GIVING THANKS

Before opening any council, within the Confederacy or with other nations, the Haudenosaunee give thanks. Many people, alone and in families, also begin and end each day in this way. They say: This is what has been given to us.

Thanksgiving comes before all else: it is a way of the Haudenosaunee that is fundamental to seeing and understanding the world. In the Kayanerekowa, the Great Law of Peace, the manner of giving thanks is stated:

...the Onondaga Lords shall open it by expressing their gratitude to their cousin Lords and greeting them, and they shall make an address and offer thanks to the earth where men dwell, to the streams of water, the pools, the springs and the lakes, to the maize and the fruits, to the medicinal herbs and trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and give their pelts for clothing, to the great winds and lesser winds, to the Thunderers, to the Sun, the mighty warrior, to the moon, to the messengers from the Creator who reveal his wishes and to the Great Creator who dwells in the heavens above, who gives all things useful to men, and who is the source and ruler of health and life.

[Gawasowane (Parker), Dayodekane (Newhouse), p. 32]

The Thanksgiving address, Ohenton karihwateh’kwen (“the words that come before all others”) has a deliberate structure. It moves outward and upward from the earth and the plants and animals of the earth to the village and the things that grow in the clearing, into the forest and then into the heavens.

Ohenton karihwateh’kwen provides both a three-dimensional structure to the world and a fourth order: the world has a spiritual structure.

We resign nothing of intellect or learning in taking seriously the voices and spirits of places, the spiritual dimensions of a people’s history. On the contrary, to dismiss the dictates of the gods and spirits of places as either transparent rationalizations for aggression or childish credulities is to recommit old mistakes—both of conquest and of historiography.

[Beyond Geography, Frederick Turner, p. 39]

It is in that spiritual dimension of the known world, as well as in its physical structure, that the Thanksgiving locates the spirits and messengers from and workers for the Creator. While places have their spirits, and the world as a whole can be viewed as forming a single sacred creation, the beings with the greatest powers are those which generally are the most distant from the everyday surroundings of the people. It is no accident that Hadu’wi lives at the world’s rim, nor that the Creator dwells beyond the heavens.

Ohenton karihwateh’kwen fulfills several purposes.

It reminds each person present that human beings are a small part of a much larger natural world. The structure of Ohenton karihwateh’kwen is to address and return thanks to each part of the natural world separately. After each part, the speaker states that “we who are gathered here have put our minds together for this purpose”, and the assembled people indicate their agreement.

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.

[Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson, Ballantine, New York 1972]

Ohenton karihwateh’kwen reminds those gathered in council that they have duties not only to the law and the people, but also to the entire natural world; that as each part of that world continues to fulfill its responsibilities, so we as humans have our own duties to fulfill to maintain the world as it should be.

When the Creator gave his Great Law and planted the Tree of Peace, Ht uprooted it, and He threw under it all the weapons of war. He said: You are now a nation of peace; and I will give to you oyankgwo-oohway, thi sacred tobacco; and that will be your strength. That wiU be what you depend on, the spiritual power of prayer, a belief: the belief of your people. And if you have one mind, and you consider this again, it is the power that you have. So it happens when you burn the tobacco and use the sacred cornmeal that all of the animals stop and they listen: they turn and thev listen to these words.

...We went to Geneva—the Six Nations, and the great Lakota Nation—as representatives of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. We went to Geneva, and we spoke in the forum of the United Nations. For a short time we stood equal among the people and the nations of the world. And what was the message that we gave ? There is a hue and cry for human rights—human rights, they said, for all people. And the indigenous people said: What of the rights of the natural world? Where is the seat for the buffalo or the eagle? Who is representing them here in this forum? Who is speaking for the waters of the earth? Who is speaking for the trees or the forests? Who is speaking for the fish—for the whales—for the beavers—for our children? We said: Given this opportunity to speak in this international forum, then it is our duty to say that we must stand for these people, and the natural world and its rights, and also for the generations to come.

Continued next week