THE MESSAGE OF KAYANEREKOWA

A Continuation of the Great Law of Peace

THE EQUALITY OF THE NATIONS

Brother

It is normal for us to wish to preserve our ancient customs and to walk in the paths of our forefathers… We consider each nation alike respectable and although we are the fore holders and appointed to speak for the whole, yet we do not consider ourselves any better than the rest in point of power and respectability.

(National Archives of Canada, Portfolio of Upper Canada, 1826. 214; Reply of Great Britain, Cayuga Arbitration, Vol. II)

The fact that each nation retains its internal integrity, rights and government means that the laws of the Confederacy must make room for these rights. For example, in the area of citizenship, a person adopted by one nation is recognized as a citizen by the Haudenosaunee as a whole (the division of powers between Canadian provinces and the federal government is the essence of the Canadian constitution, beginning with the Act of 1867---while the powers are divided differently, because Canada and the Haudenosaunee concern themselves about different things in different ways, the challenges of a dynamic confederation are similar).

THE CIRCLE WAMPUM

The Chiefs are said to have linked their arms together so strongly that even if the Tree falls it will not break the union they have created with the Peace and the Law. This same expression finds itself repeated in later centuries in describing the way the Haudenosaunee and the British have linked their arms in the Covenant Chain.

The Circle Wampum of the Haudenosaunee symbolizes the fifty members of the Confederacy’s Grand Council. The fifty strings of wampum are of equal length, indicating the equality of the Chiefs—the single longer string indicated the special responsibility of one of the Onondaga royaner as firekeeper.

The two strings of white wampum which form the outer circumferences of the Circle are symbols of the Great Law and the Great Peace. They are intertwined, since the one cannot be achieved or maintained without the other.

The wampum belt that shows five men standing with their elbows contains the symbol of the Circle. The “elbows crooked” mean that if any person seeks to leave the protestion of the Law, he may do so, but if he (or she) holds a title, that name catches on the “elbows” like a deer’s horns catch in the brush and fall off, so that the name remains within the Circle, to be given to someone else. The individual is free to leave (and return)-but the continuity of the title remains within the Circle, for it belongs to the people, and not to the individual.

The same messages of peace and power that accompanied the making of the law, and the same processes, moved from the personal to the political and ceremonial level, and pervade the Confederacy’s ways and processes in its dealings with all other nations.

THE EVER GROWING TREE

This wampum of the Great Law is the symbol of the Tree of Peace. It had no beginning or end to it: it is intended to grow forever. In its continuity and its ability to grow and expand, it reminds us of the White Roots of the Tree of Peace, and of the law itself.

The peacemaker also created a way of making decisions in Council. The process involved all the Five Nations coming to one mind, using the two sides of the Council Fire as the means of moving an idea back and forth until everyone was comfortable with it. The process involved gentle persuasion rather than confrontation, consensus rather than votes, deliberate thought rather than rash action.

Continued next week