Basic Call to Consciousness

Continued from last week.

The Obvious Fact of Our Continuing Existence

Legal History of the Haudenosaunee

Since the beginning of human time, the Haudenosaunee 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 Haudenosaunee are a distinct people, with our own laws and customs, territories, political organization and economy. In short, the Haudenosaunee, 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 Haudenosaunee council is also one of the most ancient continuously functioning governments anywhere on the 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 Haudenosaunee is governed by a constitution known among Europeans as the Constitution of the Six Nations and to the Haudenosaunee 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 right 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 Haudenosaunee.

The philosophies of the Socialist World, too, are to some extent traceable to European contact with the Haudenosaunee. Lewis Henry Morgan noted the economic structure of the Haudenosaunee, 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 Haudenosaunee, 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 Haudenosaunee began long before European contact with Native people. It began, at least, with the rise of a system call feudalism in Europe, for the only law which the colonizing countries of Europe ever recognized was feudal law, a fact which they have obscured from their own people as well as from Native people for many centuries. That fact, however, remains the essential reality of the legal relationships which exist between Native peoples and Indo-European societies.

Continued next week.