragists' research, and to write and finish their encyclopedia. Gauge was also profoundly influenced by the Clan Mothers' consultations over the decades that she personally wrote and designed the Suffragist pamphlets, posters, and other handouts, and personally organized the Suffragist marches and demonstrations in Washington D.C. and across the country.
Matilda Joselyn Gauge also worked endlessly to ensure that the Suffragists' efforts would result in the simultaneous institution of full and equal rights for all African Americans and freed slaves. Her efforts endured even without the assistance or support of her upper class and well-educated contemporaries. However, she always held the compelling support and immediate encouragement of the Clan Mothers, and Matilda Joselyn Gauge was dedicated, loyal, and productive to these causes into her old age. All throughout her career, though especially near the end, she faced the obstacles of the taboo and struggle. She lost friendship and faith in many of her contemporaries, as they would change their positions and relinquish their support for the Haudenosaunee People and for African American Liberty in the Suffragist struggle. Matilda Gauge faced bigotry, ridicule, boycotting, and consistent threats of mutiny and violence for most of her career. But, she never gave up, she kept her friends close and she chose her battles wisely, and the struggle lived on through her daughters, who were among all the first women to vote, side by side with registered African Americans, in the United States of America.
Tribe Accreditation and Imperialist Appropriations
With all of this now said, the profound history of these collaborations between the women's groups still deserves far more credit than has been given. Across the world, billions of women, men, and children rightfully deserve to hear these origins. The recounting of this history only reached my ears in the small, comfortable setting of a University Honors class. It was probably the most influential course I ever took, and perhaps ever offered by the Honors Program. My professor had developed a unique curriculum based on her own dedicated research into Matilda Joselyn Gauge over 30+ years, which she assured us had never been done thoroughly, before her, or since her. Much of this influential development remains in the background of society today, though I understand it's being more responsibly advocated for with every passing academic year.
Similarly, the American political body and the public school system have yet to give proper recognition to the profound collaborations between the Founding Fathers and the Haudenosaunee Nation. This history only reached my ears in an introductory Religions course (and it was also mentioned in the Suffragist course, which I had enrolled in the same semester). The religions professor was a member of the Haudenosaunee Nation by marriage. He included this profound history of the collaborations in his Religions course as an example of Indigenous Spiritual influence in modern history, and especially as a profound means for bridging anthropological and sociological gaps that many of his students faced as young voting Americans and private University students. His dedication to the subject was also a clear homage to the achievements and struggles that the Native American community faces, and that he and his family face in their cross-cultural lifestyle, spirituality, and unique citizenship.
Now, I would like to take a moment to admit how a part of me had always felt overwhelmed, and even intimidated, but really deeply ashamed to know that one of the most powerful nations in the world has never properly addressed those who helped in its origins. And, for a long time, I have felt deeply sorrowful for such a profound history to have been largely abandoned to scatter in the wind, or otherwise flagrantly hidden under the floorboards of the judicial courts and police stations. But, another part of me has also always felt relieved and still feels deeply fortunate that its lineage survived to the present day. And, I feel stronger to carry this knowledge with me, everyday.
I had the fortune, and the privilege to come from a well educated family, with international roots, and it molded me to be deeply curious about the world, but also highly impressionable in the face of education. I grew my first pedagogical roots with the world-renowned Bank Street School for Children in NYC, where my sense of identity, or role, or "membership", as a student among the world was profoundly shaped by the Bank Street Method. This pedagogical method focused on the integral role of student-teacher and student-student dialogue and discourse, as a means for shaping children's education and curriculum development. In this advanced and inclusive learning environment, I had the opportunity to learn about inspiring details of the "Iroquois" lifestyle (as the Nation was termed in this setting), as well as the Suffragist movement, and African American liberty way back as an 8-year-old in 3rd grade, in a complex and months long unit about the influence of colonialism and the development of democratic liberties, in early American history. In this progressive educational setting, we also focused on the impact of these integral American histories in the development of the modern world, and especially on contemporary social justice movements across the globe. It had been a profound ethical and moral experience for an 8-year-old, and I was notably proud for what I had learned and also come to honor about my Nation's past. Needless to say, I was shocked and even deeply embarrassed at 20 years old, to learn that my progressive Bank Street family had been starved of this pivotal and critical aspect of American history.
My knowledge today is still far from complete, and as you can see, my paper is still lacking any formal citations. If I ever complete this piece for submission, I will be sure to properly credit all my sources, and secure permission from the proper Haudenosaunee channels for a more formal publication.
Back to the 18th and 19th centuries, instead of showing proper accredation for the Six Tribes' contributions to the American way of life, the Founders and their families and the superseding officials instead seemed to feel singular and surreptitious overwhelming concern for the new U.S. Nation, and for other Colonial regions and Imperial Nations in the world. Perhaps in part due to the secret nature of these meetings, and in part to the discriminatory progression of appropriated time in this era alone, as it would be, it was only the American politicians and their families who were afforded most of the credit for the Tribes' profound contributions, both in the documents, and in the scene of politics. This deeply discrediting and politically aggressive dismissal of the collaborations had also been empirically promoted by a legal document, "The Doctrine of Christian Discovery" that was centuries old at the time. Among many injustices, this doctrine has declared all non-Christian societies, peoples, and their territorial lands not only the appropriated right and ownership of the Church and the English Crown, but the Christian "duty" for its eradication and devastation. This non-democratic and religiously dogmatic but nonetheless widely accepted Doctrine was one of the only legal documents ever developed in national and international law, to handle the "concept" of Indigenous nations. Today, much to the (clandestine) dismay of all citizens of Democracy, this doctrine still exists and has been enforced and reinforced by even the Supreme Court (2005 Sherrill v. Oneida).
In the previous centuries, the advanced (and in pivotal ways more-advanced) politics of the Six Tribes contrasted so many Western cultural concepts and corrupt international bodies of governance, as well as the violent ideologies and commerce of military financiers and the global Imperial complex, in the era. The base existence of the Six Tribes' democracy ran contrary to the habitual reverence for the birth of democracy in Ancient Greece. Moreover, it ran contrary to the social and political agendas of racism and sexism in the Colonial and Imperialist Eras, of the time. Such an unprecedented collaboration brought with it the threat of being publicly dismissed and even violently rejected by domestic citizens, as well as by foreign Nations. Threatening the scene were new bastardizations of political, social, and cultural appropriations of Imperialist-sourced labor, resources, and philosophy, across the globe. The Founders and the Six Tribes even faced the looming threat of newborn Religious "claims" to "another discovery” of any "world-changing collaborations" with all indigenous societies. Making the Tribes' collaborations public would almost certainly have implicated Indigenous peoples, colonial and prospective Imperial territories, domestic and international craftsmen, traders, and refugees across the world.
Forced Citizenship and Off-Reservation Boarding Schools
Indigenous societies have been continuously displaced, exploited, and manipulated by the government up into the present day. After decades of violent displacement, and many desperate uprisings by Tribes across the continent, in 1842 the American government stipulated and forced all citizens of Indigenous Nations into citizenship with the United States of America, effectively stripping them of their power to act from as sovereign national identities. Of course, the Native Nations resisted this final act of political assimilation into the American society. They attempted to preserve and protect their own ways despite this political usurpation, and they declared and fought repeated bloody wars against the United States government, in last-resort attempts to maintain their remaining lands and culture. In a devastating retaliation, the federal government invaded every reservation with soldiers and guns in order to round up and forcibly send Native children off-reservation to government funded boarding schools, run by different Christian denominations. At these Christian agencies the Native students were stripped of their culture and religion and taught to speak English and practice Christian religion and ethics. This form of cultural agression and violence is formally referred to as deculturation, and was one of many bloodthirsty forms of ethnic cleansing used against Indigenous societies by the West, over the past three-quarters of a millennium.
This enactment of deculturation lasted from 1860-1973, and many Native Americans still alive today have experienced the horrors of these institutions. At these agencies, students were forbidden from speaking their native languages, children as young as four were forced to cut away their indigenous hairstyles, to wear American clothing, and to stay out of the sun to lighten their skin tones. If they broke any rules, such as speaking their native languages, telling heritage stories, or practicing their ceremonies, they were punished with violence, and often physically beaten, starved, or forced to enact forms of self-flagellation or physical labor. It was recently uncovered that sexual abuse by staff was rampant at these institutions. Children who broke the rules were often locked in cages in the basements of their schools for short or even extended periods of time. An estimated 40,000 children died from these abuses. Many were buried in unmarked graves, others in mass graves, and all on the boarding school grounds. Even today, none of these murdered children have been identified or returned to their families or homelands.
Hundreds of thousands of children attended these federally funded religious institutions. While the children learned how to speak English, they were forbidden from learning how to read or write in English. At this point in history, most Tribes across the U.S. territory had only ever developed advanced oral language and history traditions, and most had never developed written languages. Today, we know that the integral role of written language in any society mimics the needs of the highly adaptable and moldable abilities and capacities of the physiological human brain for communication. For the schools to assume these children were incapable of written language simply because it was not a common heritage practice was a gross misunderstanding of written language's general physiological and cultural relevance, and of the needs and value of the student. Instead of being given a proper education, all children were trained in physical labor tasks, and were also expected to perform all the duties needed to run the schools themselves. As of today, this federal development is yet to be considered the most recent form of slavery and child labor in the US, and in my own opinion the government's impertinence and temerity is abhorrent and indefensible. The children were instructed to be hired out for their labor after "graduation", and were equipped with a handful of memorized English colloquial promises for hard laboring, and a note, which they could not read, explaining these promises to their employers. These children were effectively discarded upon completion of these Institutions, and entered the uninviting world before them psychologically traumatized, emotionally stunted, and mostly alone. Some returned to their homelands, but many never returned home and never heard from their families again.
The first allotment of Native children reads as follows: "In 1872, the Board of Indian Commissioners allotted 73 agencies to 16 denominations, including: Methodists, fourteen agencies in the Pacific Northwest (54,743 Indians); Presbyterian, nine in the Southwest (38,069); Episcopalians, eight in the Dakotas (26,929); Catholics, seven (17,856); Hicksite Friends, six (6,598); Orthodox Friends, ten (17,724); Baptists, five in Utah, Idaho and the Indian Territory (40,800); Reformed Dutch, five (8,118); Congregationalists, three (14,476); Christians, two (8,287); Unitarians, two (3,800); American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Indian Territories of Oklahoma (1,496); and, Lutherans, one (273). This brings the total government allocation of 318,569 Natives, in 1872."
Today, Native Reservations make up 87,800 square miles of land, approximately the size of the State of Idaho. The most recent U.S. Census records 6.79 million Native Americans, making up 2.09% of the U.S. population. In 1853, there were a recorded 400,764 Native Americans living on reservations. Before colonists came to the Northern continent, there were an estimated 20 million people of indigenous origin.
Outline for following sections:
The Continuum of the Natural World and the Myth and Symbology of Economics
1. Continuum, Contiguity, and Worldview v. Hierarchy and Centralized Power
2. Deification, Hierophany, and the Inherency of Symbolism in Systemized Economics
3. Sameness v. Equality: Praxis and the Court of Law
Heritage Storytelling and Mythology in the Six Tribes
1. Storytelling as a pedagogical method for upholding and preserving ancestral heritage within a Worldview
2. Mythology as creative influence on the social order of equality in the Six Tribes
3. Storytelling and mythology as social advancement of the symbology of cultural values
4. Shamanic practice as praxis of mythology, symbolism, and Heritage Stories
Evolutionary Ecology and the Mythology of Industrialization
1. 19th century Evolutionary-Ecology and Charles Darwin v. Industrial Revolution Lobbyists and the fabrication of Social-Darwinism
2. Modern-day solutions: subsidization for sustainable industry and high taxing for unsustainable industry
3. Modern-day solutions: European Social Democracy (often referred to under the misnomer of "socialism") as post WWII political security and an intentional societal stand and National treatise against Nazism and Fascism through the provision of public education, public health care, and public housing, and the modern day mythological significance of no housing tax combined with high wage tax
Peace and Gratitude
The Haudenosaunee democratic process and Worldview created and sustained profound and lasting peace, after centuries-old ancestral wars. From their rich experiences and achievements, the Haudenosaunee Nation made essential contributions to the world-changing and revolutionary political rhetoric of the United States of America, from which so many around the world have benefited today. And even though sometimes I sit with this knowledge, and it feels diluted in a miasma of privilege that I've been bastardly exposed to by the clandestine ambition of academia in a private University setting (sorry, prof., I don't mean you)... My mind rests and my heart is warmed, and I feel deep, deep down, that the whole world is grateful.
Language
Now, as I've expressed, I don't know the details or the complexity of the Tribes' many languages. But I imagine how in their societies, this inherency of responsibility, choice and membership would be expressed as an "activity", as verb-centric, and the profound affect this had on their cultural richness, and their internal peace and unity.
