Sovereignty with Oren Lyons Pt. 1

[Music] [Applause] [Music] the history of the nation's indigenous to north america and the burgeoning united states is one that is widely unknown [Music] in order to uncover the entangled roots of the colonial settlers and the first peoples of this land children of the setting sun convened indigenous knowledge keepers to speak on this shared history [Music] the stories that emerged reveal indigenous values beliefs and life ways as they were pre-contact and as they are today we begin with oren lyons a faith keeper for the onondaga nation of the haudenosaunee confederacy located in modern day upstate new york assigned by his elders to go out into the world to fight for the rights of his people warren has taken his teachings all the way to the united nations where he was pivotal in the creation of the united nations declaration of rights of indigenous peoples in revealing the traditions of his people oren emphasizes the need to know the history in order to understand the current terms of a nation-to-nation relationship as described by their treaty with the u.s government you have to know the history in order to understand the point oren walks us through 400 years of history between the united states and the haudenosaunee confederacy illuminating the tradition of his leadership role in government and how that looks in contemporary [Music] society [Music] dear friends relatives elders and respected women i don't know the mummy language but i'm still learning on behalf of our family on behalf of the nation thanking each and every one of you for being here and our hands love to each and every one of you we're very happy to see you our friends and relatives you know what scandal i said from our language thank you for being well that's our greeting scandal same word for peace and in our language your answer is what you say is true it's uh i was so pleased to come to uh let me country again and it's been on my mind for a long time first i want to introduce myself my name is joy crystal tanyuni i'm a wolf clan and my mother was wolf seneca nation my father was an eel on a dogger nation and to clarify the introduction in the houdinoshony we are matrilineal we go by the mother's side for our identity and when my mother came to onondaga as a young lady [Music] and my father married her and they raised family six boys and one girl uh i was brought up at onondaga that's where i lived and but i was seneca by my mother's side all our family six boys and girls syndicate and then they asked me to sit on the underdog council and my youngest brother kingsley lives and we were quite young at the time and she said a clan mother rita peters she was holding five titles because there were four other clan mothers that were mia somewhere so she had these titles she had to fill them titles and we have a process within the houdini what people call six nations uh french call us iroquois english call us six nations and our proper name shioni that's mohawk oneida onondaga cayuga seneca tuscarora that's our confederation gold and we have adoption policies in our confederation and so part of the process of becoming on a chiefs council leaders council have to be on a dogger so i i had to consider as my younger brother we would have to go and we would have to take our name off the seneca nation and be adopted into the underdog nation it's a long process and you can't do one without the other so [Music] i asked my younger brother and i said rita says you should come along with me and he was pretty wild and i was pretty wild myself i said he said well what do you think i said all right i don't know she's he wants you to come with me okay so we went to the leadership of the seneca nation cataract new york and we told them what our ideas were and our position that we had to remove ourselves now from from the role of seneca people they were reluctant to let us go but i said well they said you understand what uh what that means says you know your land or you don't have any yes i said we understand all that so they said all right and so we were taken off the roads of the seneca nation and then we didn't belong anywhere and it took almost five years before they adopted us so we were kind of in no man's land for five years but then we were adopted and they kind mother said you have a choice here you can be adopted into the clan that i want you to sit for which was a turtle i said do i have an option she says yes you do she says if you want to keep your clan then the position that you sit for in the turtle will be temporary until we find somebody that's from the turtle to take your place she says but it's yes you can maintain your identity as a wolf and i did as well as my youngest brother so we were temporary and i was 55 years ago years on that council temporary it's hard to find leaders very very hard to find leaders that's willing to commit and now our system at onondaga on the hood in oshone is still the old system it's still the traditional system that was established probably 14 1500 years ago there's no elective system in onondaga there's no bia there is no government but us because of that because we keep our way it's not easy and so i wanted to clarify the introduction because he introduced me as a seneca i'm not a dog a woof [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have [Music] on one side of our our council at underdog we have the beaver clan uh snipe clan that little bird long snipe clan turtle clan a wolf clan that sits on this side the house and on the other side the house that we work across is a deer clan a bear clan and the eel clan and the hawk clan and in the seneca nation they have the same clans but they had one more and they have the heron clan and the different nations the mohawk nation has three clans turtle wolf bearer and cayugas have six and so forth so it's not all the same across but the clans are the same and then what i found out over a period of time was that a wolf is a wolf is a wolf whether i'm in new york or whether i'm in arizona there's a wolf class that's my family i know you have a wolf clan my family we're all one so it's a broad family the way we do and what i found out i learned over a period of time was how our system the clan system tied us to the earth a brilliant brilliant system because we're tied to the earth wolf is my brother i look after him i worry about him i think about him his work and the same with all and when i traveled around i found out that navajo nation my goodness they had a cloud clan they had a wind clan they had but all tied to the earth brilliant so we're relatives out there everything you see out there is our relatives and close close related and i listen to the lakotas and their prayers at the end they always say all my relations and when they say all my relations they mean every fish that's swimming every tree that's growing every grass that's our family that's your family it's our family but our brother from across the sea he's lost that relationship doesn't understand it knows it's there but lost it and that kind of gave him license to take advantage and do things that's to your own relative that you shouldn't do in the confederacy so long ago when they put us all together the peacemaker the great peacemaker gathered us logo it's a long story i won't go into that because it's so long but established our relationships and the clans what he said to the leaders at that time go into the woods and the first thing you see come back and tell me i saw beaver henceforth that's your family i saw a snipe henceforce that's your family so he established that to us and it's matrilineal the women our lines run with the women whoever the mother is that's who you are not the father the mother [Music] oh [Music] and as you well know the mothers think different than the men they're concerned about life they're concerned about families they're concerned about things and the men they have other ideas sometimes and they have other work as well so there's always a balance there's always a balance but it takes a man and a woman to make a family children however to look after children and so the work is equal as you know but over all the years of my travel and so forth i see the women work harder than the men there's no doubt about that they work harder than them in and they kind of overlook our sometimes not growing up fast enough they kind of you know they have a lot of patience with us luckily fortunate for us and so it's been a a good a good relationship a good family it's a good balance look after responsibility of the earth here that's our responsibility and the two common laws that i see in my travels i see that our people and i say our people i'm talking about native people in these lands here they have two common law two rules and the first law the first rule is respect respect for yourself respect for the nation respect for life respect for everything that's a law that's a rule the second one is to share share what you have everything if there's that's a big law that's a big rule to share in the old days the hunter would go out in the woods and he would find his mark and leave meat hanging in a tree for the next person that comes through he's sharing and the youngest hunter the first time in the first kill he takes that meat and he goes to all the elders and he gives it to them that's his first rule the first law to share [Music] and that's what our brother from across the water doesn't like he's the opposite way mine he says me it's hard for us to fight that but we've managed to to do that just uh two days ago i was down to yelm where we had a traditional circle of indian elders and youth meeting it's our annual meeting and we bring in the traditional leaders from all over the country and we're hosted by a nation and this was nisqually hosting us and the mcleod family and we'll next year we're going to be hosted by the uh northern cheyenne lame deer they have taken the staff so that's where we'll be meeting next year and to re-energize the nation and the people back to their traditions i was very pleased to see the dancers and the songs here it really raised my spirits to see that little little boy boy he was dancing that's the future now sometime not too long he's going to be this big he's going to take care of them but you got a good start and that's to your credit that you keep those songs you keep those dances that's the foundation of us that's our foundation a ceremony that's who we are to give thanks so the two rules to be thankful to share make sure and respect respect for life respect for everything and above all respect for yourself [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] you

Channel: ChildrenSSP

Views: 11,325

Rating: 4.953125 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 2Vcsq_DkGCE

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020