A Basic Call to Consciousness The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977 copyright © 1978 by Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, Via Roseveltown, NY.
part 1 INTRODUCTION
part 2 SPIRITUALISM THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
part 3 THE OBVIOUS FACT OF OUR CONTINUING EXISTENCE: LEGAL HISTORY OF THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE
part 4 POLICIES OF OPPRESSION
"DEMOCRACY": ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE
The papers which follow are position papers which were presented by the Hau de no sau nee to the Non-governmental Organizations [NGOs] of the United Nations in
It is a call which can be expected to be both ignored and misunderstood for some period of time. But the position papers themselves are absolutely unique -- they constitute a political statement, presented to a representative world body, pointing to the destruction of the Natural World and the Natural World peoples as the clearest indicator that human beings are in trouble on this planet. It is a call to a basic consciousness which has ancient roots and ultra-modern, even futuristic, manifestations.
It is a statement which points to the fact that humans are abusing one another, that they are abusing the planet they live on, that they are even abusing themselves. It is a message, certainly the first ever delivered to a world body, which identifies the process of that abuse as Western Civilization -- as a whole way of life -- and which acknowledges the immense complexity which that statement implies.
What is presented here is nothing less audacious than a cosmogony of the Industrialized World presented by the most politically powerful and independent non-Western political body surviving in
Be that as it may, the Hau de no see nee position is derived from a philosophy which sees The People with historical roots which extend back tens of thousands of years. It is a geological kind of perspective, which sees modern man as an infant, occupying a very short space of time in an incredibly long spectrum. It is the perspective of the oldest elder looking into the affairs of a young child and seeing that he is committing incredibly destructive folly. It is, in short, the statement of a people who are ageless but who trace their history as a people to the very beginning of time. And they are speaking, in this instance, to a world which dates its existence from a little over 500 years ago, and perhaps, in many cases, much more recently than that.
And it is, to our knowledge, the very first statement to be issued by a Native nation. What follows are not the research products of psychologists, historians, or anthropologists. The papers which follow are the first authentic analyses of the modern world ever committed to writing by an official body of Native people.
INTRODUCTION
It was not long ago that the Hau de no sau nee, or Six Nations, were a powerful people, occupying a vast territory stretching from
"Hau de no sau nee" is a word which means "people who build," and is the proper name of the people of the Longhouse. The early history, history before the Indo-Europeans came, explains that there was a time when the peoples of the North American forest experienced war and strife. It was during such a time that there came into this land one who carried words of peace. That one would come to be called the Peacemaker.
The Peacemaker came to the people with a message that human beings should cease abusing one another. He stated that humans are capable of reason, that through that power of reason all men desire peace, and that it is necessary that the people organize to ensure that peace will be possible among the people who walk about on the earth. That was the original word about laws -- laws were originally made to prevent the abuse of humans by other humans.
The Peacemaker travelled among the people, going from nation to nation, seeking those who would take up this way of peace, offering with it a way of reason and power. He journeyed first among the Ganienkegaga -- the People of the Flint Stone -- (Mohawks) where he sought to speak to the most dangerous of these people, offering them his message.
He travelled for a long time among the Mohawks; the People of Standing Stone (the
It is impossible to overstate the power of thought that emerges from that document. Today, it is almost impossible for us to recreate the scene of its birth. But centuries ago, a natural world people gathered together at the head of a lake in the center of
Secondly, they looked into their own histories to discover the things which cause conflict among people. They saw, for example, that peoples sometimes struggle over hunting territories, and they did a curious thing. They abolished the significance of such territories, and guaranteed the safety of anyone entering the country of the Hau de no sau nee. And they established universal laws about the treatment and taking of game, because the taking of game sometimes caused conflicts. In the country of the Hau de no sau nee, all people were free, all had a right to protection under what the Peacemaker called the Great Tree of Peace.
The basic principles of peace went further than the simple absence of conflict. An ordered society which has the capability of protecting people against abuse and which is, at the same time, dedicated to a containment of hierarchy, is a complex society. The People of the Longhouse sought to carry the principles of peace far from the council fires, into every dwelling in the country of the Hau de no sau nee. Thus does the Great Law establish more than a code of conduct -- it is also the beginning point for the modern clans. It embodies the foundations of all the customs of holding meetings, of exchanging messages on wampums, and of assigning titles to leaders.
The Hau de no sau nee raised their children from the cradleboard to be participants in the culture. The ways of the People of the Longhouse have always been powerfully spiritual in nature, and it is true that the government, the economy, everything that is Hau de no sau nee has deep spiritual roots.
The papers which follow are position papers which were presented by the Hau de no sau nee to the Non-governmental Organizations of the United Nations in
It is a call which can be expected to be both ignored and misunderstood for some period of time. But the position papers themselves are absolutely unique -- they constitute a political statement, presented to a representative world body, pointing to the destruction of the Natural World and the Natural World peoples as the clearest indicator that human beings are in trouble on this planet. It is a call to a basic consciousness which has ancient roots and ultra-modern, even futuristic, manifestations.
It is a statement which points to the fact that humans are abusing one another, that they are abusing the planet they live on, that they are even abusing themselves. It is a message, certainly the first ever delivered to a world body, which identifies the process of that abuse as Western Civilization -- as a whole way of life -- and which acknowledges the immense complexity which that statement implies.
What is presented here is nothing less audacious than a cosmogony of the Industrialized World presented by the most politically powerful and independent non-Western political body surviving in
Scholars and casual readers alike should question the significance, in the age of the Neutron bomb, Watergate, and nuclear energy plant proliferation, of a statement by a North American Indian people. But there is probably some argument to be made for the appropriateness of such a statement at this time. Most of the world's professed traditions are fairly recent in origin. Mohammedanism is perhaps 1500 years old, Christianity claims a 2000-year history, Judaism is perhaps 2000 years older than Christianity.
But the Native people can probably lay claim to a tradition which reaches back to at least the end of the Pleistocene, and which, in all probability, goes back much further than that.
There is some evidence that humanoid creatures have been present on the earth for at least two million years, and that humans who looked very much like us were in evidence in the Northern Hemisphere at least as long as the second interglacial period. People who are familiar with the Hau de no sau nee beliefs will recognize that modern scientific evidence shows that the Native customs of today are not markedly different from those practiced by ancient peoples at least 70000 years ago. Indeed, if an Iroquois traditionalist were to seek a career in the study of Pleistocene Man, he may find that he already knows more about the most ancient belief systems than do the modern scholars.
Be that as it may, the Hau de no see nee position is derived from a philosophy which sees The People with historical roots which extend back tens of thousands of years. It is a geological kind of perspective, which sees modern man as an infant, occupying a very short space of time in an incredibly long spectrum. It is the perspective of the oldest elder looking into the affairs of a young child and seeing that he is committing incredibly destructive folly. It is, in short, the statement of a people who are ageless but who trace their history as a people to the very beginning of time. And they are speaking, in this instance, to a world which dates its existence from a little over 500 years ago, and perhaps, in many cases, much more recently than that.
And it is, to our knowledge, the very first statement to be issued by a Native nation. What follows are not the research products of psychologists, historians, or anthropologists. The papers which follow are the first authentic analyses of the modern world ever committed to writing by an official body of Native people.
SPIRITUALISM
THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE MESSAGE TO THE WESTERN WORLD
The Hau de no sau nee, or the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuously existing cultures in the world. We still remember the earliest doings of human beings. We remember the original instructions of the Creators of Life on this place we call Etenoha -- Mother Earth. We are the spiritual guardians of this place. We are the Ongwhehonwhe -- the Real People.
In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who walk about the Earth have been provided with all the things necessary for life. We were instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the Vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.
Ours is a Way of Life. We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. Spirits can be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter -- grass matter. The spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass.
All things of the world are real, material things. The Creation is a true, material phenomenon, and the Creation manifests itself to us through reality. The spiritual universe, then, is manifest to Man as the Creation, the Creation which supports life. We believe that man is real, a part of the Creation, and that his duty is to support Life in conjunction with the other beings. That is why we call ourselves Ongwhehonwhe -- Real People.
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives -- the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end.
Our roots are deep in the lands where we live. We have great love for our country, for our birthplace is there. The soil is rich from the bones of thousands of our generations. Each of us were created in those lands, and it is our duty to take great care of them, because from these lands will spring the future generations of the Ongwhehonwhe. We walk about with a great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.
We are not a people who demand, or ask anything of the Creators of Life, but instead, we give greetings and thanksgiving that all the forces of Life are still at work. We deeply understand our relationship to all living things. To this day, the territories we still hold are filled with trees, animals, and the other gifts of the Creation. In these places we still receive our nourishment from our Mother Earth.
We have seen that not all people of the Earth show the same kind of respect for this world and its beings. The Indo-European people who have colonized our lands have shown very little respect for the things that create and support Life. We believe that these people ceased their respect for the world a long time ago. Many thousands of years ago, all the people of the world believed in the same Way of Life, that of harmony with the universe. All lived according to the Natural Ways.
Around ten thousand years ago, peoples who spoke Indo-European languages lived in the area which today we know as the Steppes of Russia. At that time, they were a Natural World people who lived off the land. They had developed agriculture, and it is said that they had begun the practice of animal domestication. It is not known that they were the first people in the world to practice animal domestication. The hunters and gatherers who roamed the area probably acquired animals from the agricultural people, and adopted an economy, based on the herding and breeding of animals.
Herding and breeding of animals signaled a basic alteration in the relationship of humans to other life forms. It set into motion one of the true revolutions in human history. Until herding, humans depended on nature for the reproductive powers of the animal world. With the advent of herding, humans assumed the functions which had for all time been the functions of the spirits of the animals. Sometime after this happened, history records the first appearance of the social organization known as "patriarchy."
The area between the Tigris and
Within these cultures, stratified hierarchical social organization crystallized. The ancient civilizations developed imperialism, partly because of the very nature of cities. Cities are obviously population concentrations. Most importantly though, they are places which must import the material needs of this concentration from the countryside. This means that the Natural World must be subjugated, extracted from, and exploited in the interest of the city. To give order to this process, the Semitic world developed early codes of law. They also developed the idea of monotheism to serve as a spiritual model for their material and political organization.
Much of the history of the ancient world recounts the struggles between the Indo-Europeans and the Semitic peoples. Over a period of several millenia, the two cultures clashed and blended. By the second millenia B.C., some Indo-Europeans, most specifically the Greeks, had adopted the practice of building cities, thus becoming involved in the process which they named "Civilization."
Both cultures developed technologies peculiar to civilizations. The Semitic peoples invented kilns which enabled the creation of pottery for trade, and storage of surpluses. These early kilns eventually evolved into ovens which could generate enough heat to smelt metals, notably copper, tin and bronze. The Indo-Europeans developed a way of smelting iron.
Christianity was an absolutely essential element in the early development of this kind of technology. Christianity advocated only one God. It was a religion which imposed itself exclusively of all other beliefs. The local people of the European forests were a people who believed in the spirits of the forests, waters, hills and the land; Christianity attacked those beliefs, and effectively de-spiritualized the European world. The Christian peoples, who possessed superior weaponry and a need for expansion, were able to militarily subjugate the tribal peoples of
The availability of iron led to the development of tools which could cut down the forest, the source of charcoal to make more tools. The newly cleared land was then turned by the newly developed iron plow, which was, for the first time, pulled by horses. With that technology many fewer people would work much more land, and many other people were effectively displaced to become soldiers and landless peasants. The rise of that technology ushered in the Feudal Age and made possible, eventually, the rise of new cities and growing trade. It also spelled the beginning of the end of the European forest, although that process took a long time to complete.
The eventual rise of cities and the concurrent rise of the European state created the thrust of expansion and search for markets which led men, such as
The
The Indo-Europeans attacked every aspect of
The hardwood forests of the Northeast were not cleared for the purpose of providing farmlands. Those forests were destroyed to create charcoal for the forges of the iron smelters and blacksmiths. By the 1890's, the West had turned to coal, a fossil fuel, to provide the energy necessary for the many new forms of machinery which had been developed. During the first half of the Twentieth Century, oil had replaced coal as a source of energy.
The Western culture has been horribly exploitative and destructive of the Natural World. Over 140 species of birds and animals were utterly destroyed since the European arrival in the
But like the hardwood forests, the fossil fuels are also finite resources. As the second half of the Twentieth Century has progressed, the people of the West have begun looking to other forms of energy to motivate their technology. Their eyes have settled on atomic energy, a form of energy production which has by-products which are the most poisonous substances ever known to Man.
Today the species of Man is facing a question of the very survival of the species. The way of life known as Western Civilization is on a death path on which their own culture has no viable answers. When faced with the reality of their own destructiveness, they can only go forward into areas of more efficient destruction. The appearance of Plutonium on this planet is the clearest of signals that our species is in trouble. It is a signal which most Westerners have chosen to ignore.
The air is foul, the waters poisoned, the trees dying, the animals are disappearing. We think even the systems of weather are changing. Our ancient teaching warned us that if Man interfered with the Natural Laws, these things would come to be. When the last of the Natural Way of Life is gone, all hope for human survival will be gone with it. And our Way of Life is fast disappearing, a victim of the destructive processes.
The other position papers of the Hau de no sau nee have outlined our analysis of economic and legal oppression. But our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and plant life are also destroying the Native people. And that process is Western Civilization.
We know that there are many people in the world who can quickly grasp the intent of our message. But experience has taught us that there are few who are willing to seek out a method for moving toward any real change. But, if there is to be a future for all beings on this planet, we must begin to seek the avenues of change.
The processes of colonialism and imperialism which have affected the Hau de no sau nee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that mystified the peoples of the Earth.
The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural World, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and egalitarian societies.
It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical analysis of the West's historical processes, to seek out the actual nature of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives.
We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every program, and every process that the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere wrote, in his book, the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," that it is the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that response to oppression.
The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all the things that support Life -- the air, the waters, the trees -- all the things which support the sacred web of Life.
We feel that the Native peoples of the
We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold the dignity of
The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization which hold the promise of unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the native peoples of the
THE OBVIOUS FACT OF OUR CONTINUING EXISTENCE
LEGAL HISTORY OF THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE
Since the beginning of human time, the Hau de no sau nee have occupied the distinct territories that we call our homelands. That occupation has been both organized and continuous. We have long defined the borders of our country, have long maintained the exclusive use-right of the areas within those borders, and have used those territories as the economic and cultural definitions of our nation.
The Hau de no sau nee are a distinct people, with our own laws and customs, territories, political organization and economy. In short, the Hau de no sau nee, or Six Nations, fits in every way every definition of nationhood.
Ours is one of the most complex social/political structures still functioning in the world. The Hau de no sau nee council is also one of the most ancient continuously functioning governments anywhere on this planet. Our society is one of the most complex anywhere. From our social and political institutions has come inspiration for some of the most vital institutions and political philosophies of the modern world.
The Hau de no sau nee is governed by a constitution known among Europeans as the Constitution of the Six Nations and to the Hau de no sau nee as the Gayanashakgowah, or the Great Law of Peace. It is the oldest functioning document in the world which has contained a recognition of the freedoms the Western democracies recently claim as their own: the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of women to participate in government. The concept of separation of powers in government and of checks and balances of power within governments are traceable to our constitution. They are ideas learned by the colonists as the result of contact with North American Native people, specifically the Hau de no sau nee.
The philosophies of the Socialist World, too, are to some extent traceable to European contact with the Hau de no sau nee. Lewis Henry Morgan noted the economic structure of the Hau de no sau nee, which he termed both primitive and communistic. Karl Marx used Morgan's observations for the development of a model for classless, post-capitalist society. The modern world has been greatly influenced by the fact of our existence.
It may seem strange, at this time, that we are here, asserting the obvious fact of our continuing existence. For countless centuries, the fact of our existence was unquestioned, and for all honest human beings, it remains unquestioned today. We have existed since time immemorial. We have always conducted our own affairs from our territories, under our own laws and customs. We have never, under those laws and customs, willingly or fairly surrendered either our territories or our freedoms. Never, in the history of the Hau de no sau nee, have the People or the government sworn allegiance to a European sovereign. In that simple fact lies the roots of our oppression as a people, and the purpose of our journey here, before the world community.
The problems incurred in the recent "legal history" of the Hau de no sau nee began long before European contact with Native people. It began, at least, with the rise of a system called feudalism in Europe, for the only law which the colonizing countries of
Feudal society in Europe appears to have arisen as the result of a number of conditions which existed following the dissolution of the
The feudal lord often held dictatorial power over his "subjects," especially the peasants. Military protection was necessary because of the continuous state of "feuding," among the various lords. The "peaceful people," or peasants, were caught in the middle. The land, and everything on it, including the animals, plants, and people, was under the domination or dominion of the feudal "lord." This lord demanded loyalty and a part of the peasant's crops as well as some of his/her labor. Feudalism could be far more brutal and humiliating than is outlined in many histories. Some feudal lords exercised what was called "the right of the first night," a custom which referred to the right of a lord to the peasant's bride.
Prior to the rise of feudalism, it is fair to state that most of the agricultural people of
The crystallization of centralized executive power serves to separate civilized societies from primitive societies. It is immaterial whether such controls are located in a feudal castle or in the executive offices of the capitals of nation states. The appearance of the hierarchical state marks the transition of food cultivators in general to the more specific definition contained in the concepts of peasantry. When the cultivator becomes dependent upon and integrated in a society in which he is subject to demands of people who are defined by a class other than his own, he becomes appropriately termed a peasant.[1]
The state of a medieval European peasant was not a pleasant one. Peasants have no rights, save those granted by their lord. They cannot own the land as a people. Only the Sovereign owns or possesses sovereignty. Peasants were often treated as chattel. They were bought, sold, and inherited with the land. They were a people who had been dispossessed of their freedom. At some points in history, the tribal peoples of
A peasant is not a member of a true community of people. His society is incomplete without the town or city. It is trade with the town or city, an economic relationship, which defines the early stages of peasantry. As trade becomes more necessary, for whatever reasons, the tribesman becomes increasingly less of a tribesman and more of a peasant. The process is neither immediate nor is it necessarily absolute, but to the degree that a tribesman becomes dependent, he becomes less of a tribesman.[2]
To a great extent, the process by which people lost their freedom in
"It is the market, in one form or another, that pulls out from the compact social relations of self-contained primitive communities some parts of men's doings and puts people into fields of economic activity that are increasingly independent of the rest of what goes on in local life. The local traditional and moral world and the wider and more impersonal world of the market are in principle distinct, and opposed to each other. . . ."[3]
The European "discovery" of North America led to the transposition of European medieval law and customs to the
"Europeans used a great variety of means to attain mastery, of which armed combat was only one. Five principles were available to a European sovereignty for laying claim to legitimate jurisdiction over an American territory and its people: Papal donation, first discovery, sustained possession, voluntary self-subjugation by the natives, and armed conquest successfully maintained. The colony was the means of translating a formal claim to the effective actuality of government, and it was "colonial" in both senses of that ambiguous word. The huddled villages of Europeans were colonies in the sense of being offshoots or reproductions of their parent societies, and these villages exerted power over lager native populations in the sense more clearly implied by the word colonialism."[4]
The European invaders, from the first, attempted to claim Indians as their subjects. Where the Indian people resisted, as in the case of the Hau de no sau nee, the Europeans rationalized that resistance to be an incapacity for civilization. The incapacity for civilization rationale became the basis for the phenomenon in the West which is known today as racism.
The Europeans landed on the shores of the
The European legal systems had, and apparently have developed, no machinery to recognize the rights of peoples, other than dictators or sovereigns, to land. When the Europeans came to
The dispossession of the Native people was accomplished by the Europeans in the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of human history. They were acts committed, seemingly, by a people without conscience or standards of behavior. To this day, the
Their reasoning is patently medieval and racist: " . . . Civilization is that quality possessed by people with civil governments, civil government is Europe's kind of government; Indians did not have
Modern multi-national corporations operate in much the same way. They identify a market or an area which has the resources they want. They then obtain a charter, or some form of sanction from a Western government, and they send what amounts to a colonizing force into the area. If they successfully penetrate the area, that area becomes a sort of economic colony of the multi-national. The greatest resistance to that form of penetration has been mounted by local nationalists.
In
This concept of illegitimacy is then interpreted into official government policy. In the
The
The Hau de no sau nee have also been subjected to the many forms of colonialism of the Western governments. Our first contact with a Western people came in 1609 when a French military expedition under Samuel deChamplain murdered some Mohawk people along the lake which now bears his name. Later, when the Dutch came, the first treaty (or agreement) which we made with a European power was the Two Row Treaty in which we clarified our position -- that we are a distinct, free and sovereign people. The Dutch accepted that agreement.
But the European nations have never honored the agreement. Many times,
The
The mechanism for the colonization of the Hau de no sau nee territory is found, in legal fiction, in the United States Constitution. That document purports to give Congress power to "regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, and with Indian tribes." Contrary to every principle of international law, Congress has expanded that section to an assertion of "plenary" power, a doctrine which asserts authority over our territories. This assertion has been repeatedly urged upon our people, although we have never agreed to that relationship, and we have never been conquered in warfare. The Hau de no sau nee are vassals to no people -- we are a free nation, and we have never surrendered our rights as a free people.
From the beginning of its existence, the
The
Because the Hau de no sau nee refused to sell the land, the
There followed a long list of moves by the
In 1886, there was an attempt to divide the Hau de no sau nee lands into severalty under the Dawes Act, an attempt which was not entirely successful. In 1924, the
Also in 1924,
In 1948 and 1950, Congress passed laws giving civil and criminal jurisdiction to New York State, although Congress was never given such jurisdiction by the Hau de no sau nee. In 1958, Congress passed Public Law 88-533, the Kinzua Dam Act, which resulted in the flooding of almost all of the inhabitable lands of the Seneca at Alleghany, and virtually destroyed the Native communities and culture there. That act also provided for the termination of the Seneca Nation, a process which would have ended even the colonial government there, and which would have moved the denial of our existence a little closer to reality.
In addition to these legal kinds of colonization, the Hau de no sau nee have been subjected to every other kind of colonization imaginable. Churches, school systems, and every form of Western penetration have made political, economic, and cultural peasants of some of our populations. The continuing denial of our political existence has been accomplished by an almost overwhelming psychological, economic and spiritual attack by the colonial institutions of the West.
For over 300 years, our people have been under a virtual state of siege. During this entire time we have never once given up our struggle. Our strategies have, of necessity, changed. But the will and determination to continue on remains the same. Throughout these years, European historians have recorded the position of the Hau de no sau nee.
During the 1920s, one of our leaders, a man named Deskaheh, came to this city to seek help for his people. At that time, the international body which existed did not truly represent the world community. Many cultures and nations were not recognized. Now, fifty years later, we have returned, and our message remains the same.
Our elders have watched the rebirth of this international institution. In 1949, a delegation of the Hau de no sau nee attended the foundation ceremony for the United Nations building in
Now we find ourselves in
POLICIES OF OPPRESSION
IN THE NAME OF
"DEMOCRACY"
ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE
The Hau de no sau nee, People of the Longhouse, who are known to many Europeans as the Six nations Iroquois, have inhabited their territories since time immemorial. During the time prior to the coming of the Europeans, it is said that ours were a happy and prosperous people. Our lands provided abundantly for our needs. Our people lived long, healthy, and productive lives. Before the Europeans came, we were an affluent people, rich in the gifts of our country. We were a strong people in both our minds and bodies. Throughout most of that time, we lived in peace.
Prior to the arrival of the colonists, we were a people who lived by hunting and gathering, and practiced a form of agriculture which was not labor intensive. The economy of the people was an extremely healthful Way of Life, and our peoples were very healthy -- among the finest athletes in the world. There were some, in those times, who lived to be 120 years and more, and our runners were unexcelled for speed and endurance.
Among our people we refer to our culture as "OngweHonwekah." This refers to a Way of Life that is peculiar to the Hau de no sau nee. It is virtually impossible for us to recount, specifically, the history of "Hau de no sau nee economics." As will become evident, our economy, that way in which our people manage their resources, and the relationship of that management to the total organization of our society, are processes completely bound together. The distribution of goods, in our traditional society, was accomplished through institutions which are not readily identified as economic institutions by other societies. The Hau de no sau nee do not have specific economic institutions. Rather, what European people identify as institutions of one classification or another serve many different purposes among the Hau de no sau nee.
We were a people of a great forest. That forest was a source of great wealth. It was a place in which was to be found huge hardwoods and an almost unimaginable abundance and variety of nuts, berries, roots, and herbs. In addition to these, the rivers teemed with fish and the forest and its meadows abounded with game. It was, in fact, a kind of Utopia, a place where no one went hungry, a place where the people were happy and healthy.
Our traditions were such that we were careful not to allow our populations to rise in numbers that would overtax the other forms of life. We practiced strict forms of conservation. Our culture is based on a principle that directs us to constantly think about the welfare of seven generations into the future. Our belief in this principle acts as a restraint to the development of practices which would cause suffering in the future. To this end, our people took only as many animals as were needed to meet our needs. Not until the arrival of the colonists did the wholesale slaughter of animals occur.
We feel that many people will be confused when we say that ours is a Way of Life, that our economy cannot be separated from the many aspects of our culture. Our economy is unlike that of Western peoples. We believe that all things in the world were created by what the English language forces us to call "Spiritual Beings," including one that we call the Great Creator. All things in this world belong to the Creator and the spirits of the world. We also believe that we are required to honor these beings, in respect of the gift of Life.
In accordance with our ways, we are required to hold many kinds of feasts and ceremonies which can best be described as "give-aways." It is said that among our people, our leaders, those whom the Anglo people insist on calling "chiefs," are the poorest of us. By the laws of our culture, our leaders are both political and spiritual leaders. They are leaders of many ceremonies which require the distribution of great wealth. As spiritual/political leaders, they provide a kind of economic conduit. To become a political leader, a person is required to be a spiritual leader, and to become a spiritual leader a person must be extraordinarily generous in terms of material goods.
Our leaders, in fact, are leaders of categories of large extended families. Those large extended families function as economic units in a Way of Life which has as its base the Domestic Mode of Production. Before the colonists came, we had our own means of production and distribution adequate to meet all the peoples' needs. We would have been unable to exist as nations were it not so.
Our basic economic unit is the family. The means of distribution, aside from simple trade, consists of a kind of spiritual tradition manifested in the functions of the religious/civic leaders in a highly complex religious, governmental, and social structure.
The Hau de no sau nee have no concept of private property. This concept would be a contradiction to a people who believe that the Earth belongs to the Creator. Property is an idea by which people can be excluded from having access to lands, or other means of producing a livelihood. That idea would destroy our culture, which requires that every individual live in service to the Spiritual Ways and the People. That idea (property) would produce slavery. The acceptance of the idea of property would produce leaders whose functions would favor excluding people from access to property, and they would cease to perform their functions as leaders of our societies and distributors of goods.
Before the colonists came, we had no consciousness about a concept of commodities. Everything, even the things we make, belong to the Creators of Life and are to be returned ceremonially, and in reality, to the owners. Our people live a simple life, one unencumbered by the need of endless material commodities. The fact that their needs are few means that all the peoples' needs are easily met. It is also true that our means of distribution is an eminently fair process, one in which all of the people share in all the material wealth all of the time.
Our Domestic Mode of Production has a number of definitions which are culturally specific. Our peoples' economy requires a community of people and is not intended to define an economy based on the self-sufficient nuclear family. Some modern economists estimate that in most parts of the world, the isolated nuclear family cannot produce enough to survive in a Domestic Mode of Production. In any case, that particular mode of subsistence, by our cultural definition, is not an economy at all.
Ours was a wealthy society. No one suffered from want. All had the right to food, clothing, and shelter. All shared in the bounty of the spiritual ceremonies and the Natural World. No one stood in any material relationship of power over anyone else. No one could deny anyone access to the things they needed. All in all, before the colonists came, ours was a beautiful and rewarding Way of Life.
The colonists arrived with many institutions and strategies designed to destroy the Way of Life of the People of the Longhouse. In 1609, Samuel deChamplain led a French military expedition that attacked a party of Mohawk people on the lake now named "
Champlain, accompanied by his newly-found business partners, marched into the center of Mohawk territory. This war party encountered a party of about 200 Mohawks. The first volley of gunfire killed three men, and the second created such confusion that the Mohawks retreated, leaving twelve men who were taken captive.
The period of warfare which followed this incident has come to be known as the "Beaver Wars." The introduction of trade in beaver pelts inevitably triggered a long series of colonial wars. It represented the escalation of disputes among neighbors into a full-scale struggle for survival in the forests of the Native people of
The European penetration affected every facet of the Native Way of Life from the very moment of contact. The natural economies, cultures, politics, and military affairs became totally altered. Nations learned that to be without firearms meant physical annihilation. To be without access to beaver pelts mean no means to buy firearms.
The trade in beaver pelts, and the now necessary weaponry, introduced factors never before encountered by the Native people. Trade meant that long routes over which goods were to be transported had to be secured. The only way that was possible was for the entire area to be in friendly hands. Any potential disruptor of the trade routes must either be pacified or eliminated.
With the introduction of firearms, war became a deadly business. It was made more deadly because the European strategy of economic penetration was to stimulate warfare among the Native nations over which would have the goods for trade. Out of necessity, to protect themselves from annihilation, the People of the Longhouse entered the beaver trade. The pelts were used to buy more firearms and goods that made it possible for more men to trap more beaver more efficiently. The marketplaces of
Shortly after the encounter on Lake Champlain, the Hau de no sau nee began trading with
So intense became the need for European goods, especially firearms, that by 1640 the beaver were becoming scarce in the Hau de no sau nee territories. Pressure from the newly created European frontiers was steadily increasing. Warfare was also common between the various colonizers. The Hau de no sau nee were well aware of what was occurring to the East. The Dutch, shortly after their arrival, began a series of genocidal wars that ended in the utter annihilation of the Native peoples of the
Knowledge of these massacres greatly influenced Hau de no sau nee defense policy. To the East were the Dutch and English, whose presence was necessary as a source of firearms. Yet, they represented a constant potential of movement of their frontiers westward into the Longhouse. To the North was the colony of
The missionaries made persistent attacks on the economic structures of the People of the Longhouse. They specifically attacked the spiritual ceremonies as "pagan," and thereby sought to end the practice of give-aways and public feasts. In addition, they sought to break the power of the clans by causing division which would split the people into nuclear households.
European churches, especially in colonial practice, take on their feudal roles as economic institutions. Among natural world people, they are the most dangerous agents of destruction. They invariably seek to destroy the spiritual/economic bonds of the people to the forests, land and animals. They spread both ideologies and technologies which make people slaves to the extractive system which defines colonialism.
In 1704, the first Anglican missionaries were sent, by
The warlike European kingdoms were constantly fighting among themselves. There were three wars during the 18th Century just between
If
During his tenure he engineered the establishment of a beachhead from which immigrants could move Westward to broaden the colony. Mohawk lands along the Susquehanna and
There was so much trouble with the peasant settlers that the Mohawks, who had so generously allowed them to share their lands, were actually considering moving Westward into
William Johnson was a master public relations man for the King. He would, on the one hand, apologize for the behavior of the frontiersmen and urge the Mohawks to be patient, and on the other hand encourage more settlers to move into the Mohawk lands. He would make a great show of protecting Hau de no sau nee interests, and in that way encourage the People of the Longhouse to seek a resolution at the bargaining table where they invariably ended up trading land to gain a temporary peace.
Throughout this period many other Native peoples had been moving into our territories to gain some respite from the colonial onslaught. Far to the South, in the colonized area known as the
Peace, however, was not to be. At the approach of the American revolution, the Hau de no sau nee did everything possible to remain neutral. With the decline of
The policy of
The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, made no provision, at least in writing, for the Native nations, which the British Crown had solemnly promised to protect. Thus the representatives of the People of the Longhouse held an international treaty meeting with the new federation called the
Somehow the
By pretending that the Hau de no sau nee government no longer exists, both the
The policy of the dispossession of North American Native peoples, first by the European kingdoms, and later by the settler regimes, began with the first contact. Dispossession took a number of approaches: the so-called "just warfare" was a strategy by which Native nations were deemed to have offended the Crown and their elimination by fire and sword was justified. That was followed by the Treaty Period in which Native nations were "induced" to sell their lands and move westward. The Treaty Period was in full swing at the beginning of the 19th Century. By 1815, the governor of
While the infamous Trail of Tears was removing Native peoples from the Southeast to
Like the Termination Policy a century later, the Removal Policy was eventually abandoned due in part to the bad press received during the Cherokee Removal in 1832. During the process of the Cherokee removal, thousands of Cherokee men, women, children and elders were subjected to conditions which caused them to die of exposure, starvation and neglect.
In 1871, the U.S. Congress passed an Act which included a clause that treaties would no longer be made with "Indian Nations." It was at this time that official
There was consistent pressure in the New York Legislature to "civilize" the Hau de no sau nee. To accomplish this, all vestiges of Hau de no sau nee nationality needed to be destroyed. This is the 19th Century origin of the policy to "educate" the Indian to be culturally European. It was thought that when the Indian was successfully Europeanized, he would no longer be distinct and separate, and that there would no longer be an indigenous people with their own customs and economy. At that point, the Indian could be simply declared to have assimilated into the
In 1924, the Canadian government "abolished" Hau de no sau nee government at the
With all semblance of a Native nation's original context destroyed,
The Hau de no sau nee vigorously objected to the Citizenship Act and maintains to this day that the People of the Longhouse are not citizens of
The Terminations Act of the 1950s were efforts to simply declare that the Native nations no longer exist and to appropriate their lands. The acts were so disastrous that they caused something of a national scandal. "St. Regis," the European name for Akwesasne, was one of our territories targeted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as "ready for integration."
The BIA based its recommendation on the fact that many Mohawks had acquired at least some of the material conditions which made their community outwardly indistinguishable from the white communities. In fact, however, Akwesasne was, and is, very different from the small towns in the area surrounding it.
Termination submerged as an official policy in the late 1960s. But Termination is simply a means to an end. The objective is the economic exploitation of a people and their lands. The taking of lands and the denial and destruction of Native nations are concrete and undeniable elements in the colonization process as it is applied to Native people surrounded by a settler state. Tools to accomplish this end include guns, disease, revised histories, repressive missionaries, indoctrinating teachers, and these things are often cloaked in codes of law. In the Twentieth Century, the taking of land and the destruction of the culture and Native economy serve to force the Native people into roles as industrial workers, just as in the 19th Century the same processes forced Native people in the
The Hau de no sau nee has, over a period of 375 years, met every definition of an oppressed nation. It has been subjected to raids of extermination from
Revisionist
The world is told by colonial government propaganda machines that the Hau de no sau nee are simply "victims of civilization and progress." The truth is that they are the victims of a conscious and persistent effort of destruction directed at them by the European governments and their heirs in
Although treaties may often have been bad deals for the Native nations, the
The European nations of the
The effect of all these policies has been the destruction of the culture and therefore the economy of the People of the Longhouse. The traditional ceremony has been largely replaced by the colonial ceremony which serves multinational corporate interests. The colonial ceremony is one that extracts labor and materials from the people of the Hau de no sau nee for the benefit of the colonizers. The Christian religions, the school systems, the neo-colonial elective systems, all work toward these goals.
We are an economically poor people today. Few of us can afford to support the spiritual ceremonies which form the foundations of our traditional economies. The money economy is not adaptable to the real economy of our people. Few of our peoples participate in the Domestic Mode of Production which defines the traditional economy. This is largely because of the colonizer's education system, and also more systematic and brutal attempts at acculturation, have placed neo-colonial governments on our territories. On some of the Hau de no sau nee lands, the Canadian and
Genocide is alive and well in the territory of the Hau de no sau nee. Its technicians are in
We are living in a period of time in which we expect to see great changes in the economy of the colonizers. The imperial powers of the world appear to be facing successful resistance to expansion in Africa,
For the moment, there is more wealth, more goods and services, more automation than has ever existed in the history of mankind. The world is living in an age of manufactured affluence. But the people of the world have rarely been told the costs in terms of peoples' lifes and suffering, that this affluence has extracted from each of us. Even the people in
The modern family is an institution which is presently under a great deal of stress. The family in Western society has undergone great changes over the last century. As the Westernization of the world continues, all peoples will be faced with similar stresses and turmoils.
We, the Hau de no sau nee, have clear choices about the future. One of the choices which we have faced is whether to become Westernized, or to remain true to the Way of Life our forefathers developed for us. We have stated our understanding of the history of the changes that have created the present conditions. We have chosen to remain Hau de no sau nee, and within the context of our Way of Life, to set a course of liberation for ourselves and the future generations.
Our liberation process is not one that is exclusive to us as Humans, but also includes the other life forms that coexist and are as oppressed as we. The liberation of the Natural World is a process which is being undertaken in a most difficult environment. The people surrounding us seem to be intent on destroying themselves and every living thing.
Throughout the past four hundred years, the Hau de no sau nee have exerted a great influence on the lives of millions of people. Theories about democracy and classless society have been developed from inadequate interpretations of the true nature of those ideals. This conference may be the time which begins a process which moves toward more real definitions of these concepts.
In our homelands, our people are still struggling and developing strategies for survival. In the Mohawk country, our people have re-occupied lands for the purpose of revitalizing our culture and economy. This settlement, known as Ganienkeh, has been successfully held for more than three years. The
If we are to continue to survive, we need the help of the international community. We need external presence to bring some sort of stability to the situation of our people. We have learned, too frequently, that what is good law today can rapidly be changed into bad law. Both
We are nations by every definition of the term. We have been unable to obtain any semblance of justice in the court systems of the
Lastly, we require economic assistance in the forms of economic aid and technical assistance. We are aware that there exist various international figures who have technical expertise and who are conscious of the development in the context of specific cultures. Our case is appropriate to the deliberations of the United Nations Decolonization Committee. We are engaged in a struggle to decolonize our lands and our lives, but we cannot accomplish this goal alone and unaided.
For centuries we have known that each individual's action creates conditions and situations that affect the world. For centuries we have been careful to avoid any action unless it carried a long-range prospect of promoting harmony and peace in the world. In that context, with our brothers and sisters of the
Footnotes
1.
Eric R. Wolf Peasants, Foundations of Modern Anthropology Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966), p. 11; see Belshaw, Cyril S., Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets, Modernization of Traditional Societies Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965), pp. 53-54.
2.
Kroeber, A.L. Anthropology, Rev. Ed. (New York, 1948), p. 284; see Redfield, Margaret Park, ed. Human Nature and the Study of Society: The Papers of Robert Redfield (Chicago, 1962-3) I, p. 287.
3.
Robert Redfield Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization (
4.
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of
5.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agricultural Origins and Dispersals: The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs, Carl O. Sauer, MIT Press, 1969.
Civilization in the West, From the Old Stone Age To the Age of Louis XIV, Crane Brinton, Prentiss Hall, 1973.
Medieval Technology and Social Change, Lynn White, Jr.,
Origin of the Aryans, Isaac Taylor, Gordon Press, 1976.
Seed to Civilization: the Story of Man's Food, Charles B. Heiser, Jr., W.H. Freeman, 1973.
Stone Age Economics, Marshall Sahlins, Aldine Press, 1972.
Technology in the Ancient World, Henry Hodges, Knopf, 1970.
This comprises pages 65-111 of the book, basic call to consciousness, edited by Akwesasne Notes, published by Book Publishing Company,
1 comment:
Hi...great blog! I'm wondering if you might have any idea is there is a Spanish translation of "A Basic Call to Consciousness." I'm searching around for one, but not sure if it exists...thanks!
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