Chief Oren Lyons - The Roots of American Democracy | Bioneers

Yosuke no joy whistling Justin died uni don't anger I said thank you for being well it's our greeting your response to that is what shot Doukas it means yes it's true and I said that I'm I will it's my family my clan major identity for Indian nations and people they discussions that have been going on here by the Bioneers and the speakers and people included in all of you is is vital it's important it's fundamental when I was coming here the other day approaching Marin Center I saw the people from a distance and I recognized them immediately and I said the hippies and the Indians are coming back together again those are great days and we had good times thank you to the pioneers for for doing this year after year spirit and will to do it it's great great to be back so I thought well since time is always short get your first priority out there say the first thing that needs to be done so let's say my first message is that we have to put our our minds together our hearts our minds together and vote this administration out and down the road no ifs ands or buts about that and we can do it it got time you have to use your mind and you have to think how are we going to coalesce on this let's not get into any spitting matches between ourselves let's put our agendas aside and get somebody in there I think we can all agree that another four years of this administration will be unthinkable and so the opportunity is there administration is vulnerable in many many areas but I think one of the most important areas that there is is the area of environment it's going to come and go Evan flow with this idea of Iraq and the fighting and the dying and mismanagement and all of that but the environment that is on its way the problems are severe and I think we should sharpen our position they finally got the Indians to vote so we might as well kick his ass that's first message talk about democracy and what is democracy the history in this this country of democracy Western democracy I'll call it is very old and our people have been involved in this discussion from the beginning from the first meeting that we made and with the Dutch 16:13 the two row wampum belt which established our style of interaction and relationship and at that time we said that you have a canoe or we have a canoe and you have a boat and in your boat you have many religions many colors of people in a ways of life I said in our canoe we have simple life we have you might call a hard life but life that we we like and then our canoe is our people our government our way of life will will connect our two boats our ships our two vessels with what we call the covenant chain of peace and they'll be made of three links the first link is peace the second link is equity and the third link is how long will it last and we said that when we make this agreement it should last as long as the Sun rises in the East sets in the West as long as a rivers run downhill and as long as a grass grows green which there are some contradictions already but but still and all the Sun is still rising setting and so we made this agreement this covenant chain and we hooked our two vessels together and we said we're going to float down gas went on the great river of life side by side in peace and friendship for as long as we exist that was the essence of our our agreement in the beginning and at that time the people who were talking said well what will happen if if some of our people want to get into your canoe or some of your people want to get into our boat and people at the time the leaders at that time said that's going to happen but mostly it will be our people getting into your vote because our life is hard and because it's it's not something that your people are used to you probably will be a few people in our boat but many of our people in your boat but they said that won't be the issue the issue will be those that have one foot in a canoe and one foot in a boat that's not a good place to be and they said sometime in the future a great wind will come and they'll blow the vessels apart and those that are there will fall into this river of life and no one will be able to help them on this side of the creation I was glad to hear Kenny talk about the creation because that's our belief Indian nations belief in the creation we believe in a higher power we believe in a great Authority we believe in the way that were we're hooked together the way that we we are intertwined the way that we we live with one another all of this one being and so that's what we've been gauging all of our agreements with down through the centuries first the to role and many nations have held that then the English landed in Cape Cod the Englishmen landed there and about 1620 although there were many people back and forth but they were coming for real on this one and and we watched them and several hundred years later in 1776 they declared themselves Americans and they said that they no longer had allegiance to their father the king of England that they were separate that they were sovereign that they were independent and the question arises is how did they make this transition how did they come from an Englishman to an American because in 1750 or 1776 or 1700 an American was an Indian everybody else was what they were so they said they were Americans and they made this transition through hundreds and hundreds of meetings that we held up and down the coast inside and all was over land always over problems in them and we knew them very well and they knew our leaders very well we spend a lot of time in Philadelphia and in New York and in Albany and so the idea of being free the idea of being independent was everywhere they looked and they liked it and they became like us all of those people that were out there in the frontiers as soon as more people came they moved just like the Indians didn't scan crowded didn't like being crowded didn't like towns they wanted to be in the woods and so at one point at a meeting in Lancaster Pennsylvania in 1744 when a several of the governors were arguing amongst themselves one of the underdog the leaders stood up and said to them you know you're never going to mount to anything until you quit fighting with one another I said why don't you make a union why don't you make a league like our great League of Peace and began the instruction at that time those notes were taken to Philadelphia and were printed and the printer was none other than Ben Franklin and he read those notes and he said that's a good idea make some common sense here and so in 1754 he called the Albany plan of Union to create this league a piece like the Indians like the Hadean Oh Shawnee whom the French called Iroquois and so they had the meeting and there was a spy for the King there now he sent word back to England and said King you better be careful they're talking about government by the people here so they knew what it was about 1775 they met again and they asked us to join them in a battle coming and our chief said we know your father and we have a lot of agreements treaties with your father and we know you we also have agreements and treaties with you we think that this is a battle between father and son best we stay out the Six Nations at that time was trying to say snoot row because it was a fierce fight coming and it was gonna rage over our lands so we were caught in the middle of his great great battle but when the Continental Congress joined itself they called themselves the thirteen fires they used all of our terms they had a Grand Council they called themselves and so and they used wampum the way we did because they learned over these hundreds of years and the first agreement that we had with a new Continental Congress for 1776 at Fort Pitt and they made a treaty belt the Continental Congress made a wampum treaty belt and they sent it to bring neutrality over the coming conflict and they said to us we agree with your position and we agree with your second position they said because if you weren't going to fight with us then don't fight against us but actually in the event itself Mohawks fought heavily on the side of the English unites such growers fought heavily on the side of the colonies and in fact it was the Unitas carrying 300 bushels of corn down to Valley Forge when the troops were starving that kept him alive and it takes a lot to cook corn you can't cook corn in one hour it takes about six hours to make corn soup and so the Indians had to fight the troops while they cooked for them cause you can't eat raw corn you know a thousand years ago in coming to our lands long before the white man when we were fighting amongst ourselves great peacemaker came in a great epic story about how he came among our nation's and how he brought peace some say it took him 200 years to do that but eventually on the shores of underdog he had the 50 original leaders of the original five nations the Mohawks the Unitas 10 and August the Cayuga s-- and the Senecas they finally were sitting in a group in a peaceful manner and then he laid down the laws he laid down our Confederacy Constitution he said I'm gonna base this Constitution on the first principle which is peace the second principle which is equity for the people and the third principle which is the power of the good minds those are the principles and their dual principles when I agreed you I said Noah has scandal scandal is the same word for peace so health and peace are the same thing you can't have peace without health and I've been listening to the discussion about out there and of course it's a problem and so he said scan Oh peace equity for the people be fair be fair to the people can have justice without equity justice comes with equity dual principle then he said the power of the good Minds the Council of Chiefs and the people themselves the good minds and he was talking about unity which is what we're talking about now to be united to be of one mind and when you do that you have great power great strength and this is what kind of otago was talking to the Virginia governor's and Pennsylvania governor New York governor about working together unity and that's what we're gonna do now what we're thinking now how are we gonna unite how we're gonna do this together and comes great power from that so the discussion resonates when he talked to the leaders he said to the leaders first he said how shall you know your nation he said you shall know your nation through the women he said they will be carrying the line he said because the earth is female the women will be working with the earth the earth will belong to them so when a girl was born you had a landholder and when a boy was born you had a lacrosse player and good singer good dancer and maybe he'll even be a chief one day but he gave a great deal of responsibility to the women he made them the clan mothers and with them they had to choose all the leaders so he gave us a process of raising leaders that did not involve politics and so at the end of the day you got a leader not a politician it's a very extensive process to hold the title the Hadean no Shoni first the clan mother will choose from her clan or a related clan the leader that she wants and that has to be agreed upon by consensus by the clan if they don't agree she got to find somebody else so it's the clan that is agreeable but it's her choice if they agree then she takes the choice to the Chiefs Council and they also have the right of veto if they don't agree she's got to start again but if they do agree now you have a real candidate for this title which was the original person at that original time with a peacemaker so the titles we hold are the names of those original 50 Chiefs the office it's an office and each has a deputy you have a clan mother achieve four sub chief a partner and you have a faith keeper male faith keeper female and they look after the welfare of the clan itself and so but choosing the leader now we will send a messenger to the other house which is the younger brothers the kyrgyz the own itís the Tuscaroras and they will accept a message and they will say good news we'll get ready and because our site is in mourning we have achieved down they will do all the work and then they will send us a runner and they say this is a time this is a place where we will race the new leader and so then we send runners to all the Six Nations announcing that news and we gather at that appointed time and that appointed time then the two houses judged this man again and then when they're finished then the speaker which will take all day this is a big big big aver and we hear all the laws were here all of that and so at the end of the day we we will bring forth the candidate and if he passes all of this examination on his own merit as a human being and is simply to be a man of good health courage family man responsible honest if he's accepted then they'll all agree but then he turned to the people and they say does anyone here know reason why this man should not be here and the final word is the people that's democracy in his form and I know nations across this great Turtle Island racer leaders the same ways are chosen by the people and their their by the will of the people and when they don't perform the will of the people will remove them and that's what you've got to do now I'll say one more one more thing in a short time I've been traveling I've been putting most of my effort on on global warming because of the dangers that are coming and most people not aware of them and don't really realize how serious it is they the Gulf Stream Atlantic Ocean is slowing down and the University of Bergen sent a report 2001 that said if it continues to slow down at the pace it's slowing it'll stop in 15 years and so if it does well then we're gonna deal with it and what will happen well you'll force the issue of a global China change you'll have ice age so I asked the scientist what's that mean is it well you'll start snowing 24 hours a day for a hundred years it's we're pushing a dimmer switch raising the light raising the power to power the power when you come to the end of the dimmer switch you want to give it one more push for more energy and it becomes a switch and it goes from hot to cold because the earth takes care of itself it will cool itself and that's what's an ice age we're just pushing the bubble very hard so I want you to keep that in your mind because this administration is not letting you know that and this administration does not want you to be working in those areas but if you're really concerned we can do it and so let's put our minds together as one and let's get something from here and next year when we come back again let's have a report and a good one thank you you you

Channel: Bioneers

Views: 44,907

Rating: 4.9232693 out of 5

Keywords: bioneers, collective heritage institute, social justice, environmentalism, indigenous knowledge, activism, movements, educational, Chief Oren Lyons, American democracy, Iroquois elder, Iroquois (Ethnicity)

Id: Gs0EK1z9xhc

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 19 2014