Oren Lyons

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: Governing Our Way to a Brighter Future

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Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
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Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons shares his perspective on why governance matters to the sovereignty and long-term prosperity of Indigenous peoples, and stresses the importance of adhering to the long-taught instructions that have ensured the survival of those peoples to this day.

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Lyons, Oren. "Governing Our Way to A Brighter Future." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 7, 2002. Presentation.

Oren Lyons:

"[Iroquois language]. That's our greeting for, general greeting across Six Nations country and the Haudenosaunee, people call us Iroquois. It means ‘thank you for being well' and it's important. '[Iroquois language]' means 'peace' and it's the same word for health. [Iroquois language]. ‘Health and peace,' that's our greeting. Thank you for being healthy. Thank you for the peace. We'll come back to that because that's instructive. Time is relentless and so is Andrew Lee. He put together a program, you know, when you look at it and say, ‘Well, how are we going to get through all this?' But here we are. It's Saturday afternoon and we have gone through all of the points that were put out in the program and very well as a matter of fact. It's been very enlightening and I really enjoyed these sessions because I learned so much, there's just so much that I guess we all had the same feeling. 'Boy, I wish everybody was here from my nation so they could have heard this.' So what that means is that somehow we have to transfer this information that we have back to our peoples, back to our nations, and to give them some hope and direction because we are in perilous times, there is no doubt.

Now I thought that we should begin and I should take the time and I will take the time to go through our greeting, our [Iroquois language] we say, the opening or the words before all words. Before we open any session in any meeting, big or small, we start with these words and so I thought you should hear them because as my grandmother said last night as she was talking, my aunt, and she said, ‘There are words, there are directions,' that she doesn't hear much anymore, but they are there and I know all our nations have them and when Regis [Pecos] was talking and he was speaking, when Peterson Zah was speaking his language, he was saying these very words and even though we didn't understand the language, we understood that these were the words and they are the same. They're the same for all our peoples and we're so fortunate that any of our elders can stand and speak for all of us. That's how common we are. Language of course is the soul of a nation and that's what's been put forward. And if you don't have a use for a language you lose it or if somebody transfers your uses to another language then that's what you use. Indian nations -- we didn't lose our language, it was taken from us, it was beaten from us, it was forced from us. We didn't lose it. So we have to fight back for it. We need it. There's a lot of information and instruction in our languages. When we lose these languages, all that instruction is gone. Ceremonies that we run will be gone. So we have to fight for it. Each generation has to pick up that fight and that's where we're at right now.

It's interesting to me, one more statement on the language, is that we're getting a lot of political play these days for the code talkers. Here in Washington people are talking about the code talkers, but the irony I think is missed by most people but probably not by our people. You know, those code talkers -- and there were many -- there were...I know there were the Ojibwes, I know that there were many other languages used but those languages, those Navajo languages that was used this war, the second World War saved thousands and thousands of American lives, thousands, and these were the very languages that they were beating out of us. And what if they were successful? How many lives would America have lost? Isn't that ironic that the very thing that they were taking from us saved...maybe saved the war. Who knows? It was mentioned here that we should forgive and we have and it's amazing but we don't forget. As you know, Indians never forget anything...ever! But we have forgiven and there's an amazing amount of good will in Indian Country to our brothers. We espouse common cause very easily. It's amazing, but I think that's a reflection of our nations, of our cultures cause that's just the way we are.

And anyway, we always start these meetings with the thanksgiving acknowledge we call it. We say first...our first acknowledgement is to the people. So all of the people who are here, all of the people who are not here, those who are sick, those who could not make it, we acknowledge all the people of the world, whoever they are, wherever they are, and we give a big thanksgiving.

And then we acknowledge the earth itself. [Iroquois language] we say, 'Our Mother.' We acknowledge the earth and all the life that she brings and all the generations of faces looking up from that earth...coming...coming...coming. We acknowledge the earth and we give a big thanksgiving for the earth, Our Mother.

And then we acknowledge all the grass and all the bushes and all the medicine that grow on this earth and we think about that. We're grateful and we're thankful and we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving for all of the grasses and medicines and bushes on the earth.

And then we move to the trees and we think of the leader of the trees, the maple. And we think of all the trees in the world and their duties and we give a thanksgiving, because they continue their duties and it supports us and we're grateful. So we put our minds together as one and give a big thanksgiving for all the trees of the world.

And then we move to all the animals that run in the woods and run in the fields and that live in the rocks and we think about them and we give a thanksgiving for all of these animals for they carry out their duties and their duties provide for us, support us. We think about them and we give a thanksgiving for all the animals of the world, big and small.

And then we move to the waters and we think about the waters, all these waters, the springs, the streams, the rivers, the lakes, the oceans, our life and what it does for us. The water that we cook our foods, we wash ourselves, we cook our medicines; without the water there would be no life. And so we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for all the waters of the earth.

And then we think about all the fishes and the life that's in the waters and how great they are and how they sustain us. And we think about that and we think about the leader, the trout, and we say, ‘The river runs through his mouth' and we say, ‘This is wonderful.' We give a big thanksgiving for all the fishes of the sea and all the life within it. So we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving. So be it, our way.

And then we move to the birds, those that fly. These are very special. These birds do many, many, many duties. And the chief, the leader, the eagle is the one that looks out for all. And we think of even the smallest, the tiniest, the hummingbird and the songs that they give us that can raise our spirits when we don't feel good. They wake us in the morning, they remind us every day this is another day. They are messengers and we give thanks for all the birds of the world.

And then we move to our grandfathers, the four winds, the ones that bring the seasons. And we think about them, these powerful forces so great in strength that we do not want to see their ultimate strength but we may as we were warned. But still, we love these grandfathers, these winds of the four directions that plant the life on this earth and bring the seasons. And we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving to the great winds from the four directions of the earth.

And then we think of our grandfathers with thundering voices that bring the rain and when we hear them in the spring we're grateful and we run and we give thanks, special thanks because it means we are going to have rain for another season when they speak, these grandfathers with thundering voices. And we give thanks for them because they water our people, they water the trees, they water the earth and they replenish all the fresh water. So we put them in our minds and we give a thanksgiving.

And then we move to our grandmother the moon and she looks after the female, she works with the female. She sets the duties for the seasons. She raises and lowers the great seas of the earth, very powerful. We call her the night sun. She shows our way at night. And we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for our grandmother the moon.

And then we think of our eldest brother the sun, without whom we wouldn't have light today as we can look outside and we can see he is doing his duty and we are served by that and we are fortunate. He works with the earth to bring life, together they produce life, this eldest brother, a mighty thanksgiving. Each day we are fortunate. Someone once said here, ‘Tomorrow never comes' and that may well be. So today is here. So we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for our eldest brother the sun.

And then we move to the stars, those beautiful stars. They hold a great deal of knowledge and our people used to know the knowledge. But we now say we don't know much anymore. But yet they still guide us at night, yet they still lead us and they lift our hearts with their beauty and they bring the dew in the morning and work with water. And so we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving to the stars in the heavens.

And then we move to the spiritual beings and these spiritual beings who look out for us every day, these spiritual beings whose duty it is to work with this earth and help us, support us. They're the ones that catch you just before you fall; they're with us all the time. And they're with us if you want to work with them and if you want to ask them, they're there, these spiritual beings, and we don't know who they are and they work in many ways. And so we put our minds together in a big thanksgiving for these spiritual beings that work for the Creator.

And in our lands we give thanks for [Iroquois language], this man who was given a message to us 200 years ago that helped our nation survive, that gave us the directions that we needed, spiritual message. And so we put our minds together and we give a thanksgiving for [Iroquois language].

And then we come to the Creator, [Iroquois language], giver of all life; this might force who sustains us, looks after us, provides for us. Finally, with all our minds and thinking of all the things that we can think of that he has given us. We put our minds together in a mighty, mighty thanksgiving and we give a thanksgiving for [Iroquois language], the Creator.

So then we say we have now finished our first [Iroquois language], which is the words before all words and now we have provided a context as to who we are and what our duties are and we go about our business. And so with that I thought I could share that with that with you. [Iroquois language] So now we'll begin the business.

They told us, make your prayers, get up and make your prayers and then go to work, 'cause nothing happens without work. So the context then, who are we? In this great earth that we heard about, where is the human being and what is our responsibility because we have intellect, because we have hands, because we can build things and especially because we have the foreknowledge of death? We know that we are going on. Animals know when they are going, they prepare. If you watch your dog, in the morning when he goes out and he's making a bed and he disappears for a day and then two days then three days and five days and he doesn't come back because he knows it's his time. We used to know that too. We've lost a lot of things. Animals know, but they don't know beforehand. We know beforehand, so that's our responsibility. That means we have to look up for life and that's our responsibility and that's where leadership comes, that's where governance comes and that's where the relevance of our peoples today in today's context is very important because of these great knowledges that our nations have. We don't want to lose them. Everybody will suffer by that loss.

So now we want to talk about identity. You heard about it. What is our identity? Our identity is our land. That's our identity, it's our land, it's our water, it's where we live, it's where we've lived for thousands of years and who knows how long. I get such a big kick out of anthropologists and archaeologists and historians who say, ‘Well, you Indians have only been here 10,000 years yourself,' immigrants talking to us. We've been here a lot longer than 10,000 years and we know that. And I told them that. I said, ‘I'll just simply wait because eventually your science will turn it up.' They get very angry. But identity, yes, that's us, that's our land.

My uncle took the time when I was just graduated from college, took the time, realizing that I was head strong, kind of full of myself and feeling pretty hot...pretty hot stuff here. He said, ‘Hey, let's go fishing.' I said, ‘Good idea,' because I knew he knew where the fish were. We went in a boat, we got out in a boat and we were over by where the bass were and sitting there quietly, got our lines in and he said, ‘Well, I see you're just graduated from the university.' And I knew right then I was in trouble. I was in a boat, I couldn't go anywhere and he was the one that had the motor on the other hand. But it was interesting because he said, ‘Well, you must know who you are then. You know a lot of things.' ‘Yeah, I learned a lot of things.' ‘Well, you must know who you are.' ‘Yeah, I know who I am.' So I gave him my Indian name, I gave him my clan, gave him the nation and every time I would add something then he'd say, ‘And that's it, huh?' After a long struggle I finally had to be quiet for awhile and then he says, ‘You need some help?' I said, ‘Yeah.' ‘Good,' he says, ‘good.' He said, ‘Look at that tree up here,' and he pointed to a cliff and there was a beautiful tree not very old, a spruce it looked like, beautiful. He said, ‘You're the same as that tree.' He says, ‘Your roots are in the earth, that's your Mother.' He says, ‘You're the same as that tree.' He says, ‘You're one in the same, you're a little ant, your mother's the earth.' He said, ‘That's who you are.' That was the biggest lesson. I never forgot it and that's what we have to remember.

So identity, the land, that's what I mean, you're part of the earth. It's us and it's our responsibility. So how do you maintain this responsibility? Well, we were instructed to one, give thanks, which we did and two to enjoy life. We're instructed to enjoy...you're supposed to enjoy life. You're not supposed to be walking around like them pilgrims we saw come over, they were so grim. They only wore black clothes and worked seven, no six days. They worked six days. Our people thought they were kind of crazy. They took their little children in the middle of the winter and they put them in the water and they were just born and some of them died. And our people said, ‘What are you doing?' And they said, ‘We're saving them.' We never really figured that out yet. ‘We're saving them.' But anyway, they were pretty grim, but our people are not. They like bright clothes. Look at my shirt, nice. One time when we were talking with these...white, they're my brothers, they're Dutch...we were making an agreement, a treaty called the Two Row. After all was said and done, they said, ‘Well, how will we know one another?' And we said, ‘You will know us by the way we dress.' Now, think about that. If you have a hard time, they'll see a lot of us these days, won't they, by the way we dress. What does it mean ‘by the way we dress?' That means your culture, that means who you are. So wear something, carry something, show who you are.

Now, my clan is the wolf and we had a lot of discussion here about the wolf and I'm glad my young nephew Aaron brought that up. He talked about the wolf. A good question, ‘Who is the wolf?' Well, the clan, that's me, I'm the wolf. I'm proud of it. And people ask me, they say, ‘Well, what's your sign?' I say, ‘The wolf.' And they get confused, but the signs that they talk about come from another land and another idea and another way. We have our identities, we know who we are, and I'm so glad you spoke about your clans, who you are because that is really important, that's our identity. And who is the wolf then, who is the wolf? Really, even among our people, an enigma. We know powerful, we know spiritual, and we know our white brother looks at the wolf the same way he looks at us. He likes us because we're proud, he likes us because we're fierce, he likes because we fight hard. So he takes his picture and puts it on his uniform and says he is a warrior or he is an Indian because we're fierce and we fight, but that's not who we are and that's not who the wolf is. Anyone will fight when you're coming in your front door. The mouse will fight you if you corner them. You know you've got to be careful, he'll bite you. You have to respect. And so who is the wolf, then?

We were having a ceremony in the longhouse and it was a great feather dance, the Creator's dance, and we had a singer coming from [Iroquois language], Mohawk, and he was singing and I was listening. I couldn't understand exactly what...so I went to my grandmother and I said, ‘He's talking about? The wolf?' She said, ‘Yes.' She said, ‘That's an old song. I haven't heard that in a long time'. And I said, ‘What is he saying?' And she said, ‘In this road to the path to the Creator, this beautiful path that we all go on and we're walking,' she says, ‘we're walking and on the sides of the road are the strawberries, the leader of the fruit, strawberries all the way out.' 'And we're walking,' that's what he saying in his song, his preamble before we begin the dance. And then he said, 'To my side my grandfather the wolf, on his own path, side by side we're walking, we're walking through the Creator's land.' And that gave us some indication of who our brother the wolf is because I think, yes, I think he represents the natural world and I think how it goes with the wolf goes with us. We're the same and we're also the same with all our brothers. And so how it goes with us will go with them, although they don't know yet, don't understand yet. So somehow we have to educate and explain to them that we need all of us to survive, we can't lose one. We can't lose great leaders like the wolf or the bear; again, spiritual, again, powerful medicine, we know that.

We say in Onondaga, Haudenosaunee, that the leader of all the animals is the deer. Now with the deer with his horns we come around and in between these horns like radar and he can see far beyond his eyes here. He's all over the world, as the wolf is all over the world, as the eagle is all over the world the leader, they're all over. That's how you can tell they're leaders, they're everywhere. Not all animals are everywhere, but these are leaders. And so, yes, who is the wolf? I think the wolf represents humanity, life as we know it. We lose that, we lose everything, us included, and it will be miserable and slow. You're not just going to fold over and die, you're just going to die slowly, one generation after the other. It's going to take generations suffering. We don't want that. So how do we stop that? By keeping our ceremonies, by keeping our dances, by giving our thanksgivings. That's what he said. ‘As long as you give thanks, life will go on.' Simple instruction. Are we too busy, are we too busy to take the time to give thanks? So those are questions that we have to answer ourselves in today's time when time is relentless. It is relentless because we've entered into the same time frame as the rest of the world so we feel the same thing. There are some people who still operate on the time of the earth and they're quite happy, they're quite content. They just go along with the day. Kind of a nice way to live, but it's not the way things are today.

And so the identity: land. Then with the land is the jurisdiction. And jurisdiction is the ultimate authority over that land and if you don't have jurisdiction on your land, then you don't have the land. You're just there until somebody wants to move you and they will. Our people have a great history of being moved. You know about it. We know where we live, we know where we come from and still remember. We had great leaders who gave their lives for our people, great leaders who would look at us today and wonder, wonder about us. Do we have the strength? Do we have the conviction? Do we have the will to survive as our peoples, as who we are? We've talked about political will. Well, that's the bottom line, political will. If you don't have the political will to survive, you won't. You have to fight and you have to fight on all levels and yet in all of this is a common cause and the common cause is survival. There was an old Indian leader who came from the west, I don't know what exactly his name was but he said, ‘There is going to come a time when people will cease to live and begin to survive.' What did he mean by that? He's talking about quality of life and that's the values we talk about. What is the quality of life? Is the quality of life a BMW? Is that your quality of life? Or is it your grandchildren singing Indian songs? Is that a quality of life? It's up to us to choose that. Every generation has to look out for itself. You can't live your children's lives. You have to give them enough instruction to survive. That's our responsibility, instruction. Each generation will have its leaders, each generation will have its heroes and each generation will have those people whom nations will despise. All of us are spiritual beings and every day when we get up we try to keep the spiritual center and be a good person. We don't want to be too good over here because then you just follow this way and of course you get too bad then you follow this way. So every day we have to make choices of who we're going to be today. And any one of us on any given day can be the worst enemy of our people ever...every day. These are decisions every day. So we need a lot of instruction. We need ways to keep in a good way. So we said with ceremonies. Now we'll move on. We'll move on.

In the borders of nations, you have three specific borders in the area of sovereignty. You have a geographic border. You can see a map and you can draw yourself a couple borders here. You have a political border. That border can look fuzzy. And then you have an economic border. Now you're really getting fuzzy. If you don't watch all three borders, you lose your sovereignty. Money, necessary, currency, around the world. At the U.N. [United Nations] or in Europe now we have the Euro. They now have a common currency. They've decided that they're going to work together and become like the United States. It seems to be working. Now we have to live every day in this society and societies, they're all different. But we have to keep our own identity and so think about that, every day think about your geographic border, think about your political border, and think about your economic border and try to keep them clear because the clearer you keep them, the stronger you are, the more sovereign. And you're at risk all the time.

So we heard about women. Somebody said women are important. Well, I guess so. When they talk about...I'm traveling around the world, which I do a lot and they're, ‘Oh, you're a chief'. ‘Well, yeah, one of the leaders'. The first question they ask, ‘Can a woman be a chief?' I said, ‘No'. I said, ‘No more than I could be a clan mother'. But the question comes from Western society. The question comes from what they call the battle of the sexes, the conflict that Western society has between men and women and the battle that women have gone through to even be recognized as equal and not quite yet. But we knew long ago, our people knew long ago that women were the center of our nation. We're partners. We've always been partners, full and equal, with duties of the woman and duties of the man. Not difficult. No one better than the other but working for the good of the family and working for the good of the nation. Not a problem, this idea of equality. It's old to our people, but our brothers in Western society is just beginning and having a hard time with it. So we should not be carried away by their discussion. We should retain and understand our own and we all remember and know that women are sacred. They carry life. We can't do it. And I think that's why the white man fears them. But I don't know.

Now, what is the danger that we face today? The dangers that we face today is this idea of government and governance, we were talking about it and I hear a lot about it. And people that have played sports, lacrosse or basketball or hockey, and these sports in particular, transition is a big factor. And if you can lay your attack on a transition, you catch your opposition in a vulnerable position and you can score. The transition game, it's getting to be a common talk. We knew about this transition game long ago. So changing, the nation is changing, you're in transition, you're in this contest and if you're not aware, you're vulnerable. So if you're changing from a traditional government to an elected government or have changed, you're still in transition. You're vulnerable because it's not your rules that you're playing by. Somebody else set these rules. So not only have you played a game, you've got to know the rules and know them good enough so you don't get caught in transition. And what are you transitioning to? From Indian to what? Envision and looking forward to who? But what I hear that gives me such great hope, strength, enthusiasm is every single one of the projects and schools people are talking about hanging onto the ways and borders. And that's where we're at.

The variety of realities that exist are the varieties of realities that are across this nation. There's a full spectrum. So we have to watch and as we move into the international field and we have people probably on their way back or assessing the last meeting at the U.N. in Switzerland and very important that Chief Justice [Robert] Yazzie was there and we had a discussion the other day. He was explaining what was going on in Geneva as they discussed your and my fate in an international forum. Were you there? Do you know about it? Eventually you'll hear about it. There's coalitions of states out there, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, coalescing against Indigenous people. We had a statement here from the federal government said, ‘Self-determination is essential...essential...to our good governance.' And yet our number one opponent at the U.N. is the United States against self-determination. Did you know that? You know how long we've been fighting them on that simple term? Well, it's not quite so simple, is it? Self-determination: the right to determine for yourself who you are. It carries great political impact and since 1994, when we put the draft declaration for the Rights of Indigenous people to the Human Rights Division in ECOSOC [U.N. Economic and Social Council] at the U.N., out of 45 articles they have only since 1994 agreed with two. Forty three of the articles of self-determination and human rights they have not agreed to. That's the kind of fight going on over there. The Haudenosaunee led that delegation to Geneva in 1977 and I was one of the leaders there and the people responsible. One hundred forty four people in that particular event, North, Central and South America. Indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere, we said, ‘That's who we are.' And the last meeting they had there was over 1,000-1,100 delegates, Indigenous people.

They moved to establish a permanent forum for Indigenous issues in ECOSOC. We are now developing the rules and regulations for governing that. That's going on and the ECOSOC will be in May at the U.N. in New York. It's going to reflect all the peoples of the world. But from the time that we stood outside the U.N. in 1973 petitioning to speak to them on behalf of the Lakota Nation, who was struggling at Wounded Knee, they wouldn't let us across the street. Phalanx is the police. We couldn't cross the street to the U.N. In 1992 I gave the first address to the United States body at the U.N. in their forum from their roster. And if you didn't' have the longevity of knowing the fight in between those years you would have said, ‘We haven't moved a step,' but obviously we have. So you have to have a perspective. You've got to know about these things. The same slam you're fighting at home, these fights are going on over there. You've got to support the people that are there. It's hard, it's expensive, it's really excruciatingly slow. We just last year, from the Clinton Administration, got an agreement that we were peoples, in brackets yet, but still. They didn't even agree to that before.

So I want to end this little discussion with some news from my country. Good news, I think. It makes me feel good. On the 14th of April we are going to raise the next Tadodaho, the next leader of the Haudenosaunee for the Six Nations, we're called the Iroquois. This title is 1,000 years old and although I feel apprehension for this man that's going to take this position because it's such a difficult position, yet, I have a lot of real hope. He's a good man. He was one of our very best lacrosse players. He was one of the very best defensemen we ever had. And now he's going to take this position. His name is Sid Hill. About 46, pretty young for the position but he is working hard and I think he's going to do it. So in the process and procedure of governance that we do and how we raise our leaders, we're going to raise this leader and there isn't going to be any Bureau of Indian Affairs there and there isn't going to be any Department of Interior and we're not asking anybody for anything. We are just doing what we should be doing, which is to raise our leaders in our way and the process is 1,000 years old. It's hard, it's tough to maintain that in these times but we have. And I never realized until I started traveling how important that was. And I don't think a lot of our people, our own people, realize how fortunate they are to still have chiefs because all of our nations know about chiefs. They revere these people, very selfless leaders. We still have them. And I've been on that council for a long time now, since 1967, and I can say one thing, that there is no budget for the chiefs. We don't get paid. I think that might be a good idea for governance. You will certainly change the people who want to be in charge. No, nobody wants to be the chief where I come from. It's too much work, it takes you away from the family and I heard it the other day, when you're working for the [Iroquois Language] you can even lose your family and it's happened, I've seen it. It's hard but it's important. It's what you call leadership in governance. What is the purpose of leadership, but to defend and promote the welfare of your nation and your people and to really be concerned for that seventh generation, the long vision?

So we have to raise our leaders and I thought Lance [Morgan] had a good idea. I said, ‘He's really put his finger on the problem that I see with elective systems which is that two- to four-year fight that goes on which can be really fierce in Indian Country, disruptive and no continuity.' And I thought his idea was a good idea. Maybe we should look at that because you want continuity. And it's nothing to it except to change it. You know you can do that if you just have the political will. That's all it takes. So having been taken far out and finding our way back, we have to take advantage of all of these things. And I tell you that I could take all the events...I can take it home to our people and say, ‘We can learn from every one of these projects. They're positive, they show spirit, they show the will of our people.' And I congratulate you. We've just got to keep it up and somehow we have to share and we have to be better coordinated to work with each other and support each other wherever we are. And so we have to give up some of our people we love to hate, long-time battles. We have to really set them aside now and work together and be more understanding and be more tolerant with the problems of all of our brothers wherever they are, the nations and their struggles.

They're asking...the world is asking for the wisdom of the elders of the traditional Indigenous people, all over the world. I know because they call me. And I'm just the runner. I'm just a runner. All I do is talk about what the nation knows and I'm careful about that. I'm learning all the time. I know who the leaders are and I know what it takes to be. So we have to support them. And in our own way now...by being at this meeting we're all runners. We now have to go back and take the message home and share it and be concerned. It is the future. It is our people. And it's not only our people; it's the rest of life. I don't think that it's too late but we are, the human race, approaching a point of no return. We are approaching this point of no return. The ice is melting in the north as we speak. Global warming is here, we're in transition and the work that we're going to be doing today we are not going to be doing for ourselves, we are going to be doing for the next two or three generations. That's who's going to...who will gain by our work. Not us. We have to understand that we're going to have to take what's coming and not be weak and raise our leaders to meet these problems and they're going to be big. And if you think two towers going down in New York was a problem, wait. You're going to see some real problems coming. That's when we have to be strong and that's when we have to rely on the wisdom of our nations and remember them and hold them and keep the language. And with that I'm going to end my discussion. I'm going to, I think, urge you as we say [Iroquois language] -- try hard, do your best. [Iroquois language]"

Oren Lyons: Looking Toward the Seventh Generation

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University of Arizona
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Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons discusses the increasingly urgent issues of global warming and climate change and points to Indigenous peoples, their core values, and their reciprocal relationships to the natural world as sources of instruction for human beings to heed in order to combat those issues.

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Lyons, Oren. "Looking Toward the Seventh Generation." American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 17, 2008. Presentation.

“A lot of thank you’s today and I especially want to thank my elders here who gave a blessing and reminded me as well as everybody else that we are connected to the earth very closely and we should be thankful for everything that we do. And that was our instructions: give thanks, be grateful. I want to thank the American Studies in…Indian Studies in Arizona for bringing me here, and Moran for taking the time, and Carol for trucking me about, and to David for taking care of me. And everybody’s been so great to me so I really appreciate it here. Obviously going to have to come back and spend more time. Right now, I’m just on the move, but the reason why is important. It’s my mission to bring news to you, maybe not good news, but news that you should know about and things that are going on in the world.

I come from Onondaga, upstate New York. I come from the Six Nations. English call us 'Six Nations,' French call us 'Iroquois,' and we ourselves are the 'Haudenosaunee.' Six Nations: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, the Senecas and the Tuscarora. We’re an old alliance, we’re a confederation based on peace and we were gathered together some thousand years ago to cease fighting amongst ourselves and to become productive in creating and working with one another bringing peace. There was a spiritual being, messenger we called The Peacemaker. He has a name and the only time we ever use that name is when we raise leaders and we raise the [Native language], what you call 'chiefs,' then you’ll hear his name, but otherwise than that we call him The Peacemaker. And he came to five warring nations at that time and I won’t go through the epic story of his life and how he arrived at the Mohawks and how he went from one Nation to the other changing these fighting men to peace. So finally gathered on the shores of Onondaga Lake, where 50 men who formerly were enemies of one another and he laid down for us the whole constitution based on peace, the principle of peace and health, of equity, justice for the people and of unity, the power of the good minds and the power of the collective working together --one mind, one body, one heart, one spirit. And we’ve prospered under that instruction over these many years.

And today I represent in the council at Onondaga the Turtle Clan. I myself am a Wolf. I’ve been borrowed from the Wolfs to the Turtle -- temporarily, they said -- that was 41 years ago. You know how Indians are. So I’ve been there for a long time and the Onondaga Nation is the central fire of the Confederacy and we still maintain our structure of raising leaders and removing leaders. We’re probably the last of the traditional governments still in charge of land. And on our nation at Onondaga, we have no Bureau of Indian Affairs; we’re independent. I just traveled from Sweden to here. I traveled on a passport issued at Onondaga and we’ve been using that passport for now since 1977. It’s an instruction in maintaining your identity, who you are, the importance of being who you are and knowing who you are, instructing your children as to who you are. And most of that comes from songs like Mr. Lopez was singing -- that’s our instruction -- to the moon. We call that our grandmother. We have close relations with the earth. The earth’s our mother. You can’t get any closer than that. And from that point on, we’ve always been instructed by the Peacemaker on many things. When he gathered the people at Onondaga on the Onondaga Lake so many years ago and he instructed us how we would sit and what our clans would be and the authorities and the duties of the women and the men and the people and how this would continue and we’ve maintained that. Now in today’s times, we’re kind of alone in this traditional government, but traditions are everywhere. Every nation has kept their traditions, even though the BIA may be there and even though there may be government authorities, the traditions are still there, songs are still there, language is still there. And the information that’s in the language is what people are seeking today, some instruction.

And so I’ve been a runner for the Onondaga Nation and then the confederacy itself and at times for Indigenous people around the world. I was one of those people who were educated and they said, ‘Well, you can talk like they do. You get out there and you tell them.’ And so I get my instructions from the councils. I don’t have any great wealth of wisdom or so forth. I just understand what I’ve been instructed with and pass that on. Our leaders, our people, don’t like to get up in front of people and speak like that unless it’s our own people. Then they can really speak. So what is the nature of my discussion today, tonight? I had the good fortune to speak to your students here and some of your faculty this morning and it kind of outlined for me what I thought I should be talking about. First of all the introduction of ourselves: the Six Nations has about 18 communities, territories, both about half in Canada and half in the United States. We’re in three states. We’re in Wisconsin, New York and Oklahoma and two provinces in Canada, Quebec and Ontario. And then we have our people all over. Met an Onondaga girl tonight at dinner. She’s over here and her family was here and it was really nice to meet one of my young people here. So we travel far and wide and the message is always the same, it’s always about peace. But today some of the things that were told to us might be helpful here.

When The Peacemaker finally had laid out the whole system for us, he said, ‘Now I’m going to plant this great tree of peace, this great white pine.’ He said, ‘It’ll be the symbol for your Nation.’ He said, ‘It will have four white roots of truth for reaching the four cardinal directions of the earth.’ And he says, ‘Those people who have no place to go can follow the root back to its source and come under the protection of the great tree of peace.’ He said, among a lot of instructions to us as leaders, ‘Prepare yourself for the work that’s in front of you.’ He gave us a lot of instructions. Some of them I’ll tell you about. He said, ‘You as leaders will now have to have skin seven spans thick, seven spans like the bark of a tree,’ he said, ‘to withstand the abuse you’re going to take as leaders. And it won’t be from your enemies, it’s going to be from your family and your friends.’ He said, ‘And don’t wait for any thanks because that’ll be slow in coming.’ He said, ‘Move on.’ He said, ‘When people are angry and they speak in a loud voice, you have to listen to what they’re saying because they’re saying something.’ He said, ‘Try to hear the message through the anger.’ And he said, ‘You cannot respond in kind. Listen. Hear what they’re saying.’ And he said, ‘When you sit and you council for the welfare of the people, think not of yourself nor of your family nor even your generation.’ He said, ‘Make your decisions on behalf of the seventh generation coming. Those faces looking up from the earth,’ he said, ‘layer upon layer waiting their time.’ He said, ‘Defend them, protect them, they’re helpless, they’re in your hands. That’s your duty, your responsibility. You do that, you yourself will have peace.’

So he told us to look ahead. It was an instruction of responsibility of what we are supposed to do. So because I stand here as a representative of our Nation, still carrying the titles, seven generations ago someone was looking out for me or else I wouldn’t be here. So each one of us are any seventh generation and ahead of us are our responsibilities. And we have to take that seriously if they are to have a good life like ours. Our people have gone through a lot of pain and a lot of misery. We’ve suffered removals, genocide, yet we’re still here today. I heard the song and I knew we were still here and everywhere you go you’ll hear those songs. So today as a human being, as a species, I don’t think we have time for being Red or being Black or being White or being Yellow or Brown. I don’t think we have time for that anymore. We have to work together. We have to put aside all of that racism that’s been so destructive, continues. We just don’t have time for that. There’s changes coming and they’re close at hand and very soon we’re going to have to gather ourselves together around the world, and mobilize in our own defense, for our own survival, as a human species. We won’t have time for wars. We’ll need all the money that’s being spent on arms for defense of ourselves and protection of all of nature.

One time, long ago, sitting in the long house when we were having one of our ceremonies, Thanksgiving, we had a visitor who came from the north. He was a Mohawk and they asked him to sing and he was singing the [Native language], the Great Feather Dance. I couldn’t understand Mohawk, but I understood some of the words and then he spoke about my family, [Native word], the Wolf, and I said, ‘What is he saying?’ Because as they sang this Great Feather Dance, there’s a preamble where the beat is slow and they sang and they talk about a lot of things before the dance starts. This was all slow. In our Longhouse, the men are on one side of the house and the women on the other side of the house. So I went down to my grandmother who was sitting there and I said, ‘Gram, what is that man saying?’ And she says, ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it’s an old song.’ She said, ‘I haven’t heard that in a long time.’ I said, ‘He’s talking about the wolf.’ She said, ‘Yes, he is.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s talking about the road to the Creator and how beautiful it is and how we should all be walking in that direction and see the strawberries on the side of the road, the path that we’re taking.” The ‘Good Red Road’ they call it, the ‘Good Road.’ And she said, ‘What he’s saying is that on the side in a path like ours, walking beside us is a wolf, both going in the same direction.’ And I said, ‘What does that mean?’ She said, ‘Don’t know. It’s always been a mystery.’

I ponder that a lot of times and I think that he is the representative for the animal world, the spiritual way. And he’s my family, so I’m wondering what does that mean? And I think that he’s like a, well, our uncle maybe. And that whatever happens to the Wolf is going to happen to us. I think that’s what he is. He represents the earth itself and all the life on it. So when you look about and you see what’s going on today and how they’re treating the Wolf, it makes you think that we have to do better, we have to understand. Our nations, they do know about relationship and that’s what it is, it’s a relationship. Our Lakota friends and relatives they say, at the end of their prayer, ‘All our relations…all of our relations,’ and what they mean is literally all life. And when The Peacemaker was instructing the leaders so long ago, he said, ‘Now into your hands I am placing the responsibility for all life in this world.’ And he meant all the trees and all the fish and all the animals and all the medicine and all the water and everything there is, all life, and that’s a responsibility that has kept us here all these years. That’s how we’ve survived. He said, ‘Give thanks, be thankful for what you have.’ And so I see that our nations, the Indian nations, have created great ceremonies of thanksgiving, some that last for days, of thanksgiving and connection with your relatives. And I think that’s what people have to do now in the world. They have to recognize that they are not independent, that they’re just a part of life and you can’t remove all the animals or cut all the trees or catch all the fish without consequence. And so here we are, today’s times facing the consequence of our lost relationship and our lost responsibility.

When we raise leaders in the Longhouse, the old style, what they call the great condolence, it’s a long day. We go through all the laws, all the instructions, instructions to the leaders, instructions to the clan mothers, to the faith keepers, to the chiefs, and then instructions to the people. And it’s the longest instruction when it comes to the people. The people receive the most instruction because they have the most work to do. Leaders are there to help guide you, to be responsible, to initiate positions but the people are the ones that do the work, they’re the ones that have to be the nation. In our language, we don’t have a word for 'warrior.' That’s an English word and it comes from Europe and they were fighting over there. I’ve been traveling over there and I looked at their history, centuries and centuries of fighting. There’s great battlements over there, there’s castles, there’s amazing instruments of war. In Oslo, Norway, there’s a battlement and it starts way back somewhere around the 10th century and each year they made it bigger and bigger and soon it was big enough to hold horses and soon it was big enough to hold battalions of men and it just got bigger and bigger. And I looked on the walls and I saw the armaments and the shields, the axes, the battle axes and they were chipped and broken, heavy swords were nicked and the shields were sliced. And I said, ‘These people fight. These people fight hard.’ I said, ‘It must be hard to be that kind of a life where all you do is fight from one generation to the next.’ We call our men '[Native language].' '[Native language]' means ‘those men without titles who carry the bones of their ancestors on their backs.’ That’s what we call our men, not warrior, '[Native language],' responsible beings, strong men, strong. And they were [strong] or else we wouldn’t be here. And the women right there with them, strong women. Strong families, good instruction, close relations, carried us for a long time until we run across technology of war, weapons and guns, powder.

I won’t go through all that, but all that’s in our history, all that’s in the past and here it is today. And interesting that I’m standing here representative of the Haudenosaunee talking to you about peace and how do you get peace and how do you find peace. You find it by being thankful for what you have and you find it for being grateful for what you have and being in defense of what you have and being closely related to the life that sustains us. We’ve become so independent from the earth itself that we think we are independent and that’s brought us to this point here where we are. Now we’re about to see what the real authority is and how inconsequential we are. We have to work together now. We have to put aside all of this and we have to raise leaders about peace. We have to raise leaders who are going to look out for the people, who are going to look out for the earth and for the lands and the waters. The cod fishing up here off the east banks of the United States is broken; cod is broken. Cod that were once five feet long, hundreds of pounds, down to one and two pounds, fishing them right off the bottom. Can’t fish the cod anymore. Herring, we’re losing the herring. We’re polluting the oceans themselves. We’re polluting the earth itself. We’re leaving a legacy for our children which is really destructive. The high incidents of asthma in children in the east is amazing now, all the kids got asthma and that comes from bad air, that comes from pollution.

And so the instructions that our people had a long time ago still reverberate, long-term thinking, decision making, long-term thinking and you come across the discussion today about bottom lines. What is a bottom line? That’s an economic term, it means the bottom line. Is it a profit or is it a loss? It’s an economic term, that’s what bottom line means. Somebody asked me one time, they said, ‘Well, what’s your bottom line? Everybody’s got a bottom line.’ It caught me a little off guard. I said, ‘Gee, I never thought about that. What is our bottom line?’ And I thought about it awhile. I said, ‘You know, we don’t have a bottom line.’ He says, ‘Everybody’s got a bottom line.’ I said, ‘No, no, no.’ I said, ‘We don’t have a bottom line.’ I said, ‘We live in a cycle, a circle.’ I said, ‘We just go around and around. There’s no bottom line.’ He didn’t have an answer to that, but that in fact is the way it is. Our ceremonies go around the lunar clock, we reach the end it starts over again.

I was talking to the Mayans, our brothers down there in Central America, and I was saying to them, ‘Well, you guys have a calendar that’s coming to an end in 2012.’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘that’s true.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen when the calendar comes to an end?’ ‘Well,’ they said, ‘these are 5,000-year calendars so we’ll just start another one.’ Yeah, they made me feel that way too, a little relief there. They did say, though, they said, ‘However,’ they said, ‘there will be a period of enlightenment.’ ‘Oh, what is that, enlightenment?’ ‘Well, you see something.’ I’m thinking, ‘A period of enlightenment, what could that be?’

Well, I thought of this man that was working very hard, decided he was going to take a day off and he was out there on Long Island. Good fishing out there off the Montauk Point in Long Island, big fish out there, come right around the corner. So he said, ‘Well, I’m going to go fishing today, the heck with everything.’ So he went, nice boat, way out there. Hot day. He said, ‘The water looks good. I think I’ll jump in the water, take a little swim.’ So he did. He’s swimming around there, a little ways away from the boat and then he sees this big fin coming towards him, big fin. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. He’s looking at the boat, looking at the fin figuring, ‘how much time have I got?’ Well, that’s a moment of enlightenment. So I hope it’s not going to be that way for us.

The other thing The Peacemaker said was, he said, ‘Never take hope from the people.’ It’s a good instruction. Never take hope from the people. He said, ‘Find a way, find a way.’ So this is hard today, find a way. I’ve been on this road now about global warming for some time and human rights. I’ve been working for our human rights and maybe that’s another section of discussion we should have. In September 2007, September 12th of 2007, Indigenous peoples of the world weren’t peoples. We were populations. In the vernacular of human rights and political discussions in the United Nations, we were always referred to as populations because populations don’t have human rights. Peoples have human rights and for 30 years we’ve been battling in this United Nations for that to be recognized that we are people. And I wondered and I wondered, ‘Why is it or how could it be that there is a declaration, the universal declaration on human rights, so should we not be included and why aren’t we people and why aren’t we included?' Because all those 30 years we’ve been at the U.N., we’ve been developing our own declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. They would not accept the term 'peoples.' They never used that term, we did. They didn’t. And 'peoples' with an 's'. 'People' is a generic term, it means everybody. But when you say 'peoples' with an 's', ah, now you’re talking about Tohono O’odham, you’re talking about Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Apaches, Senecas. You know there’s 561 Indian nations in this country today. That’s a lot of peoples and there were many, many more than that that are gone forever. Still there’s quite a few of us. Here we are. So 'peoples' with an 's', we were fighting to be recognized. Well, on September 13th, the next day, the United Nations adopted the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with an 's'. We made a huge step on the political scene of this world. Of course we always knew we were peoples but that’s a political term and highly charged. We learned that. When you start fussing around there with language, we learned about terminology, what tribes mean, what bands of Indians mean. That’s why we say we are nations. We are nations! The buffalos are nations. They are nations. The wolves are nations. That’s who we are. Yes! But they didn’t think so and we were subjugated.

And how is that, how can that be, how can you take a whole Indigenous people of the world and subjugate them to something less than human? Well, that was done in 1493 by the papal bulls of the Roman Catholic Church and they said in this directive, this bull, they said, this was the pope, ‘If there are no Christian nations in this new lands that you’ve discovered, then I declare those lands to be terra nullius, empty, empty lands,’ old Roman law, terra nullius, ‘Furthermore, if there are people there and they are not Christians, they do not have right of title to land. They have only the right of occupancy.’ And there, one year after the discovery of a whole hemisphere by fiat, it was taken by a declaration from a pope in Portugal. How about that? And we’ve been struggling ever since. We’ve been struggling to come out from underneath that. King of England said, ‘Well, I’m as good as a pope. I like that idea. Works for me.’ So he issued the same directive, 1496 to the Cabots, colonizing the new land. ‘By my authority the land is yours.’ Over here of course, here we were, happily planting. We were planting corn and they were planting flags. Big difference. It was pointed out today, this morning in our session, someone had noticed that just a few months ago that the Russians had taken a submarine up to the North Pole and planted a flag at the North Pole. Anybody remember that? Now why do you think they did that? It’s the Doctrine of Discovery. They took a lot of trouble to get a submarine and go to the bottom, find the North Pole and put the Russian flag there. They were claiming land. And if you remember, when the United States landed on the moon, what was the first thing they did? I think I saw a flag standing there wasn’t it? First thing. Doctrine of Discovery: it’s operational today. So you say, ‘How can that be?’

Well, it became installed in U.S. federal law in 1823 in Johnson vs. McIntosh and the issue was Indian land and Judge [John] Marshall, a very famous judge said, and it was not Indians fighting over lands, it was two white men fighting over Indian land, saying, ‘Boys, boys, boys. You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, that land doesn’t belong to the Indians,’ and recited the Doctrine of Discovery. And he went back and he quoted the King of England and the Cabots and installed that into U.S. federal law. 1955; Tee-hit-ton Indians made a land claim and they were defeated by the Doctrine of Discovery [in the] Supreme Court of the United States. Gitxsan Indians made a land claim, British Columbia 1991, not very long ago, and they lost the case to the Canadian government based on the Doctrine of Discovery. Last year, small town Sherrill, New York, suing the United Nation of New York for taxes, went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, ‘Yes, Oneidas, you owe them money based on the Doctrine of Discovery.’ So you think that’s an old law? It’s operational today. That’s why we’re having all this hard time. So it’s racist and it’s also religious law, what you call…a country that proclaims that religion and state are separate. Not under those rules they’re not. How can that be?

Well, we’re studying that. We challenged the 'Holy C' because that’s the root of it all naturally and supported by all Christian nations because that became what they call the Law of Nations. They just made up a law and said, ‘Let’s all get in on it,’ so we lost our land. And if you go to court, you’re going to wind up right there. So there can’t be any justice in the court for us. So the paradigms have to change. When people realize that things are so bad and you understand what’s right and what’s wrong, then you have to change the paradigm itself. Common usage, well, if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. So we’re challenging now the Holy C and we did have a meeting. I gave a strong position on treaties and the Doctrine of Discovery last year at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations and 10 minutes after the Holy C came up to us and said, ‘We have to have a meeting,’ because they have a seat at the United Nations. I don’t know why, but the Roman Catholic Church has a seat there. And they said, ‘We’ve got to have a meeting.’ So we said, ‘Fine. Fine. 500 years, about time isn’t it?’ So we went upstairs and we met with their leaders, the bishop, very well versed and he had his lawyers with him and he said, ‘What is it that you want?’ I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to do something about this Doctrine of Discovery because it’s causing us great pain in the courts today, right now.’ He said, ‘Well, we don’t…we’ve disavowed that many times.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not good enough. It’s not good enough. You’re going to have to do something better, more profound.’ And he said, ‘What would that be?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it would be good if your pope confessed to the Indians and Indigenous people that he was wrong, that the Church was wrong; a confession from the pope.’ I said, ‘You people believe in that confession pretty much, don’t you? Good for the soul they say. How about that?’ ‘Well, there’s got to be a better way,’ they said.

So we are in discussion with them. They did write a letter back but in the meantime we’ve talked to Pace University and they have agreed to do a moot court on the Doctrine of Discovery so we’re going to vet this issue. Right now they’re preparing a position to be made at the United Nations in Barcelona, Spain, this fall on the issue of the Doctrine of Discovery. And I would like to see a hearing held in every one of those Christian nations; France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden. There’s your Christian nations and every one of them should be taught their own history because they don’t know about it, American people don’t know about it but the governments do, they know. So the battle is on. Be that as it may, and we will strive on, but I think before we see the result of that we’re going to be engulfed in global warming and it’s going to take our attention off of everything else except what we’re going to face as humanity.

I was working with a group called the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival. Through the ‘80s, ‘90s we were meeting on that issue [global warming] and there were very luminous individuals there like Mother Teresa, the Dali Lama and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Al Gore. Al Gore was talking back then. He was saying, ‘Hey, problem here.’ And we met and we met [in] Moscow hosted by President [Mikhail] Gorbachev, who’s a great environmentalist by the way, knows what he’s talking about. In 1991, we said, ‘Well, how long are we going to meet here? We’re going to meet, just meet, meet, meet and we don’t come to a conclusion, let’s get to a conclusion.’ So in Tokyo, we came to a conclusion and it was four words. After all these meetings, all these years, we came down to four words: 'value change for survival.' If you don’t change your values that are running this world right now, you’re not going to survive. You can’t run on the values you’re running on right now. You’re going to have to change it. You’re going to have to look to the Indians for that change. Thanksgiving, sharing. You’re going to have to share. Not accrue; share everything, big time. We’ve got a chance. We’ve got a chance. Just the fact that you’re all here. If you’re going to wait for leaders to lead you, see you on the other side. You have to do it yourself. You’ve got to do the leading. You have to step forward and you’ve got to speak up in defense of your families and your lives in the future. You don’t have time. Things are just going to get worse. Talk to the Inuits or the hunters up in Alaska they’ll tell you, ’Whoo hoo, it’s bad up here. Dogs won’t go out on the ice. Hunters don’t know whether they’re going to come back.’ They’ve got to go. They’re subsistence hunters. They’ve got to go but whether they come back is always a question now. They say the same thing in Greenland, same thing in Nunavut. It’s really…you can see the change up in the Arctic Circle better than any other place because it’s really moving at a very fast pace and it’s accelerating.

Now, this is the other thing that you have to keep in mind. The process that we’re engulfed in is a 'compound' action and if you ask what a compound is, compound is what Professor Einstein said was the most powerful law of the universe, a compound. We have two compounds going on right now. One is the ice melt and the other is human population. When I was 20 years old in 1950, there were 2.5 billion people in the world. Here we are 58 years later and there’s 6.7 billion people in the world. That’s a compound, unsustainable and growing as we stand. Every four days there’s another million people born. Did you know that, every four days? That means food, water, shelter and land for every one of those individuals. We’re pressing the caring capacity right now. That’s a reality. It’s hard news, but you’ve got to hear it. And so what do we do? Ah, that’s the question. So you do, you know what you do, you gather your people in a circle, your families, your community and you say to each other, ‘All right, let’s have a meeting here. Let’s have a meeting and let’s decide what we’re going to do.’ And you will, you will decide and you will find a way when you sit and talk to each other like that because that’s how we always used to do. The people will decide. So the fate of our own lives and of the future is in our hands, no one else’s and it doesn’t do me or anybody else any good to say, ‘Well, I told you so.’ That doesn’t mean anything. But mobilization, yes, and this country, the United States has the greatest possibility for change than any other country in the world. We use one quarter of the world’s resources. We’re less than six percent of the population of the world and we use one quarter of the world’s resources. Well, just our change will help a great deal. But that’s the values. You have to make up your mind.

In our meetings overseas talking about energy, a big issue water and energy, because water’s life, water’s food, energy. Well, for so long we were just level -- if you notice, you see the graphs -- for millions of years here we are, human beings just going along like this. And then suddenly about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution they called it, the graphs changed and they start going this way. They start climbing about 1850; both the population and…they’re just together. So what does that mean? It means at one time we were living by the energy of the sun for one day and we could only use one day’s energy. We couldn’t save it, couldn’t store it, there was no electricity, you had to work with the sun and we did. That’s how we planted, that’s how we harvested. We worked with the sun, one day at a time so we couldn’t exceed, there was no way. Well, when we discovered electricity, ooh, things changed. Now there was refrigeration, now there was storage, now there was energy storage and the more energy we made the more we used and if we make more energy today we’ll use more. Why? Because that’s our values; so we have to change our values then. Can we do it? Well, I say yes but that’s really your answer, not mine.

I mean we live at Onondaga, eh, we’re like you guys. We’re pretty close, the same kind of lifestyle but we do keep our ceremonies and we do know who we are and we do give thanks and I think that’s what you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have to find your ceremonies again, you’re going to have to find a way to give thanks, to get your relationship back, to understand how close you’re related to the trees that you’re cutting down, your grandfathers. There’s renewable if you know how to do things, if you’re judicious. Old Indians used to have a game; it was a game everybody played. And you’d be traveling back in the old days and make a camp beside a stream somewhere, river, good place to spend the night, you’d make a camp. Then the next day you would leave but before you left you would put back every leaf, every twig so that the next person coming along would have to look and look and look to see whether somebody was there. It was a game. It was a game about being thankful. It was a way to understand how to keep things so they wouldn’t even know you were there. What a good game. What a peaceful way to deal with Mother Earth. That was our style.

So we have to think about things like that. We have to work with one another, we have to be much more friendly than we always were and we have to share. That’s the biggest issue, share. It goes against the grain of private property, goes against the grain of capitalism, but that’s brought us to where we are today. So if you want to hang onto that, there’s consequence. Our options are fewer and fewer every day. Every day we don’t do something we lose a day. We’re approaching the point of no return when no matter what we do will not matter at all ever. We turn our fate over to the great systems of this earth who will regulate, who’ll regulate our population, will regulate the temperature of the earth and we will be involved there as a consequence. So this is what I’m telling you and I’m not an alarmist, but I have been running this road for a while now and I think people have to know the truth and this administration that’s presently in control has been really negligent about giving the truth of the situation of the earth itself because it interferes with business. Well, Telberg, they said, ‘Business as usual is over. You can’t do business as usual, you just can’t.’ And it’s going to be cooperation rather than competition. You’re going to cooperate. If you’re going to survive it’s going to be cooperation rather than competition. It goes against the grain of this great industrial state here but nevertheless it’s a reality: share, divest, share.

You’re going to have to deal with Africa. You’re going to have to look after Africa. What happens to Africa happens to us. You have to feed people where they live, you have to provide for them, otherwise they’re here. They’ll go where the water is; they’ll go where the food is. So great migrations pushed by circumstance is what we’re looking at. Anyway, I think that we have maybe another Katrina, the fires that you’ve been enduring here, they’re not going to go away, they’re just going to get worse. Fires are here, floods, wind, grandfather. We call them grandfathers, soft winds, but they’re powerful; they’re coming. And let’s hope we have foresight and I say let’s hope we have the will, the fortitude to take on the responsibility of value change for survival. We have to inspect ourselves, every one of us, myself included and we’ve just got to do better. We have to enlighten ourselves, we have to learn, we have to understand what is coming, then you can deal with it. We’re always instructed, ‘Don’t put your head down, never put your head down, keep your head up and keep your eyes open and look and see. Always keep your head up.’ That’s where we are right now. There’s something in the wind, we know that, so we have to find out specifically what it is.

So in that regard, I’ll be a little practical here, I’ve been…I use these books myself and, let me see, here’s one, 2008, called the State of the World: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy. Good ideas in there; practical approach to reality. You can find this book. It’s only about $20. It’s the 25th anniversary of the World Watch Institute and they have a huge science section and they’ve been collecting this information and every year they just add more on so they’re right up to date. Good book to educate yourself. It’s available for $20; you can spare that.

Here’s another one. Plan B, what’s that tell you? Plan B, we’re already in Plan B. Lester Brown. Okay, this is this year. Oh, man, this guy’s got it down. You get through this thing you’ll know what they’re talking about. But he doesn’t leave you without hope. He gives a lot of direction, a lot of ways to move and what to do so you’ve got to keep your head up and you’ve got to move and you’ve got to take…we don’t have time, time’s a factor now in everything really.

Okay. Let’s see what else we’ve got here. Oh, here’s one. Pagans in the Promised Land: Doctrine of Discovery. This is the hottest one. It’s just come out. You can get it on Amazon. Pagans in the Promised Land, this is the Doctrine of Discovery and this really discusses laws and all of the information here. Steve Newcomb. A young man came to us, elder circle 1991 carrying stuff under his arm saying, ‘Hey, you guys got to see what I got here.’ And that’s when we found out about the Doctrine of Discovery. Now it’s…we’re in consultation.

Here’s one: Voices of Indigenous People. This is the first statements that we made at the U.N. [in] 1993, the first time we addressed the United Nations. 1972, I was with a group of people who were trying to get to the United Nations and they wouldn’t let us across the street. We couldn’t go across the street. There was a phalanx of police and we had to be on this side of the street looking at the U.N. building, 1972. 1993, I was the first one to address the general assembly on the dais of the U.N. So the progress, hard fought progress to get there. But these are the words of the leaders of Indigenous people around the world, pretty much the same today as when they were done. But what’s good about this book here is it has the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in its pure form. Now the one that’s passed has been modified. We lost traction here and there but we did keep our main principle but we did lose some. But the original is right here in this book. So some day maybe you’ve got the time to see what that is.

Here’s another one. It’s written by Lindsey G. Robertson called Conquest by Law. This is again the Doctrine of Discovery. And here was a guy that was just curious about it. He got some names and he said, ‘Gee, I ought to follow what happened to these people.’ And he found out that the law firm that was fighting this case had all of these papers and that they put it in a big trunk, it was going to go to England. So he found the family in Ohio and he said, ‘Can I find out where you sent those…that trunk of papers on the Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson vs. McIntosh?’ They said, ‘Well, it never went. It’s downstairs in the cellar.’ So that’s what this book is. So stuff like that, stuff we didn’t have before we do now and things have got to change and fairness to everybody. I’m going to leave some of this stuff with the University.

Do you know that in March of this year that the State of Arizona supported the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a state? Did you know that? That’s a great event, first state in the Union to do that. I have it right here. I was here or up there in…so you can be proud. Here’s the event that’s in here. It also has a complete description of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as it is now. So I’m going to leave that here, people can copy [it] and you can look at statements made.

What else here? I know we have somewhere…oh, here we are. Statement: The ice is melting in the north. This was a statement that was given by the Indigenous people at the United Nations in the year 2000, eight years ago we said, ‘The ice is melting.’ Now they didn’t listen to us then but here we are halfway there but we’ve still got time. So I’ll leave this with you as well. So you’ll have something to work with and maybe it’ll be the great State of Arizona that changes everything, who knows and why not? You’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got a lot of Indigenous people here, you’ve got a lot of Indian nations here still hanging in there.

So I think that’s enough for tonight, don’t you? I mean I don’t know what you were expecting. But we’re all in it together. There’s one river of life, we’re in our canoe, you’re in your boat, we’re on the same river. What happens to one happens to the other. So it’s in our hands; that’s the end of my message, I think. It’s up to us to organize. They’re doing it in Europe, big time so you’re not going to be alone. You’re not going to be alone. They’re looking for allies. We’re looking for allies. So as a runner from the Haudenosaunee, well, I’m walking now, I don’t run much anymore but I bring you this message as a fellow human being and as a man with a mission and I think it’s a good fight. I think it’s a good fight and I like a good fight. Let’s do it, let’s get on…let’s get on with it. Educate yourself. I’m leaving some stuff here and organize, sit in the circle, talk. Don’t just do something; make sure it’s a good move. Talk it over, work together because unity…

When The Peacemaker brought the five nations together he took an arrow and he broke the arrow, then he took five arrows for the five nations and he took the sinew of the deer and he bound those arrows together, he bound them together hard and then he said, ‘Here is your strength, to be united, one mind, one body, one heart, one spirit, your strength.’ We’re brothers and sisters, we can change blood. That’s how close we are.

Take your time, take your reflections and think about it and ponder it and talk and talk and work your way careful into a good move, strong move. Tell all your relations.” 

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "The Strategic Approach to Leadership"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders discuss why it is important for Native nation leaders to take a strategic approach to leadership, stressing that the decisions they make must be made with the culture and values of their people and the next seven generations in mind. 

Native Nations
Citation

Briggs, Eileen. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Prior Lake, Minnesota. December 1, 2011. Presentation.

Lyons, Oren. "Rebuilding Healthy Nations." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Makil, Ivan. Nation Building seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 6, 2005. Presentation.

Pico, Anthony. Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project for American Indian Economic Development, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 2004. Presentation.

Russell, Angela. "Leadership and Strategic Thinking" (Episode 9). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program.

Oren Lyons:

"From our directions and from the instructions given to the leaders of the Haudenosaunee when they say -- among many other instructions -- we are reminded and the words are direct, 'When you sit and you counsel for the welfare of your people, think not of your children, think not of yourself, think not of your family, not even your generation. Make your decisions on behalf of seven generations coming.' Now that's an instruction on responsibility, a very serious instruction on responsibility. Peacemaker said that, I don't know, a thousand, maybe two thousand years ago. It resonates today. Today it resonates. Be concerned about the seven generations and how we are going to survive and we survive by doing on a daily basis."

Anthony Pico:

"The strategic question the Viejas council engages should not be 'who runs the mailroom?' but what kind of society are we trying to build? What are our priorities as a community? What uses should we make of our resources? What relationships with outsiders are appropriate and necessary? Who can we trust? What do we need to protect? And what are we willing to give up?"

Eileen Briggs:

"I think that there's a general receptiveness to the new ideas that come. I think the biggest challenge for ourselves is how we listen to each other, say what about, what have we forgotten. Because that's where our biggest challenge...and I have to say I don't know if the word is fight or struggle maybe, is that you have people coming in and saying, 'You have forgotten who you are because this is, look at how you're running this meeting. Look at how this is getting done.' And it's important that that auntie stands up and sort of reminds us and maybe scolds us about, 'Look at, look at the way things used to be done. And look at this.' And that's what, I think in my analogy, that's the message she's giving us, is remember who you are. What were and are the values you were raised with? And look at how we're behaving now and how we're getting this done, how we're approaching something, what we're open to, what can we bring to this, and not just swallow this idea from the outside, whole, and say, 'Hey, we've been successful. Because that's this idea -- we did the thing.' Did we do that at the compromise of ourselves? Have we stepped back and given ourselves time to say, 'Does that fit us? Is this right for us? Is how we're doing this work for us?'"

Angela Russell:

"Well, among our people, when we say leader we say '[Crow term],' which means a good person or a good man, and I think leadership is extremely important to all of our nations, and it's important not only for the leader to have a vision for his people, but as citizens of a particular nation, we need to be very supportive to our leader, but we also need to be participatory in a sense that we need to give some direction, we need to give support, we need to give encouragement. I think too many times it's easy to be very critical and to not look ahead toward the vision. You have to have goals, you have to have reachable goals, whether they're short-term or long-term. So leadership is very important, but it's a very, very difficult thing, because in the past our leaders were usually men who had many deeds, many accomplishments and that's how they became a leader. They were supported by the community, and today it's a whole different role, different dynamics, a different society we live in -- lots of challenges ahead for leaders."

Ivan Makil:

"And as leaders, that is one of the responsibilities you have, is to have that vision and to help to define a vision for you people so that there's going to be several paths that you can take but you want to define something that provides the kinds of things that your people need, the kinds of things that your people are looking for, the kinds of things that are consistent with the lifestyle and those values that are important to your people, the kinds of things that I call seven-generation thinking. Seven-generation thinking meaning very simply that when we make decisions -- and this is a traditional concept as well -- that we think about the impacts of our decision on the next seven generations. Our ancestors in the Phoenix valley two thousand years ago built a canal system and they did it with a lot of vision. They did it with a lot of thought. But interestingly enough, two thousand years later, at the turn of the twentieth century, the settlers came in here with all their technology and their engineers and they're going to lay out, map out this whole new system of irrigation for the valley so there could be growth and opportunity in the valley for Phoenix. So they started mapping this area out and you know what was so interesting? The areas they laid out for the canal system for the Phoenix valley were a direct overlay over the traditional hand dug canals that our ancestors built two thousand years ago, because it made sense, because it was seven-generation thinking, it was thinking about the impact on the next seven generations. And although that's a concept, just think: that system lasted for more than seven generations." 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Oren Lyons

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in October 2003, traditional faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation Oren Lyons shares his experience in various roles within the international Indigenous community. Lyons also shares his involvement in the U.S. Senate's passage of a resolution in 1992 that formally acknowledges the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the United States Constitution, and his special relationship with the nation of Sweden, whose leaders are confronting the realities of global warming.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Buffalo, New York. October 2003. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Oren Lyons, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, is faith keeper of the Turtle Clan. At the request of Clan Mothers in the late 1960s, he gave up a successful career as a commercial artist in New York City to return to the Onondaga Nation. The Onondaga is one of six nations in the Iroquois Confederacy. Chief Oren Lyons spent his childhood his says, ‘running about the Nation,' where he learned ceremonial practices including the game of lacrosse. He says that when you talk about lacrosse you talk about the lifeblood of the six nations. He was an All-American lacrosse player as a goalkeeper when he was a student at Syracuse University. In 1990 he organized an Iroquois national team that played in the World Lacrosse Championships in Australia. In 2003 Oren was inducted into the International Scholar Athlete Hall of Fame at the University of Rhode Island's Institute for International Sport. His personal story ranges widely over many experiences; hunting, fishing, coaching, painting, activism, traditional leader, crisis negotiator, author and teacher. He is a Professor of Native American Studies at State University of New York Buffalo. With John Mohawk he published a major work, Exiled in the Land of the Free. Presence at the most significant recent events for Indigenous peoples in the United States and abroad, in 1972 Oren accompanied a peace delegation of the Iroquois to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington which had been taken over by the American Indian Movement, AIM. In 1973 he led a delegation to the Lakota Nation during the standoff at Wounded Knee. In 1977 he was instrumental in organizing a group of Native leaders to speak at the United Nations in Geneva. Through Oren's work in educating leaders the United States Senate passed a resolution in 1987 that formally acknowledges the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the United States Constitution. Oren has a special relationship with Sweden. His philosophy of responsibility to the welfare of future generations has struck a responsive chord in Sweden's leadership, which is facing the realities of global warming. In the north of the country Oren has a working partnership with one of the oldest cultures in the world, the Forest People, fishermen and reindeer herders. Often in the limelight Oren Lyons remains compassionate and humorous using his visibility for matters of urgent concern, tribal sovereignty, the survival of Indigenous people and their traditions and the perpetuation of Creation. Speaking before the United Nations at the opening of the Year of Indigenous Peoples in 1993 he said that, ‘when we walk upon Mother Earth we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. Mother Earth is not a pleasant metaphor for Oren Lyons. He is gravely concerned about Her survival. He believes human beings can be productive and supportive of Nature or they can be parasites. They are, he declares, ‘presently the latter. There are forces that will check this unbridled growth such as disease and lack of food and water. Privilege will not prevail. There can be no peace as long as you make war on Mother Earth.' His message of peace also took him to the streets to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Committed to religious understanding as a way of reducing world tensions he has participated in ceremonies with Buddhists, Christians and other groups at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and in other religious venues. Though Chief Oren Lyons' message to the world is prophetic and urgent, his lectures always include an encouragement to people to take good care of their families. He is himself the father of two children. At the end of his interview with the Institute for Tribal Government in Buffalo, October, 2003, Oren said, ‘I have two instructions. Be thankful for what you have and enjoy life.'"

Life as a child

Oren Lyons:

"Well, I grew up on the Onondaga Nation territory. The time that I was growing up they called it the Onondaga Reservation. My mother was a Seneca, the Wolf Clan and she was married to my father who was Onondaga, the Eel Clan. Although I was born in the Seneca Territory, Seneca Nation, I just happened to be born there, I was brought up, the whole family brought up at Onondaga. Since the process of our way of keeping track, it follows the woman; I'm Seneca, following my mother, Seneca Wolf, as was her whole family. In 1972 I was adopted into the Onondaga Nation. So now I'm Onondaga, still Wolf but borrowed into the Turtle Clan and I've been sitting for the Turtles since 1967. So we were brought up Indian style. My early childhood was just running about the Nation. I don't think I saw a White person until I was about four years old. We didn't travel downtown. We didn't go down...Syracuse is just down the road. We're about today, jump into the car and you're downtown Syracuse in 10-15 minutes. So we're right there in that all your family is around, grandmother's down the road. You've got all your relatives are everywhere in a real community so that even though you may not be related, just wherever you happened to be at dinner time, that's where you ate. People just sat you down wherever you were. And if you lived off the main highway, which is where the spigots were, then you had to go to the springs and carry water. So we carried water all our lives mostly growing up and cut wood, hunted, hunted for food. And we were very good at it. Everybody was planting. I remember my father planting fields in the back and using the old style of, what would you call it, plow, the plow that you have the handles behind the horse and that's tough plow because you hit rocks and you're like flying all over the place. The horses were very patient with us out there. They knew more than we did about plowing and so forth. Cold winters, no such thing as insulated houses. There was a school on the reservation, still is. It kind of was like an outpost of extension of White people into our land. There was no such thing as a Parent-Teacher's Association or anything like that. You just sent the kids to the doorway and left them and picked them up and no interaction. And for us it was like going into this outpost with all White teachers and strange ideas and different talking people. It was a trial every day. We were pretty independent, rambunctious kids. I know it was a hard time for them. But school was something to be endured. And most kids quit sixth grade, went on to work. So the reservation, the Nation itself was a very traditional Nation, still is I think. As far as I know we're probably the last of the traditional chiefs and leaders in North America who are still in charge of land. There's no Bureau of Indian Affairs, we don't allow them on our territory. We don't allow the state police nor any police except our own people. So we have working arrangements and it's not unusual, that's just the way we were always brought up. We were brought up to be who we are and we don't think it's strange. But as I travel about then I see the differences. The long house was the center of activities all the time. Ceremonies were going on, there was always dances, there was always feasts going on, there was always community activities."

The story of the Great Peacemaker, a spiritual being who came to the Iroquois Nation 1,000 or more years ago

Oren Lyons:

"We didn't learn that story, we lived it. So you don't learn something that you're living and if you're living it then you're just involved in it and you don't think of it as learning cause that's the Great Law. Peace was what governed our people. You were just involved in it and never thought much about it. In the traditional style of governance there rarely is there sessions where people will sit you down and talk to you like that. You just learn by participation and by watching. So the Great Law of Peace is a daily event. It's how you live. It's how ceremonies are performed, how leaders work, how the community operates. It's all...that's how we're brought up. So we're brought up very free, very independent and very aware of who we were in terms of our Clan and our Nation. People kept track, very close track of Clans. The Great Law of Peace is our second gift or second message. The first message that our people received was how to live, non-Indians call religion. I don't really have a word for religion. It's how you live day to day. And so the ceremonies and all of that was given to us way, way, way, way back. We don't know when. But we know the stories and we know how it came and we know all of that. And they are epic stories, they are great, great stories. The Great Law of Peace came when we were in battles and when we were neglecting the first message which was how to live. It was terrible times for Five Nation people. We were battling, we were fighting one another and we were fighting internally. The men were on the war path, so-called war path all the time. They were moving, they were fighting, fighting each other, fight anybody. Children, women, they were hiding, they were in the woods, they weren't even in their homes because they were afraid and it was a terrible time and here comes the Great Peacemaker. His intent and purpose was before he was born and his mother was a virgin, which she didn't know how she got pregnant and when the baby was born her mother tried to kill the baby three separate times and then the third time she received a visit from spiritual beings and they told her, ‘You're not going to be able to do that and don't do that because this person has a mission.' And so the story of him growing up was also one of being different and being singular in who he was."

The Peacemaker's process was thought, not force. He moved from the Mohawk to Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca

Oren Lyons:

"And he said, ‘my business is peace. I want to talk to your leaders.' And they laughed and they said, ‘Well, you've got a lot of work, you have a lot of work.' He was very insistent and that impressed them so they said, ‘All right, we'll take the message.' And so he left, they left and they started out and the first night that he spent, he spent at a lodge that was there, there was a woman by the name of [Mohawk Language] and she was an Erie, she was an Erie woman. They call it cat nation and she was, her mission was to provide food and lodging for the runners and the fighters up and down... But she said that she had a rule and that was that no discussion of war, no discussion of battle, that they could spend the night, they leave their weapons outside and she'd provide them with food and so forth. So that was what she did and when the Peacemaker stopped and he told her his mission was peace, she said, ‘Well, that's wonderful. I believe in your mission and whatever I can do to help.' And then there's this story of [Mohawk name]. [Mohawk name] is an Onondaga who was exiled from his own land because of the fierce leadership there with this fierce leader by the name of Tadadaho. He was evil incarnate and powerful and ruled and had killed three of his daughters and he was mourning. He just left and he was in the woods all the time and the Mohawks knew about him and he kind of drifted up their way and they said, ‘You should go talk with this man, he talks like you do about peace.' So he did and there's a whole epic story about how he became a partner with the Peacemaker. And then they convinced these leaders, they changed their minds and then they moved west to the Oneida and the Oneidas were going through the same thing. And so the story goes after convincing the leaders of the Oneidas to come with them then they went to Onondaga and they couldn't deal with Onondaga, he was too strong. Tadadaho wouldn't...he did all kinds of things and they couldn't get to him. He lived in a swamp, he lived by himself and they couldn't get near him. His hair was covered with snakes, he was twisted. He was just evil and powerful and a cannibal on top of it. He didn't want to talk with them about any peace or anything."

To solve the difficulties, a woman suggests a song for approaching the Onondaga leader

Oren Lyons:

"They learned the song and then they all approached him and they said it affected him, the song affected him and that even as they approached they could see him transforming, they could see the snakes dropping from his head, they could see he was transforming into something like a human being and eventually they talked with him. And then they bargained with him and ‘Your title will be the leader of the Five Nations and they will always come from Onondaga and this will always be the central fire.' And they bargained with him and he agreed with that and he transformed him and the Peacemaker transformed him, the most evil of all beings. And the lesson there is you should never give up on anybody, that anybody can be redeemed."

The Peacemaker lays down the foundations of governance

Oren Lyons:

"And then he began the discussion on governance and how you shall operate and how you shall function. And so the women were chosen as the keepers of the nations actually. So the identity of children is directly what the woman is and that's the law, one of the oldest laws we have. And that continues today and it is still her duty to choose the leaders and oversee the conduct and activities and oversee the general welfare of the clan itself and indeed act like the Mother of the Clan and of the people and very, very hard work. We have Clan Mothers today doing that today just as they always have been and it's difficult work. You give your life over to the people and then of course when she chooses the leaders then he said, ‘Her choice, it shall be her choice.' And I think that's the genius of why we're still here. I think that's what makes the Iroquois so strong was that the balance of relationship and governance was between male and female, men and women. They had equal responsibility and very much work to do but the essence of it was that leadership was chosen by the woman. And it had to be ratified then by the clan by consensus. There was no voting. You had to all agree which is a harder way to do things but of course when you come to a total agreement you're much stronger."

The Peacemaker established a system of democracy

Oren Lyons:

"Then what he said, the Peacemaker when he laid out the foundation he said, ‘There will be elder brothers and younger brothers. You will have two houses and this is how you will work together is your houses. This is the dynamics of your governance, two houses, even within your Nation there will be two houses and this is how the clans are set and that's how the houses operate together. So we're talking about governance now. We're talking about how the establishment of a democratic government, which I believe is the basis of Western society. The democracy that they talk about that comes from Greece is not here. They learned what we knew."

Western democracy and the U.S. Constitution have roots in the Iroquois Confederacy

Oren Lyons:

"Now when the Peacemaker had them throw these weapons of war into the currents under the earth, he said, ‘They'll be carried away to nobody knows where and you'll now rely on the rule of law, the rule of peace and the process of governing people by their own consent.' And so I would say that democracy, Western democracy is based on that. I talked about this meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when the Onondaga Chief talked to the leaders about having a union, 1744. All of that was heavily recorded. It was recorded very well and there's a very thick and large book on just that 1744 treaties and this book was printed by Benjamin Franklin. All those words were taken down to Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin read the reports and he said, ‘This is a good idea.' Ten years later he called the Albany Plan of Union and he asked the Six Nations to preside to talk about governance, talk about democracy. And at that meeting there was a spy from the King of England and the word went back and the letter is available warning the King of this discussion by people of governance by the people. So they knew very well what was going on and they understood the hierarchy and they understood... And by rubbing shoulders with Indian nations and people for 200 years transformed the Englishman to an American because in those days when you said you were an American, an American meant to be an Indian. And so Benjamin Franklin really saw and said...there's words where he directly talks about that ‘savages can make something like this why can't we,' and he followed through. And so the Albany Plan of Union transformed into the Continental Congress and the Continental Congress was formed very, very much on the lines of the Confederacy. They called themselves the 13 Fires. They called themselves the Grand Counsel. They used all the euphemisms and they used wampum, the original... At the Boston Tea Party when they dressed up as Indians, they didn't dress up as Indians, they dressed up as Mohawks. They were dressed as Mohawks and so the whole idea of being free and different and fighting your father and so on. 1775 when they came to our...asked for a meeting at German Flats where they wanted us to join them in the coming battle, the revolution, our leaders said to them at the time, they said, ‘well, we know your father. We have a lot of agreements with your father, we love your father and we know you as well and we have agreements with you as well. But we see this as a war between father and son and we would much rather step aside and not be a part of it.' And the delegation from the Continental Congress said at that time, ‘Good,' they says, ‘because that was our second request. If you are not going to fight with us, don't fight against us.' And so it served the purpose of the Confederation because they knew that this battle was going to be taking place around them and probably across their land, which it did finally and they wanted a neutral position because they had their hands full with the French as well. There's a whole history of the French and Indian War and that was mostly fought by Six Nations against...on behalf of the English. All that history, all those meetings, hundreds and hundreds of meetings that we had, we knew each other very well, the leaders. And our leaders traveled and if you go down to the Philadelphia you will see in front of the Hall of Independence where the Liberty Bell is you'll see a square of greens out front, it's out front there's an open square, that's Six Nation land. We visited there so often, we camped right there. It's our land today even. So these kinds of discussions you find really a complete discussion in our book Exiled in the Land of the Free. And we wrote it because the 200th anniversary of the Constitution of the United States was coming up and they were making no consideration or no place for the Indian people and we said, ‘How can you do that?' When we went to Washington we said, ‘Well, where do you want the Iroquois to stand in your celebration?' And they said, ‘Why?' because they had no idea, it's not in your books, they don't teach it, it's not in the school. Nobody teaches that history that I'm talking about. And we said, ‘Well, we gave you this idea of democracy. We held your hand through the process, our leaders.' And so it was presented to the Congress, we took it to Senator Inouye and the result was that the passage of S76 recognizing the contributions of the Iroquois to the Constitution of the United States on the principle of democracy. So I say that Western democracy is directly from our roots. When they came over on the Pinta, Santa Maria, they weren't bringing any democracy with them, at all. They brought a lot of pain with them and they brought a lot of ideas about ownership of land and so forth but they didn't bring democracy. And when the ship the Mayflower came over, that didn't bring democracy either. They were escaping the King of England. Democracy didn't come over on the boat. Democracy was here and it was all over the country, it was all over. The whole country was democratic.

What went wrong in the new U.S. democracy?

Oren Lyons:

"With our reception of the Great Law that spiritual center, that spiritual peace, is the center of it, it's the foundation of our Confederation, spirituality, the spiritual law and we said, ‘Well, that's not a good idea. What you're doing is going to come back.' And then when they consolidated their power and they actually began to go over their own records on the Continental Congress and they were doing the Constitution, they began to reinstitute European law and closure, one of the private property. They couldn't deal with slave ownership. That's going to come back to you. We told them at the time, ‘How can you have a democracy when you imprison men, people? And where's the women? Where's the women in your democracy?' The way I look at it like if you were looking from the moon down to the earth at that particular time you would see a great light as they picked up this idea of democracy. And then if you watched over a period of time you would see that light diminish until finally in 1843 or 1844 they start talking about manifest destination. And Christian rule and Christian law has always been a problem with us and for us. They've always called us heathens, they've always called us pagans and they said we have no standing because we're not Christian. So the whole taking of land across America is based on that Law of Discovery, not being Christian. It still prevails. It's right in the U.S. constitutional law now. So it's tough to do, tough to beat."

Schooling for leadership included hard work and lacrosse

Oren Lyons:

"As I was growing up, my father left the family and I became the hunter. My mother was tremendous, a woman of great integrity, never said much but kept that integrity. She never drank, she never...anything like that, just took care of the family, a very strong woman. And I quit school in the seventh grade because I didn't like the teachers, they didn't like me and I knew they weren't doing right by the people there and I just didn't get along with them, I challenged them all the time. Life was miserable for me. So I would set my shotgun aside or my fish pole and then as soon as I'd get off the bus down at the school I'd walk back and I'd spend the day in the woods fishing. And those years probably were my best teachers because I learned a lot about developing your own character. When we were growing up we had to go and cut wood and carry poles, hardwood poles, 30 feet long. One pole of oak is very, very heavy. And you carry four or five or those poles, put them on your shoulder, that's a big load. But all the kids were up there. We cut the wood, trimmed the wood, wearing sneaks in the wintertime, colder than a son of a gun. There'd be snot all over our sleeve from wiping our nose and getting the wood back and cutting it up and bringing it in. It was hard work, took a lot of character; that built character. It was good training, probably one of the best trainings I had because it built that reserve, that strength that you get from finishing something, getting it done. So I didn't really go to school. I was an athlete and we were playing lacrosse already and that's part of the fabric of the community. And your heroes are the lacrosse players and even the ceremonies in the Long House includes lacrosse. It's not a game; it's part of the fabric of our nation. And that's how I grew up, grew up playing the game and that's what gave me the offer to get to school."

Drafted in 1950 Oren found the discipline of the Army useful

Oren Lyons:

"I don't know how they drafted us because we weren't supposed to get drafted but I did. Anyway, I wound up in the Army and I said, ‘Well, this is...I don't know how I'm going to do here,' but I found out that they recruited for the Airborne came around and you get $50 more for being in the Airborne, for hazardous duty pay. I said, ‘$50 more a month. I've got to go there,' because I was sending money home to the family. So I got $50 more. So we got into the Airborne, went into the 82nd Airborne, went down to the jump school down in Fort Benning, Georgia. And then I was assigned to the 82nd in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We jumped around different places. We had to, we were so-called Honor Guard of America and if anything happened directly to the...we were the ones to be there first. So we were prepared all the time for combat. So I learned a lot, I thought the Army discipline was good for me. I didn't like it at all. When they captured me the first time they put me in jail for truancy I guess and I was just like a wolf. I didn't want to be in there, I didn't like the man and I didn't like the ideas, I didn't like anything and this truant officer, I still remember him sitting there chewing on a cigar looking at me and saying, he says, ‘You know, you dumb Indians,' he says, ‘you can't even talk, you can't answer, you can't answer me why are you not in school.' And I couldn't answer him. I was mad and I was thinking, ‘Gee, maybe I can get one punch in on this guy.' And he was looking at me and he says, ‘Don't even think about it.' And they put me in...they locked me up. I hated that. But I went to work and I did all the little stuff you do to get by. Hunted and worked in labor, dug ditches, did all of that."

Leaving school so young yet becoming a professor

Oren Lyons:

"So when I got out I went back to playing lacrosse again right away and doing a lot of heavy drinking and doing a lot of what kids do at that age. I was boxing; I was boxing at the time. I boxed before I went in; I boxed in the Army. And when I came out I was asked by the coach from Syracuse University he said, ‘Well, why don't you come up here, play lacrosse for us and box for us.' I said, ‘Well, I don't know. I don't think I've got the credentials.' He said, ‘Well, you've been in the Army.' He says, ‘You know, take the GED test in the Army.' I said, ‘Well, I don't know.' I said, ‘I took a lot of tests.' And he said, ‘Well, why don't we look for your tests and why don't you make application. Come on up.' So they recruited me. And when I graduated four years later, he said, ‘You know, we still haven't got your records. We were looking all through the Army.' He said, ‘Maybe, maybe we can just forget looking for them now.' But I had done very well. I made the Dean's List. I was a good painter; I was an artist, that's what I did. And so I did very well in the art course. I drew all A's and I had suffered through English and suffered through all the other courses but I managed to get through. And as a matter of fact they have an award they give to the outstanding Junior scholastic athlete and they call it the Orange Key Award and I won that award my junior year. And so it's a contradiction of moving away from school so early and then finally actually winding up to be a professor at the end of the day."

Art, New York City and lacrosse

Oren Lyons:

"The artwork is what got me into the university. So when I graduated I wanted to go south. I did very well in the lacrosse. In 1957 we had the first undefeated team at Syracuse University and we had an amazing team. Jim Brown, the big football player, was on our team. Billy Brown played for the Boston Patriots. It just went on. We had this amazing team. We were undefeated and we beat West Point, the other undefeated team in the country that year. It was a great year. I became an All American, made All American the next couple of years and then I went south. I went right to New York City. I was going to take up art, staying in this little room in the YMCA and running around looking for a job and carrying my portfolio around realizing, ‘Hey, this isn't going to be so easy,' and New York City being the Mecca of artists and competition. The amazing thing I learned about New York is nobody talks to anybody. Nobody's friendly, nobody says anything. You can just not talk to anybody for days on end except in an interview or wherever you're going, just no conversation. It's strange coming from a Nation where everybody talks to everybody. But anyway, a knock came on my door at the YMCA and there was a short man, bald headed and he had a mustache, gray mustache, and he says, ‘I'm Dr. Schoenbaum, Pinty Schoenbaum.' Pinty, they called him Pinty. He said, ‘I want to ask you if you're going to play lacrosse for the New York City Lacrosse Club.' He had tracked me from Syracuse and found out where the heck I was, don't ask me how. But he said, ‘Play for our team.' I said, ‘Sure. You've got a team down here?' ‘Yeah, we've got a team.' And so that helped me a great deal. I moved right into...I had some kind of friendships again, back to lacrosse again."

His career as an artist and art director

Oren Lyons:

"I finally landed a job at Norcross Greetings Cards and it was kind of like a little safe haven, didn't pay much at all but it was recognized in New York City as probably one of the best training grounds for art there is, practical training. Because with all my four years of college and abilities up there I took one look at my work and I looked at the professional work that I was up against and I said, ‘I need to refine, I need to get back to...get up to standard here, long way to go.' So I took a job there, started our $45 a week, coming out of university and I could have made that $45 in half a day working on construction. But it was a real shock to me to do it but I took the job. I was more in the art directing because I was doing artwork at night. I was freelancing all over and I had a lot of work. I was a good artist and I was doing a lot of illustration, a lot of sports illustration and I...once people found out who you were and where you then you could work. I was more or less running an ad agency right out of the company too because we had 250 artists and every one of those artists that was at Norcross was a very independent artist on their own. They were all freelancing and Norcross was easy to...easy work for a real professional. And I was doing my own work, I was doing a lot of illustration. I was getting a reputation. But I was not liking New York. Things were changing, I had children now and I didn't like the idea of bringing them up in town. You can't leave a child two feet from you, you cannot. You just have to tie them together. You just don't dare let a little girl wander. So it was constantly to keep the kids in the school and then...so I moved out to New Jersey. And when I moved to New Jersey I played for the New Jersey Lacrosse Club and I commuted back and forth, bought a house out there. But still I didn't want to bring the kids up in a foreign country so I said, ‘Well, I want to go back home.' And it was about that time, '67 when Clan Mother asked me to be leader chief and I agreed but it was about the end of my marriage too because my wife didn't really agree with that. She did not want to be sharing me with the Nation."

Returning to Onondaga and working for Indian culture and sovereignty across the nation

Oren Lyons:

"And when I got back, this was 1970, when I got back they said, ‘Well, you have a lot of knowledge. We want you to go to school and learn about museums. We want to put a museum here.' So I took a master's course at Cooperstown, which was again a very good event for me. I learned a lot about museum technology and history and that was a dual course I was taking, History and Museum Technology. So when I came out from there I was qualified to teach and John Mohawk and Barry White and several of the young people they said, ‘You've got to come to Buffalo and you've got to start an Indian class at the university.' They said, ‘We've got Black studies, they've got Women's studies, they've got Puerto Rican studies, they've got no Indian studies.' So they were really on my case and they followed me everywhere I went and by that time I was moving. When I came back home I was working with the leaders already and we traveled. We took what they call the Unity Caravan, which was a composite of leaders from Oklahoma, Hopi and Iroquois and we just went...we did a tour of the whole United States stopping, telling people at the time the importance of keeping your language, the importance of keeping your traditions and we were a traditional group and we made this circle four times. We went around, four years we went around. We were at Alcatraz. We stopped when they were having the problems there and helped the spirit of the people cause they didn't have any elders there. And so they were so happy when all these...carloads of...we traveled in a caravan of 20-25 cars and we would just come to an Indian territory, set up camp and talk about tradition. And a lot of the people I see today who are now leaders remember when we came through and how that influenced them and how they remembered the importance of your language and the importance of your tradition and customs and your land. And I felt...it was in my really strong years and I felt that I was doing something positive."

A new chapter in the lacrosse story, the Iroquois Nationals

Oren Lyons:

"In 1983 I got a call from my friend Roy Simmons, Jr. whose father was the coach, Roy Simmons, Sr. And now, Slugger we call him, Roy, Jr., was now the head coach of Syracuse University and he said, ‘Can you bring an Iroquois team down and play Canada at the NCAA finals?' And I said, ‘Gee, I don't know. We haven't played field lacrosse in a long while. I don't know.' He said, ‘Well, think about it. We'd like to have an exhibition match.' And so I thought about it and I said, ‘Geez, why not.' So we did. We got the boys together and we took a team down there. It wasn't easy and we got roundly defeated but the boys liked the game. I said, ‘Hey, this was a good game, let's get back into it.' The following year, in '84, we played at the Olympics in L.A. and we had the consent of the Olympics because we were promoting the return of Jim Thorpe's medals. And it was called the Jim Thorpe Memorial Powwow and Native Games. And the center was going to be the Iroquois Nationals playing Canada again. But England heard about it, they called us up and said, ‘Hey, you guys are having a game, you didn't invite us.' I said, ‘Well, yeah, but you're so far.' ‘We'll be there.' England flew in. Australia was touring Canada. They had a lacrosse team touring. They came down. So there we had...and then the United States said, ‘How the heck do you guys have a game and you didn't tell us.' So we had the five nations playing again and we had the Native games down there and we did very well. And so England said, ‘You boys play a very good game.' They said, ‘You want to come over and play us over next year?' We said, ‘Well, we're traveling on the Iroquois passport. You understand.' They said, ‘We'll manage, don't worry about that.' So we went over and we were very successful. We won every game but one over there and very happy. The boys were getting into the game so we said, ‘Well, we want to get into the International Lacrosse Federation, let's get into the big game.' So we petitioned and we had a lot of problems with Canada and so we were not allowed to compete in the '86 games but we ran our own tournament here at UB and we invited everybody but Canada cause they were hosting the game. And in '87 they called me and they said, ‘We had a vote, the ILF had a vote and they want to vote the Iroquois in as a full member nation,' the International Lacrosse Federation. I said, ‘On our terms.' They said, ‘On your terms.' I said, ‘Great.' And they said, ‘And get ready for the games in Perth, Australia, in 1990. So while all this stuff was going on we filled the team and we took a team over to the Perth games, world games in 1990. There were four teams when we joined. We became the fifth nation and now there's 14 nations including South Korea, Japan, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden. They're all playing and Tonga wants a team. This is all going on, this is all part of this whole fabric in the meantime, which affords great recognition to the Haudenosaunee because when we play, our flag goes up with whoever we're playing. So the Haudenosaunee flag goes up with the USA or Canada or England or whoever. Well, the sovereignty as I was talking about, the Iroquois Nationals are certainly a very serious element of manifestation of sovereignty and so that means we have to deal with state departments around the world, it means we have to have Visas because our passports are Iroquois. So it's advancing our culture, it's advancing our presence, it's advancing people's understanding of Indian nations, internationally. It's certainly developing a better understanding among our own people, respect for other nations, respect for other people, respect for the American flag. If you go back to the times when we were battling at Wounded Knee and around and flying the flag upside down or burning it or whatever else, now when the United States plays the Iroquois our men stand at attention, take their hats off in respect. That's a big move. That's a big change but it's mutual respect is what it is and that's what brings that. So they understand that they've grown, our players have an amazing growth sense. Now they've traveled, they've been around the world, they play Japan, we've played in Australia, we've played in England, we've play Canada, we've played all over. That's exposure for our own people to learn about other nations, other people and the game itself is really founded because it's our game and so we're like the grandfathers of the sport and we get that respect from around the world. We work with them very well and it's a great avenue, it's a great venue for interaction, positive."

Working with Indigenous people internationally and with the United Nations

Oren Lyons:

"So on the other hand when we move into the U.N. and we're in the working group for Indigenous populations, the discussion still is and we still have not cleared the fact that we are peoples, not populations. ‘Peoples' with an S. ‘People' is generic, peoples means specific. So when we try to put our names as peoples the U.N. still calls us populations. And of course if you're a population then there's no human rights for populations. So the discussion is really fine tuned and our biggest adversary is the United States and the issue is the issue of the self determination, the right to self determination. And they say, ‘Well, you have a right to self-determination as far as we allow.' And we say, ‘The right to self-determination is absolute and there's no modification or else it's not self-determination.' But for Indigenous people, yes, it is. Of all the people in the world, when you have the human rights of the world, they don't apply to Indigenous people. We had to write our own. Why? The issue's still land. Land, who owns it and who are you. It goes back to the time of Columbus; it goes back to basic issues. The issue you brought up right now. They're saying, ‘And you can't tax.' So all of that is still unresolved and the United States has a very hard time to acknowledge first of all the damage they've done to Indian nations. They have a hard time to look at that. They have a hard time to acknowledge the lands that were taken, stolen. Even today they can't bring themselves to pay...here they are in Iraq, they're looking for $87 million to rebuild Iraq and they can't pay the $8 billion that they stole from the Department of Interior of Indian land. So where do you go for equity as the peacemaker said. We have to go to the international field and that's why we're in Europe. We can talk to them over there, we talk to the State Department over there but hard to get them here. And the whole issue of Indigenous peoples reflects earth and reflects land. Australia: the lands taken from Australia. Now they have recently won a case where they have agreed that the basis of land taking, which was the Law of Discovery, the Supreme Court of Australia says, ‘That's not a valid position.' That court case rocked everything everywhere around the world because you go to South Africa, you go anywhere, all the colonization that's taken on is on that basis including the United States and Canada. So we're still, when you say ‘the land of the free, the home of the brave and the land of the free' you're talking about Indians because...and you come down to the issues that they cannot resolve and get these things ready and clean their house. I'm talking about the United States and Canada and Central and South America as well. If they can't clean their house how can they go around the world trying to clean everybody else's house?"

Present and future dangers facing Creation

Oren Lyons:

"And coming up on us now is global warming. Now these issues that are coming here are very, very serious. They're going to make any conflagration that you have around the world minor when they start to manifest. And actually I've been studying this and I've been...most of my work in the past three or four years has been in that area because the danger is so evident and we're pushing toward an ice age. We're forcing the issue to an ice age and people don't understand that. There's a convection going on in the Atlantic Ocean where fresh water now has reached all the way to the Carolinas from Greenland, from the ice and snow melting in Greenland, fresh water all the way to the Carolinas. This convection is what's slowing down the currents and the University of Bergen in Norway who monitors the gulfstream said that the gulfstream is slowing down and that if it continues to slow down at the past it's slowing down, it could conceivably stop altogether in the next 15 years. Now if you can comprehend what's going to happen if the gulfstream stops and you talk about economies and you talk about what's going to happen, well, it's going to freeze, things are going to freeze. You'll trigger the ice age and it's happened before, it's not something that's never happened before, we're just pushing it with our fossil fuel, over extended fossil fuel use and all that. Global warming is real. I'm now working with scientists who are willing to speak up now. But the attitude of this present administration, the Bush administration on environment is very, very bad about environment. They're just not interested in it, they're interested in business. But it's responsibility, they have to look for the next generation and they're not looking for the next generation. So I asked the scientists, I said, ‘Okay, what happens? What happens when...how does this trigger happen?' They said, ‘Well, it's like a dimmer switch on the wall. You want more light you turn the dimmer switch,' and that's what we're doing with energy, more and more, more and more and now we come to the end of the dimmer switch, right? You can't get anymore, but we want more so we hit it once more and now the switch, actually the dimmer switch becomes a switch, it goes from hot to cold, switched. The earth itself has its own systems and when it gets too warm it cools itself off. That's the ice age. So we're pushing that now. Now the [1:02:36] ?? people from off...the marine biology units at the [1:02:42] ?? have said that this convection here is going to cause that, is going to cause the switch to turn. So they asked them, ‘Well, when?' They said, ‘It's all the way down now.' It wasn't there in 1960, nothing. Now the freshwater's all the way down here, it's slowing the current and it'll get farther. The ice is melting faster. We're in a compound. There's a compound of melting. The faster it melts the faster it melts. We're compounding. We have a compound in human population. Put them two together and you have big problem and so why are we in these insane efforts for oil and industry when we're not looking at the big picture and that's my...I said, ‘We've got to look at the big picture,' and I think it's criminal that a government doesn't look to the future and actually tries to cover it, tries to change it. It's very serious."

Amidst much negligence, hopeful signs

Oren Lyons:

"Yeah, there are. Yes, coalition is coming now. Scientists are saying, ‘Yes, we have to speak up.' So yes, on a positive side, we can slow it down if we go into a total mobilization just the way they did on the terrorists, same kind of mobilization. The system is there but it's going to manifest itself now, you're going to start to feel it and it'll get warmer and warmer and warmer and then it's going to switch and that could be in a year's time, that could be ten years. I have no idea. But we're pushing it now and so that's been my message. That was my message to the Bioneers and it goes back to the Peacemaker saying, ‘Don't make a law against that spiritual law,' and that's what we're doing, precisely what we're doing. Challenging that spiritual law, you can't win. My grandson says to me, ‘Grandpa, what's going to happen to me?' Hmm, hard question. That's what the kids are saying, ‘What's going to happen to us? Who's going to look out for us?' And if the adults don't do it, if the families... who is? And that's my message. People can do it. I think very clearly that the fate, our fate is still in the hands of the people. I believe that yet. But we're losing ground. Every day that we don't do something we get closer to the point of no return. So if you're not going to think about your grandchild much less seven generations, it's pretty murky out there right now. So it means that you have to try hard. You've got to maintain your own integrities, you have to maintain your own cultures, your own prayers. I remember Priscilla V. Hill, our elder from the elder circle, she said to me, she says, ‘you know, people forget how powerful prayer is, how strong prayer is.' Our people in particular cause we're spiritual people, we pray a lot and we pray all the time and we believe in a higher power, we believe in the ultimate authorities and we understand a lot of that and that's what the ceremonies are about. That's the integrity. Now if everybody could get on that kind of a line, then we wouldn't have what's going on now. But we have a secular world now. Spirituality is rare. We have commerce."

Promising new alliances

Oren Lyons:

"I think the religions that we have to deal with are the ones that are made here in this United States. They just make their own religion; they become what I call the hard right fundamentalist religion. They're not really listening to the teachings of their teacher. They're making their own statements. So religion has been a spear right into our breast. That's how they came, that was the spear that entered us and it's been a problem but on the other hand in today's times our best allies are religious leaders. So you know, people go, people change, we come to a common belief and we're getting there, getting there. But is it going to be...when? We're in a bind now; we're in a time bind. So I don't know. Gorbachev is a great leader; he's a great environmental leader. Al Gore, if he'd get back into gear. He belonged to that parliament who worked with us, global forum of parliamentary and spiritual leaders. Gore was in there. It's a race. But I think when the manifestations, when the fires get more, which we had all those fires last year, there are going to be more of those. This year, fire's burning up there in British Columbia all over, dry, climate change and we're going to get wind storms. The winds are coming heavier. The slower the ocean goes the quicker it warms up, the quicker it warms up heavier winds and we're spawning these big hurricanes now. We're doing that. So all these things are coming and one of our chief allies is the insurance companies. They're saying, ‘Listen to those people, it's true what they're saying.' They have to pay. And they know what the damage is costing very year, more and more and more. So I don't know politics are so peculiar in this country and around the world. And the avarice of man and the greed, the unleashed greed is fundamental to all of this. Still, I believe that it's still in the hands of the people. If people want to get out there and they want to make themselves known, then things are going to change. If they don't, then you suffer the consequence and it's not happy. But as long as we can, you never take hope away from the people. Hope is always there and I urge the people to take action, do what you have to do. Vote this administration out. That's what's got to be done. They're very, very damaging. I think in this contemporary society everybody has gone kind of a little nuts and the idea of money and this cycle of work that people are in, they've got no time for anything. I feel it."

The future is still in the hands of the people

Oren Lyons:

"This is still a democracy. This is what we helped way back there in 1775. It's a democracy yet and if people act on it, it will be. But if they just submit then that's what's going to happen. It's what I call corporate states. They have more gross national product than most countries. The corporations have allegiance to no one, they don't have any human rights, they don't have any concern about health. They have a concern to put money in the hands of the investors and that's the big deal. We're looking at the kids now and we're going to have the grandchildren and looking at trying to see this future. In the global forum of spiritual and parliamentary leaders after all the years of leading we came to a conclusion. Why were we meeting, what was going to be the substance of this whole thing? And we came to a decision under the leadership of Akio Matsumura who's a brilliant man and a great humanitarian and we came to the conclusion it would be four words, after all our meetings with all our people: value change for survival. We either change our values or we're not going to survive and we've going to have to get back to the basic values of family, of relationship rather than money, acquisition. Private property doesn't work. That's the song of this nation, private property. And so you lose community. The community is what we're after and getting back into the community of the earth itself because that's one big community, we're all one. We're a long ways away from that. But we can do it, we can get back and around the world, yes, they are trying, yes, yes, they are trying. But we have to get better leadership in this country. We have to get leadership with vision and with responsibility to the future. That's what the Peacemaker said, seven generations; make your decision on behalf of seven generations coming. You, yourself, will have peace, that's just common sense. Never give up. That was a big lesson, don't give up. Don't give up on anybody. They can change. In Sweden now we have a coalition of very active people and among them is one of the best filmmakers in Sweden, a very famous man and along with another active person that promotes events and so forth. And they have agreed to do a film on, a feature film on global warming. They said, ‘We know how to do it,' and they've prepared it. And so what I'm trying to do now is get $2 million from somewhere to get this film made and then we'll get it distributed. We want to do it in six languages simultaneously so the message gets to the people and they know how to do that. Now that's urgency, that's awareness that you've got to bill to the people cause leadership knows what's going on. They're just not pressed by the people. So that is one of the things I'm working on. I also work on the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth on the issue of keeping your culture and so forth. I think the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse teams is great fun for me and great for everybody and it's a great venue for interaction so I always put a lot of time in that. And teaching is good cause I talk directly to the children. And family, getting back to the family. So that's where I'm at. I work with the Sami people up north and they have the same problems we have. Global warming is really manifesting up there. Ice is melting, a big problem for the reindeer because it melts and freezes and they can't get to the grass, the liken. They can starve in a short time that way. They live on a daily basis. But they have good years and bad years and they have the same problems with the people, there's racism and so forth. Positive though, the government is much more positive over there towards them than here towards us. We shouldn't have to be suing the federal government for money it owes us, that belongs to us."

Building strengths and making peace

Oren Lyons:

"Peace is a dynamic action. Peace is not passive. Peace requires a lot of action and a lot of activity. It's light, it's light and it has to be always pushed, always promoted, always acted upon. On the other hand negative energy is heavy and it's dark and it has its own strength on that. If you stand still, you lose. It's easier to sleep in the morning than to get up. It's easier not to work than to work. It's always easier to do the negative than it is the positive. You have to recognize that and you have to do your own personal battle and you have to make your peace with creation and I would say coming from Priscilla V. Hill, ‘Peace and prayer are powerful.' That's the basis of where you go for your strength. Individually we're not strong enough for anything so we've got to get people back on line, spiritual path. Thomas Benyaka used to say, the old Hopi elder and he made his trips around, all the time he always said the same thing, ‘Prayer, meditation; prayer, meditation,' and that's powerful. So we have a spiritual strength and available, we should use it. It's more powerful than anything and that's the ceremonies. Thanksgiving. We still hold it. I'll say one more thing. In the longest walk there was an elder from Japan, the venerable Fujison. He's 100 years old and he was in charge of the peace Buddhists, they come and they sing that ‘no more [1:19:09] ??' and they play that. That's his people. He instructed them to come on the longest walk with us and they did, they walked the whole way, they're Buddhists. And he came along, later on and he was being pushed in his wheelchair. He had a sticker on the side said, ‘The Longest Walk,' and they hosted us when they had a pagoda in Washington, D.C. and they hosted everybody that came. They had a big meal they cooked for us and everything and they were sitting in a circle on a table and the elders were there, Chief Shenandoah, some elders from Lakota Country, Chief Farmer and I remember Chief Shenandoah saying to him, ‘Why are you here with us? Why have you...what have you...why are you here? Why have you joined us?' And the venerable Fujison said, ‘I have studied human relations around the world,' and he says, ‘I don't think there has been a people that have been more abused and have suffered more than the Native American people.' He said, ‘Yet, you have kept your spiritual center.' He said, ‘It's strong, it's crystallized.' He says, ‘Of course you have all the problems, of course you have this and you have that and you have drinking and drugging and all that.' He said, ‘But you also have kept the spiritual core.' And he says, ‘And I believe that the spiritual center of the earth is here in North America with your people.' That was his statement. I never forgot it cause we don't think that way. We just go along and do what we do. That was his observation and it makes me think every now and then what that means."

The instruction Oren Lyons would leave

Oren Lyons:

"I have two instructions to our nations. Be thank for what you have, there's all the ceremonies. Second instruction was, enjoy life."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
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Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Oren Lyons
The Onondaga Nation

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Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

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© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government 

 

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: Wounded Knee II: Honoring the Legacy of Ted Kennedy

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons shares a story about late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy's crucial yet little-known role in averting an attack by the federal government on those who took over Wounded Knee in 1973.

People
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "Wounded Knee II: Honoring the Legacy of Ted Kennedy." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project for American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

"I'm going to tell a little story about Ted Kennedy. Rick [Hill] and I come from a rough-and-tumble neighborhood and we grew up in rough-and-tumble times; we have thick skin. And sometimes these things occur. It's not badly intentioned, it's just the way we are.

Anyway, it was in the later part of the standoff at Wounded Knee and the Lakota Treaty Council along with [Frank] Fools Crow, Matthew King, [Frank] Kills Enemy, sent emissaries to the Onondaga Nation; they wanted help. And because we were a traditional system and we talk about peace, they came and they asked if we could help to bring peace to this fight at Wounded Knee. And so we did and we went out. I talked with Secretary of State [William] Rogers before I left. If you remember during that time, President [Richard] Nixon was in a hole -- he had disappeared; he was under tremendous pressure. And the White House was under [John] Erlichman and [H.R.] Halderman. Anyway, Secretary of State Rogers said, he said, ‘Lakotas shooting Lakotas is one thing.' He said, ‘Lakotas shooting Iroquois is another.' And I said, ‘Well, we're not there to be shooting at one another. We're there to try to bring peace.' And he said, ‘Well,' he said, ‘we are not in charge of what's going on out there.' He said, ‘We've sent government officials there and they've been put in jail by the FBI.' He said, ‘They're out of control.' He said, ‘We can't guarantee...' I said, ‘I'm not asking for a guarantee. I'm just telling you we're going out there and I don't want you shooting me.' So he said, ‘Well, talk to our new Bureau of Indian Affairs man at Lakota at Pine Ridge before you go in.' I said, ‘Oh, well.'

So we had a number of people at Wounded Knee. We had, I don't know, maybe 25-40. We had a lot of people there. And Indian nations across the country had not publicly supported that, but Six Nations did. We made a public statement and we said we are going out there and we did. Anyway, I won't go through all that what happened there and so forth, but when we returned...because there was the highest security of a war zone that they said they had ever seen. I was talking to the journalists; they couldn't get further than Pine Ridge, which was some miles away from Wounded Knee. Anyway, we returned and we had given our contact number. And we said, ‘We're going to try to get this information to Washington and we'll see, you tell us.' So we received a message coming from a woman who was really a leader out there, tough fighter woman. And she said, ‘They're moving troops in. They moved in the perimeter about 100 yards last night, which is about 300 yards, which makes the fire very lethal in moving 100 yards. And the fire becomes very lethal. There were heavy exchanges of gunfire out there. And one night I estimated, we estimated over 70,000 rounds coming in. It was a real fight. And anyway, they said they're moving and they're going to assault on Friday. The information we have they're going to assault on Friday and they're going to use gas.' And I saw the canisters when we went into Pine Ridge. I saw those big canisters. I said, ‘What are those things for?' and got no answer. But anyway, I knew they had the gas there.

So we called the Chiefs, the Six Nation Chiefs who were on alert to move and we said, ‘Well, we have an option here. We have either to go to Wounded Knee right now or to Washington to see if we can avert.' And we had to make up our mind. I said, ‘Well, since they're just putting everybody in jail that showed up over there, we'd probably wind up in jail right away and be of no use. So maybe we better go to Washington.' So they sent two of us down, Chief [Irving] Powless and myself. This was '73, [I was] a little bit younger and a little bit springier than I am right now. And they said, 'See if you can talk to somebody and set up meetings for us.' So we went and we could get nowhere, nowhere. Monday went by, Tuesday went by; every door was shut. Nobody wanted to talk to us and everybody was in a hole, nobody wanted to move down there. They were paralyzed; Washington was paralyzed.

It was Tuesday night and I said to Irv, I said, ‘We better call the Chiefs, tell them to come down. Maybe all of us can do something.' So we called them and they came in the next morning -- 16 chiefs, some as old as eighty -- my age right now. So anyway, we went and all day Wednesday. We finally broke through with a congressman from New York, Congressman Hadley. And he met with us. And I said, ‘Okay,' I said, ‘we need to get to somebody who can get to the White House who can stop this assault, which is planned for Friday.' And we couldn't. He said, ‘Okay.' He's says, ‘I'll give you [James] Abourezk.' And we went to  Abourezk . And curiously hostile, I don't know what it was, but our message was simply, ‘Look, we're not here to negotiate. We're here to tell you that they've cut off food supplies, which is against all of the rules of war. They're using starvation as a process.' And we went through, ‘These are 10 points we had.' And we said, ‘We're just here to tell you that on Friday there's a planned assault going in, and it's up to you to stop it. And when we leave here you'll be one that knows. And when Friday comes and the assault comes, we'll make it public that you knew and that's all we have to say.' And that was our message.

And we went around and we bounced off of Ted Kennedy's staff about three times. And then somewhere Thursday night, Thursday night -- we were tired, a lot of the old man. Luckily, it's an amazing thing; there was a young man who was driving a blue van. It had no windows. And he stopped and he said, ‘Where are you guys going?' We were going back and forth from the Senate to the House, Senate to the House. It's a long walk. I said, ‘Well, we're trying to do something about Wounded Knee.' He says, ‘Can I help you?' I said, ‘Yeah, give us a ride.' So he stayed with us all day moving us back and forth going to where we had to go. It was an amazing thing, helped us a lot because we had some old men there.

Anyway, Thursday night, we got a call from Kennedy's office. ‘I understand that you want to have a meeting.' ‘Yes, sir.' ‘Would you please come?' ‘Yes, sir.' And that was about 8 o'clock. So we went to his office and he had a beautiful office. He had the paneled walls -- big. And him and his staff were standing there, very formal. And so we drew ourselves up into a formal response. And he said, ‘What can I do for you?' We said, ‘Well, we're here to deliver a message. And the message is that tomorrow there's a planned assault on Wounded Knee,' and gave him our position. And he said, ‘You know,' he said, ‘I want you men to relax, sit down, have a seat, you've had a hard time.' He said, ‘Do you think you're hostile?' He said, ‘I just came from a Senate session where we have senators advocating a cavalry charge tomorrow.' He said, ‘I know what you're talking about.. I said, ‘Well,' I said, ‘all we have is the information, and it's confirmed.' And he said, ‘There's real hostility there, a cavalry charge [in] 1973.' And I said, ‘Well, we're here to see what we can do to stop it.' He picked up the phone, he said, ‘Have a seat, sit down.' And he called the White House, and I think it was Erlichman who picked up the phone. And he really, he really rendered a tirade that was memorable. And he said, ‘Don't you do it. If you do it,' he says, ‘we're going to have your ass.' And then he said, ‘I'm going to be on alert now,' and he finished his statement. And we looked at him, we thanked him. He said, ‘You men had anything to eat?' And we said, ‘Not yet.' He said, ‘It's pretty hard to get something around here this time of night.' He said, ‘But let me call and you guys go over.' And he says, ‘It's going to be on me.' So we had a big steak.

And that night I had to go. I had to leave that group and go on up to New York to try to do the same thing at the U.N. [United Nations]. And the men went home and we called back over there and told him, 'We think we've stopped it, but don't count on it,' because it was pretty bad out there. And as it turned out, it did stop the assault. And this past month, we were visiting [Washington, D.C.], we had planned to go over to Mr. Kennedy's office and hand him this letter of thank you. And it just so happened he couldn't make it there that day so he never received that letter. So we're going to send it to the family. But very few people know that. But when it was really needed and when we couldn't find maybe three or four friends on the [Capitol] Hill, he stood pretty tall. And we're ever grateful and to the whole family as a matter of fact. I think that if Robert Kennedy lived, he would have been the greatest advocate for Indians that this country would have ever seen [because] he was in that direction heavily. But that's the way it is. None of us are guaranteed to see sundown today. So that's the way life is. But I think you should know that this man has gone through a lot and anybody in public office catches hell, as you know. And I just wanted you to have that story about him. We'll make sure his family hears it, too. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: The Challenges Ahead

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons briefly summarizes the critical, urgent challenges that global warming and resulting climate changes present to Indigenous people and all human beings, and stresses that the principles that traditionally nurtured the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the natural world can serve as a starting point to turning the tide against global warming.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "The Challenges Ahead." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project for American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Presentation.

"[Onondaga Language] Thank you for being well. Thank you for being here. And as I was reminded last night by Miriam [Jorgensen] -- where is she -- it's 11 years. It's 11 years this program has been moving. It's fast and it continues. I'm always encouraged by the innovations and by the efforts out there by our people across the Turtle Island and how things are changing. Today, we're going to be hearing from one of our people who [has] been assigned to the White House -- really changing. It's been quite awhile. And I think we have to take advantage of the opportunities that are going to be presented to us. We have to be quick now and we have to move when the opportunity arises and we have to make our own innovations, as things will change.

This past May, there was a report given by MIT and MIT has -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- has been studying global warming, probably the most serious of the studies since 1860 to 2090, 2100. And when they first made the report, they predicted that global warming would raise 2.5 [degrees] Celsius by 2090 and that it was moving. And that was early report. I think it was only four or five years ago. And they've studied this from 1860. Now, they made another report in May -- having newer technology and better able to assess -- the very next report, which you should get and become aware of. They said, 'Oops, we were wrong. It's going to be anywhere from five to seven point Celsius warmer.' That's a big wrong. And that's science. And if science is so far behind, then we have to pay attention ourselves to what we see and what we know. I know in the prediction,s many of our nations have been given messages and they've been given predictions, and the Haudenosaunee is one of them.

We receive messages periodically; the last one 1799. And at that time, we were told that these things were going to happen. When the messenger that was receiving this said, 'Well, if that's the case,' he said, 'Well, why bother?' And they said, 'Tell your people that the generation that allows this to happen is going to suffer beyond all comprehension. Tell your people to work hard and not let it be your generation.' So in other words, what happens to us is in our hands; it's up to us. We will determine what our own fate is, no one else. That's across the country. So pay attention to your leaders, pay attention who you put into power and authority; see that they are recommending a positive future for your children. Pay real good attention, because times are shifting and they're going to be very, very rough and coming very fast.

So when they moved up that Celsius it also moved up the time. So we don't have the time that people think we have or talk about. It's very quick, it's compounding -- two compound actions going on right now, which is determining how things are going to go. One is the compounding of human beings; we're exponentially exploding. And we went from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 6.7 today and climbing very fast -- probably 6.8 now. And that's 59 years, 59 years and more than doubled the population of the world and it's going to do it again. That's water, land, food, security. Those are unsustainable figures, numbers. And the compounding, the other compounding is the ice melt. The ice cap in Greenland is melting and it's accelerating. Everything is accelerating and this is what we're not prepared for -- the acceleration -- and this is what the MIT report supports. Yes, there is an acceleration and it will continue, it will continue to accelerate. So just a reminder and something to think about, in the future, that our children, probably many people in this room, will be experiencing more than you thought you were going to experience. So leadership is important and fundamental principles of your nation are important and the relationship that we talked about, we heard in prayer this morning -- that relationship is fundamentally important to understand how closely we're connected with the earth. We're not separate. We're not separate. We're part of it and that's the message in these prayers, how close we are related, our relatives, our relations.

So in our efforts to maintain and raise the standards of our own living and our own territories and so forth, also pay attention to the spiritual side of things, because that's where your strength is going to be, that's where you're going to rely. It's going to be the knowledge of your grandfathers and your grandmothers -- powerful. It's now being asked around the world, people are now talking about Indian wisdom. Well, they come up to Onondaga and they say, 'Tell me some of your wisdom.' I say, 'Well, I don't know.' 'I'm Episcopalian, all I can tell you about Episcopalians,' is what they told me. But no, over the long hauls we've kept our ceremonies. We just finished the green corn, and I know in your areas you've taken care of that. And you want to do that, that's really important. That's our relationship, that's what's important. So with that I welcome you and we're looking at another year. It's a good fight, we're on the right side and I'm up for it."

Honoring Nations: Sovereignty Today: Q&A

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

The 2007 Honoring Nations symposium "Sovereignty Today" panel presenters as well as members of the Honoring Nations Board of Governors field questions from the audience and offer their thoughts on the state of tribal sovereignty today and the challenges that lie ahead.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Sovereignty Today: Q&A." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Ethel Branch:

"Hi. Thank you all for speaking. It was really inspiring to hear all of your words. I guess my question is -- My name's Ethel Branch. I'm a student at the law school. I'm Navajo from Arizona. My question is, Indian policy, federal Indian policy has always suffered vicissitudes going back and forth from an era of termination, extermination, whatever, and switching to an era of revitalization, empowerment of tribes. We've been in self-determination for now over 30 years. Do you see a shift in the tide? What direction do you think the next era is going to go? If you could give insight on that, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you."

Floyd "Buck" Jourdain:

"Geez, I feel like Billy Madison up here. Anybody who's seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.

Self-governance. We're a self-governance tribe and we no longer have a BIA agent and all that, we deal directly with our appropriations through the tribe. And it's [an] experimental thing that several tribes took on, but we feel it's working to our advantage; we're using it in a good way. And one of the things that we notice with the non, the tribes that are still under the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] -- they do get preference over us, so we have to really fight and arm wrestle every year; appropriations, negotiations, hearings. And it's almost like sometimes there's a safety net there that we need to grow away from. Self-governance is a good thing if it's used in a good way, and it's used correctly, and you have good leadership, and people are really on top of it. I think we just need to pry away from that old era and get away from that. And if it doesn't happen, then you'll see tribes, kind of, falling back into that, which is a dangerous thing.

Like I talked about today, the climate. You talk about the energy push in America, George Bush and the big oil companies. One of the things that -- our tribal treasurer goes to D.C. and brings back these horror stories about, 'There's going to be another huge cut. The [Department of the] Interior and BIA is going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.' And you have all these issues in your Indian community. You have methamphetamine, you have homelessness, you have poverty but, 'Hey, here's the answer to all your solutions! Let us come in and build a power plant on your lakeside and that will really help you guys out and get you out of this state.' So right now it's been rights of ways issues, those are huge -- people wanting to build power lines and roads across our land so they can -- tourism can explode and those types of things.

So I think that tribes need to really grasp it, emphasize self-governance, and really use it in a good way, and be aggressive with it. And I think that if more of them start moving in that direction you're going to see a lot of self-sufficient tribes out there doing some pretty good things."

James Ransom:

"I wanted to stand up. I know some of the people over here can't see us over here. I just had two comments on the question.

A trend that I see happening and which is real obvious is one, stay out of court. That cannot be overemphasized right now. Anything that gets to the Supreme Court is going to be an erosion of sovereignty. You can almost be guaranteed that.

What that tells us though is we need to refine our diplomacy skills and we need to negotiate solutions to issues on the local level, on a state level, on the federal level but in a way that is protective of our communities. And again, that talks about responsibility. We need to work on that and bring that back.

I think that's going to be the key to the future is exercising our responsibilities in ways that non-Natives -- the larger society -- can understand and appreciate."

Michael Thomas:

"I can only agree first of all with what's been said in terms of our own responsibilities and how we should not allow a perpetual federal trust responsibility to us to foster dependency. And frankly, the 30 years of the [Indian] Self-Determination Era has, in my mind, fostered as much dependency as self-determination. And frankly, I think that self-determination can be an excuse for modern governments to avoid their trust responsibility to each and every one of the people in our tribal communities. And so it's a balancing act. I think that we will see the lip service toward self-determination continue, but I think that you'll see the pendulum swing back and forth between whether these people are walking the walk or simply talking the talk.

As you watch the composition of our Supreme Court change, the advice about staying out of court becomes more and more relevant. And that is the kind of long-term pendulum swing that we as Indian people can appreciate but the average American cannot. The reality is, unless you are subject to those swings in constitutional interpretation, and Supreme Court composition, and federal Indian policy, and all the other things that create the storm of politics within which we must live, you're not going to get consistent outcomes.

And so that responsibility that both other tribal leaders here have emphasized is critical. Because it's a different approach to say 'They will never fully meet this trust responsibility, therefore we must...' than it is to simply cry over and over and over, 'Meet your trust responsibility, meet your trust...' We end up putting our people in a victim's position, when the reality is that we have all we need to protect and advance our people even in the absence of that fulfilled trust responsibility. I think an increasing recognition of this by tribal leaders can only lead us to good places."

Ben Nuvamsa:

"I'm very humbled to be here among you leaders. Thank you for your teachings and validation of what I also believe in. Chief Ransom, as you spoke, I feel like you were talking about us.

At Hopi, we're going through a tremendous change. I agree with you, wholeheartedly, that along with sovereignty comes responsibility and accountability, and if we can exercise that in the correct way -- hopefully we don't get to the point where somebody tells us what sovereignty means to us, like the Supreme Court. Our constitutions that we have adopted, the IRA constitution -- at Hopi we're very different because of our traditional ceremonies that we are very still actively involved in, in that -- and our values are much different than what an IRA constitution puts forth. And that really creates some problems for us, that we have two different cultures always conflicting with how we operate. And I think that in the situation that we're in, we need to go out and we need to re-evaluate that constitution. And many tribes have done that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that good, bad, or indifferent, however our constitutions are, we need to interpret those in our Hopi ways, in our tribal ways, what does that mean to us in our local customary practices. That's what's going to sustain us forever. I think that's where we're at.

I'm also very humbled to be with a group of our representatives here that are very knowledgeable in our tribal government. Mr. Kuwaninvaya has been on the council for a long time and I look to him for guidance. He's very astute about when we get into a debate at the council -- and he has this unique knack to put things in proper perspective, and he brings our traditional values, our knowledge, and interprets that debate into how we are supposed to be. And it seems like it really clarifies the whole debate. It's very simple. Go back to what Hopi is. Go back to what our beliefs are. And I think that's what sovereignty means to us is who we are as a people, and what our beliefs are, what our customs are. And we speak our language; our language is what sets us apart also. That is our sovereignty.

And so I just want to thank you for the thoughts. We also have certain principles that you talked about. Sumi'nangwa. Nami'nangwa. Kyavtsi. Respect for one another, coming together as one people, putting our heads together and working together. Those are principles and kind of visions that we have, high bars that we have to achieve. But I think that's the kind of a process that we're in right now and we'll need to get to that point. And I just want to thank you for your words of wisdom all of you."

Regis Pecos:

"Thank you for that, what I think is a really profound question. If we go back into the past and reflect upon that time of federal policies dealing with extermination, and where that moved to assimilation, and where that moved to termination, and then the more recent federal policy that defines this time as the era of self-determination, we really are at a critical juncture to be asking some very critical questions with regard to, 'What are we doing differently now, when we are in control, from those times when we weren't and we were critical of that subjection to those federal policies?' Because if we're not careful, I think that we potentially become our own worst enemies at this particular time and juncture in our journey through life.

I really think that this next wave, to answer your question, really is going to be a return to the core values. And that the definition of sovereignty is really going to come back to be defined, redefined, internally and outwardly. And I think part of the celebration, with something as profound as what we've heard all of today, are the incredible redefining of approaches that is coming from and dictated by our return to those principles and core values. I think in this next wave it's going to be part of a process and an evolution that is using the core values to redefine the strength of tribal governments, and the sovereignty and the power of our peoples to define, outwardly, the interrelations of intergovernmental relations, if you will, but defined for our purposes. So that, as we take a circle, and in it are the core values of our land, our language, our way of life, our people, our resources, our water, our air that sustains that spirit of living, to examine the way in which we either are making decisions with governance and our jurisprudence that moves us away from the core values or reinforces the core values; and where decisions are made that's moving us away, how we're contributing to make fragile that institutional framework that otherwise creates for an operation from a position of strength. And if all we're doing in this time of self-determination is simply replicating programs with no conscious thought about how the replication of programs is moving us further away from those core values or reinforcing core values, or the way in which economic development is viewed, to either be supportive and compatible with the core values or moving us away from the core values, and something as critical as education -- If we see education as the means and the process that was never intended for us, but how we find that to be necessary in developing our skills to deal with their external forces, to protect the internal workings of our nations, it becomes critical at this very point to really look at ways in which we strike a balance. And as our young people and our trust for the future are being schooled in the formal education institutions, we really have to be mindful in terms of what we're doing consciously in redefining our own blueprint for the teachings, from a cultural perspective, so that in the kind of challenges from this point forward, we really must operate from that position of strength, that is, articulating our relationships with other governments from those fundamental principles encompassed and defined by those core values.

So I think in this next wave, it's going to be about our redefining relationships with other governments based upon the articulation and the full utilization of the core values moving from within, outwardly, as it's never been done before. And if we're not approaching it in that way, the gaps are going to become greater and wider. And if language and culture is not the focus of what we do in creating the next generation of leaders, ask ourselves, 'Will they have any opportunity to argue the spirit of sovereignty from any other context or perspective?' Because when that happens we're going to be reduced to everything we don't want to be reduced to, as simply political subdivisions of someone else's sovereign governmental framework, different than what we want to do -- to come from within that context that sustains that spirit, that is defined by everything the Creator gave us and blessed us with, that sustains that spirit of living from a totally different perspective, which means that we have to create our own institutions. So that for all of us who've gone through the experience of a formal education, it doesn't take us to move back through a process of being reeducated in the principles of those core values.

So I think in this next wave, we have to be conscious about creating our own opportunities and institutions to strike the kind of balance that results in the kind of training that is necessary for young people to have that kind of balanced perspective, moving the core values as we define the way in which we're going to preserve that sustained spirit of living using those core values."

Michael Thomas:

"Definitely very well said. I would only add one piece, to what frankly, I don't think any of us could say better, which is that one of those core values we have to emphasize, in addition to that which separates us...is our foundation, our language, our culture, our values, the history, this dirt that we are from and of -- the interconnectedness value that we were all given as well is horribly underplayed. As important as all of those things that make us distinct tribal communities are, equally important are the things that bind us from one to the other, the interconnectedness value that every last one of us was taught by our elders is one that we don't walk often enough. It's an area where the way I say it to our council, it's an area where we are not matching our lips with our moccasins. It sounds wonderful, but to really emphasize the interconnectedness means that we would fight less within each of these tribal communities.

And frankly, I've never been to a tribal community, and I've visited several hundred in my life, that is startlingly different from another. As a matter of fact, when people come to Mashantucket, I tell them, 'Don't be confused by the cars and the houses. This is the res.' It might be a little bigger or a little prettier -- same issues, frankly. Wealth has intensified some of those community, social, cultural issues that we face. We're thankful to have the means to deal with those things, finally, but we've got to emphasize connectedness, because all of the other things bring us into our own individual boxes. And everything in this American culture is so individualized and so disconnected from anything, that what that value of 'the connectedness of all things' is one of the most important traditional values we should keep in mind and turn into the action that Regis articulated as well as anyone could. Thank you."

David Gipp:

"Regis, I think you summed up quite a few things today, at least from our perspective and from the tribal perspective, and where we're going hopefully. Let me jump to the next question. And it's a question for you, and other leaders, and everyone here, I think. And that's the question that our Assistant Secretary is posing and he's talking about modernizing the BIA. I don't know if you heard his remarks this morning. And I thought some of them made very good sense as compared to what I heard you say out in...which was the introduction of that thought. And I know you're running around the country trying to get ideas of what that means as well, at least that's what I hear. Comes that question, and that's part of what you have raised is, where are we going to go with this? And how are we going to deal with this? Because the immediate question is, now we have a new trust office that's been put in place, and it's supposedly doing all of these wonderful things for us in terms of managing our trust resources, and being accountable, and somebody mentioned the word transparency, and perhaps we'll see this someday from the U.S. government and truly see what they've been up to all these centuries. But the other issue is, what happens with the rest of the functions within the Bureau of Indian Affairs? Particularly as our tribal nations assume more of these, I'll just say, jurisdictional issues and more of the issues that relate to sovereignty and who and what we're all about. What happens to the government in the meantime, and the U.S. government? And what role does it play? And how will it play that role? And where do we put it in its place, if you will, as we talk about this new, if you will, evolution that's beginning to take place? And I think that's a very real question, because the government can surely be, as we know, stand in the way and create even more problems than it has in the past. Or it can be, indeed, potentially a partner, if we make it a partner. And how do we do that?"

Oren Lyons:

"Sovereignty is the act thereof. No more. No less. And it's a French word. It talks about kings. It talks about absolute monarchal power, absolute. That's what sovereignty comes from. But we came to understand it to mean control of your own future. When we talked this morning about the landing of our brothers here, and not too far away from right here, and they saw the Indian come standing out of the forest. And they looked at him and the word was, 'We'll never tame that man.' And all they ever saw was a free person. That's what they were looking at, was a free person. And that's what we all were at one time. And it's absolutely [certain] that we have to go back to our original teachings to move into the future because they're fundamental, they don't change. Principles don't change. Everything else changes, but principles do not. So as we move forward, we've changed as well. I would imagine that if we were to talk to our counterparts 200 years ago, if they walked in here, they wouldn't know who we were. They'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to our people?' We change. And 100 years or 200 years from now, we'd look at what's in the future and we'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to them?' But if you keep your principles, the main core principles, you can change all you want and nothing changes.

And so I think that it's true that there's going to be outside forces, this global warming is no joke. It's going to break economies. It's going to break world economies. They're just not going to be able to stand it. They're not going to be able to be spending all their money on wars and fighting because they're just going to be talking about survival. So commonality comes back. The discussion is about water, it's about land, it's about resources. When you talk about sovereignty in a contemporary sense, you're talking about jurisdiction. Who has jurisdiction on your land? And that will tell you how sovereign you are. And so jurisdiction is a very important discussion. How do you maintain that?

The courts have always been unfair but they're extremely unfair these days. I agree with you, it's a very difficult time. There's not been fairness in this country to us, there never has been. Racism is still here, it's still rampant, doesn't take much for it to come up. It does not take much for it to pop right up and look you in the face. So we're in a time, I guess, where we're going to see momentous changes. And so the spiritual strength that comes from our elders and comes from our nations and our old people, they always talk about the old people. I always remember Thomas Banyacya saying, 'Well, the old people said...' I always liked it when he said that because he was talking about our elders and how they instructed us and how they always looked after us. It was never a question about leadership then.

The problem with today's leadership in Indian Country is the system that doesn't allow you any continuity. You're there for two years, and then you have an election, and you fight each other for two years, and then you start again, and two years later you're -- it keeps you off balance. The traditional system, the old system, where the chiefs were there for life, I'm one of them. I've got 40 years on the bench, so to speak. I've seen a lot, talked to a lot of leaders (Nixon), most of them one time or another. Bob Bennett, I knew Bob. All of them actually -- how they had a short time, problematic time, but meantime back home, back home where we live, things remain kind of constant. You do what you can do, but I think the core values are just what we're going to depend on and we have to just get back to that. The ceremonies that Jim [James Ransom] was talking about as a guideline -- ceremony is what kept us going, ceremony is what makes us unique, it makes us different from everybody. If you were to ask who we are, we're the people who give thanks to the earth. That's who we are. And we do it all the time. And we still do it. It's important and we were told as long as you're doing it, you're going to survive. When you give it up, you won't. Simple as that.

So we're coming into times, hard times. We've had changes. On September 13th [2007] the United Nations adopted the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And for the first time in the history of this world they recognized us as peoples with an "s." We fought 30 years for that. Up to that point, we were populations. Populations don't have human rights. Peoples do. That's why we had such a problem. Well, 143 countries voted for us, four voted against us. We know who they were. But the question is why? The question is why? And you have to really inspect that for a reason. We know each other. We've been sometimes allies, sometimes antagonists, but we know each other very well, especially the Haudenosaunee. Those 13 colonies were about as close to Indian as you're ever going to get, Grand Council, the whole works, instructions from our chiefs, democracy. Democracy is from here. It didn't come from overseas. It was here all the time. We were all democratic.

And so we're coming to a crux and it's a tough one. We're involved in it because we're people; peoples, I should say. That was really a benchmark. Now the problems that we had in that final document, we'll be battling in the next 30 years I suppose, if we have 30 years. That's the question. This global warming is extremely fast, it's coming and it's coming faster than you will think. In 2000, we gave a speech at the UN and we warned them then. We warned them then. The ice is melting. It took them seven years to respond to that, but seven years lost. Time's a factor now. We really don't have the luxury of another 100 years. We're going to see stuff very quickly and we best be ready, as leaders, as responsible people. It's coming now. You can't be red, you can't be white, you can't be yellow, you can't be black. You're people, you're a species and the species is in dire trouble as a species. There's nobody in charge of our fate except ourselves. Human beings have their own fate in their hands and how they act is how it's going to be. So they're looking for instructions and right now the long-term thinking is coming forward and the values are coming forward -- our values. And I say that collectively, because I know we all have the same -- I know that. I've traveled into ceremonies all over the place. It's all the same. It doesn't matter what language. It's the same. That's going to come back again. Now whether we can survive, collectively, is going to be up to us. It's just going to be up to us. That's all. So leadership is now coming forward and I think Indian nations have that opportunity. And the stuff that we're doing right here is kind of what you would call getting in shape. You're getting in shape, flexing yourself, getting back to where we used to be, getting in shape for the big one.

And I'm just really pleased and honored for this collection of humanity: common people, common cause, and we have to work together for survival. That's the way it's going to be. Unity -- that's what the peacemaker said. Your strength is in unity. One arrow you can break, arrows bound together in a tight bundle is strength. That's what we're doing. We're binding the arrows, getting ready. We've got to take care of each other and help our brother. He's in a lot of trouble and when he's in trouble so are we. There's no way to run. You have only one Mother and when you make her mad you're in trouble. And that's where she is right now. You can't make war against your Mother and that's what's going on in this world, and not without a consequence. So I know next year, when we have the meeting again, there'll be more examples of our abilities and our strength and who we are. It's coming forward and I'm pleased to see that.

I just want to say one more thing about sovereignty. In May [2007], in Halifax, Canada, they played the World Games Box Lacrosse Championships, world championships. And Iroquois Nationals won all through the week and came into the semi-finals and we defeated the United States 14 to 4. And we moved in to play for the gold on a Sunday and we were defeated by Canada by one goal in overtime. And I would say bad call from the ref in there, too. But it was our flag, it was our anthem, and our nation and our boys and they did do well. [Thank you]."

Megan Hill:

"Thank you, Chief. I've been honored and humbled to have been in this room with so much wisdom."

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: Rebuilding Healthy Nations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons urges Native nations to continue sharing their stories of success, learning from each other, and working towards creating a better future for the next seven generations.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "Rebuilding Healthy Nations." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Amy Besaw Medford:

"Welcome! My name is Amy Besaw Medford and I'm the Director of the Honoring Nations program. I'm Brothertown Indian from Wisconsin and Korean. I come from two wonderful, beautiful cultures and I'm very happy to serve in the function as director here. I work under Professor Joe Kalt, who's the Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. That's the home for the Honoring Nations program. All of you, the honorees, create the raw material with which the Harvard Project produces research. You also impact the lives of the students here at the [John F.] Kennedy School of Government and the greater Harvard community, as being opportunities for them to hear on-the-ground examples of good governance practices, particularly in the fields of health and education and justice. So you've reached a broader audience than you possibly could imagine, and we thank you from the Harvard community.

Before we begin the day, we'll have a series of folks to start the general conversations about tribal governance. We don't say 'tribal government' in just the hard sense because a lot of the things that happen here are about governance, about community-driven models, about things that come from citizens' involvement. But then the key piece of it is is that it's coming through government function, that you're building stable institutions of good governance practices, that you're serving the needs of your citizens. And so tonight we celebrate, or today we celebrate governance. I hope you all will join me in welcoming our fearless, fearless leader, Chief Oren Lyons, who -- what do you say about a man who is known throughout the world for his Indigenous leadership, for his thinking, for his advocacy work, and for his lacrosse playing? Rumor has it he's also wearing the new Nike© shoes. So without further adieu, Chief Oren Lyons."

Oren Lyons:

"Thank you, Amy. Indeed, I have the new Nike© shoe on, and we'll talk about that. This is the important gathering where we celebrate the accomplishments of the Native people of North America, your accomplishments. It's all positive. It's a recognition of the abilities of our people to meet the problems of the day, these contemporary times. And it's important when we come to a new land -- the Wampanoags are the leaders here. They had to deal with the English the first time, the great leader Massasoit, [King] Philip (Metacom). There's a great history here that a lot of people don't know. You hear about Thanksgiving. There was, there was a great meeting once, and then it seemed to disappear. And then Colonel Bradford, sometime later after the Wampanoag Wars and after they had killed Metacom in a swamp with 16 men fighting to the end, he declared that day a Day of Thanksgiving. So the history here is the first in the old, in the westward movement of our Brothers from across the water, engulfed all of us sooner or later, from here to the West Coast. And our Brother kept going. He went on to the Philippines and he was stopped there. Later on, he went on to Vietnam and he was stopped there. Now he's gone east, having quite a bit of trouble.

Meanwhile, here we are. We're still here, we still have our nations, we still have our leaders and certainly, we accomplish things. Our young people are struggling in these times, as all the young people are in this world. It's not an easy time for anybody. And in Indian Country we can name the problems, but today we're going to celebrate the positives and what we can do and what we accomplished and what you have done for your nations, for you have represented them very well. Honoring Nations is a very difficult program to choose winners. I always feel bad because of the many programs that come forward and we wind up with 14. But it was so difficult for all of us to come to these 14 because they're almost all equal. And it's a tribute to our people, to our resiliency and to our ability to adapt and at the same time keep our traditions, keep our cultures, which is our identity. That is our identity -- cultures, the language. That's your best issue of sovereignty. You keep your cultures and your language, remain who you are, they can't beat you, no matter what. You remain to be who you are. In these times, we have land rights, land claims. We have battles going on on a daily basis. From every nation that we come from, you know what the problems are as leaders. When that phone rings, you just never know who's going to be on the other end of it. Nevertheless we prosper and we're -- you, I would say, are the living proof of the abilities of Indian nations in this country today. They're turning back to us now. International leaders are now reaching for the philosophies of the Native people. And why? Because we have a long-term perspective, as we have on this Nike© shoe, N7©. That's the seventh generation. That's a very direct relationship with one of the largest corporations in the world, and they have now espoused the philosophy of all of our nations, seven generations. From our directions and from the instructions given to the leaders of the Haudenosaunee when they say -- among many other instructions -- we are reminded and the words are direct, 'When you sit and you counsel for the welfare of your people, think not of your children, think not of yourself, think not of your family, not even your generation. Make your decisions on behalf of seven generations coming.' Now that's an instruction on responsibility, a very serious instruction on responsibility. Peacemaker said that, I don't know, a thousand, maybe two thousand years ago. It resonates today. Today it resonates. Be concerned about the seven generations and how we are going to survive and we survive by doing on a daily basis. So that's what your accomplishments are. You have proved to everybody that you can do and you will do, and serve as an example to the rest of the Indian nations and share. Probably one of the most important instructions that we have is to share. They've tried and tried and tried to beat the Indian out of us, which is to share, but we still continue to do it, because that's our fundamental survival basis. And now it's starting to resonate around the world. It's no longer business as usual. That's over because of global warming. We are now facing very, very serious times and we're dealing with a timeframe which is quite short, a lot shorter than people are talking about. We have to be ready. So programs like yourself and what you've produced are how we prepare ourselves and instruct ourselves. And remember the instructions of all of our leaders. Every one of our leaders always looked out for everybody. That was the quality of the leadership that we had. Every single one of them stood for the people.

And so here we are today in a great program, the Harvard program Honoring Nations, and I'm honored to be serving with an amazing board who gives of their time. There's no remuneration here for this board. The only thing that we receive, I think, is to see the accomplishments and to promote that. And we're going to have to step up, too, as we move along. We're going to have to take charge ourselves. Our nations are going to have to own this business. It's up to us. It's an amazing thing. And I just take my hat off to the leadership here, Joe [Kalt] and our staff, tireless staff, and then our board of governors, a tremendous group to work with. So it's a privilege for me actually to be here. I don't know -- you can be pretty fearless when you've got help like that I think. So I think today this is celebration time, presentation time. Tell the world what you've done, explain to the world what you've accomplished and say, 'We're here to share.' That's what I have to say. Thank you."

Chief Oren Lyons on International Leadership and Empowerment

Producer
Seventh Generation Fund
Year

In this presentation, Chief Oren Lyons discusses the topic of international leadership and empowerment. The speech was given on March 18, 2011, at Humboldt State University.

People
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

"Chief Oren Lyons on International Leadership and Empowerment." Seventh Generation Fund. 2011. Presentation. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcNM41PPkDY, accessed March 22, 2023)

 

Chief Oren Lyons Discusses Sovereignty

Producer
Taos News
Year

This is a short interview with Chief Oren Lyons on the issue of sovereignty that was filmed shortly after the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed.

People
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

"Chief Oren Lyons Discusses Sovereignty." Taos News. 2007. Interview. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOw6S_immM4&feature=related, accessed March 22, 2023)