In 1977 the NGO arm of the United Nations put out a call for papers from the native peoples of the world, asking them to describe the oppression they have suffered. The Haudenosaunee—better known to us as the Six Nations Confederacy, or by their French appellation, the Iroquois—responded with three papers (collectively, A Basic Call to Consciousness), which they described as “an abbreviated analysis of Western history, and which call for a consciousness of the Sacred Web of Life in the Universe.” Further, they wrote:
What is presented here is nothing less audacious than a cosmogony of the Industrialized World presented by the most politically powerful and independent non-Western political body surviving in North America. It is, in a way, the modern world through Pleistocene eyes.
Scholars and casual readers alike should question the significance, in the age of the Neutron bomb, Watergate, and nuclear energy plant proliferation, of a statement by a North American Indian people. But there is probably some argument to be made for the appropriateness of such a statement at this time.
…It is a geological kind of perspective, which sees modern man as an infant, occupying a very short space of time in an incredibly long spectrum. It is the perspective of the oldest elder looking into the affairs of a young child and seeing that he is committing incredibly destructive folly. It is, in short, the statement of a people who are ageless but who trace their history as a people to the very beginning of time. And they are speaking, in this instance, to a world which dates its existence from a little over 500 years ago, and perhaps, in many cases, much more recently than that.
And it is, to our knowledge, the very first statement to be issued by a Native nation. What follows are not the research products of psychologists, historians, or anthropologists. The papers which follow are the first authentic analyses of the modern world ever committed to writing by an official body of Native people.
Historically, the Haudenosaunee included a subset of the tribes located near the Great Lakes region, in what is today the northeastern USA and southeastern Canada. Based on archaeology and the correspondence of oral histories to cosmological events, the original five nations of the Haudenosaunee—Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—are believed to have inaugurated their confederacy almost 900 years ago, making them one of the oldest extant democracies in the world. Their political system included features like redistribution of wealth and a prerogative granted to women to veto any decision to wage war. The sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, joined them in 1722.
Haudenosaunee history includes a revolutionary figure, referred to as Peacemaker, who was born among the Huron people at a time when the local nations were locked in cycles of blood feuds and warfare. Peacemaker's commitment to peace, even in boyhood, made him an outsider among his people. As a young man, he went forth into the world to spread his message of peace and his plan for unity. Eventually, with the aid of Ayonwatha (Hiawatha), a Mohawk man, and Jingosaseh, a woman from another nation, Peacemaker succeeded in uniting the five nations, creating a system of government that balanced the political powers of women and men, and establishing the Great Law of Peace, an orally transmitted constitution that outlines the principles on which their government is founded and administered.
In their papers to the UN, the Haudenosaunee present a fascinating historical ethnography of the West—turning the tables and shining the anthropological mirror back at us. In their telling, they use categories to describe us that most of us do not identify with, and they reduce what we consider our monumental and far-reaching historical moments, much as we gloss over such details in our histories of indigenous peoples, or of any group that seems very distant from us. Interestingly, while this may diminish nuance and complexity, it can still see through some of our own biases and denials. For example, here is their quick take on Eurasian pre-history:
Around ten thousand years ago, peoples who spoke Indo-European languages lived in the area which today we know as the Steppes of Russia. At that time, they were a Natural World people who lived off the land. They had developed agriculture, and it is said that they had begun the practice of animal domestication. It is not known that they were the first people in the world to practice animal domestication. The hunters and gatherers who roamed the area probably acquired animals from the agricultural people, and adopted an economy, based on the herding and breeding of animals.
Herding and breeding of animals signaled a basic alteration in the relationship of humans to other life forms. It set into motion one of the true revolutions in human history. Until herding, humans depended on nature for the reproductive powers of the animal world. With the advent of herding, humans assumed the functions which had for all time been the functions of the spirits of the animals. Sometime after this happened, history records the first appearance of the social organization known as "patriarchy."
The area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers was the homeland, in ancient times, of various peoples, many of whom spoke Semitic languages. The Semitic people were among the first in the world to develop irrigation technology. This development led to the early development of towns, and eventually cities. The manipulation of the waters, another form of spirit life, represented another way in which humans developed a technology which reproduced a function of Nature.
Within these cultures, stratified hierarchical social organization crystallized. The ancient civilizations developed imperialism, partly because of the very nature of cities. Cities are obviously population concentrations. Most importantly though, they are places which must import the material needs of this concentration from the countryside. This means that the Natural World must be subjugated, extracted from, and exploited in the interest of the city. To give order to this process, the Semitic world developed early codes of law. They also developed the idea of monotheism to serve as a spiritual model for their material and political organization.
Much of the history of the ancient world recounts the struggles between the Indo-Europeans and the Semitic peoples. Over a period of several millennia, the two cultures clashed and blended. By the second millennia B.C., some Indo-Europeans, most specifically the Greeks, had adopted the practice of building cities, thus becoming involved in the process which they named "Civilization."
…Feudal society in Europe appears to have arisen as the result of a number of conditions which existed following the dissolution of the Roman Empire. It was based on a system by which rulers of warrior castes became strong enough to demand and extract fealty from warriors. There arose, generally, an administrative center, usually a castle, and around these were agricultural people who were usually protected from outside aggression by their "lord," the sovereign of the manor…. The feudal lord often held dictatorial power over his "subjects," especially the peasants. Military protection was necessary because of the continuous state of "feuding," among the various lords…. The land, and everything on it, including the animals, plants, and people, was under the domination or dominion of the feudal "lord." This lord demanded loyalty and a part of the peasant's crops as well as some of his/her labor…. Prior to the rise of feudalism, it is fair to state that most of the agricultural people of Europe were local tribesmen of various kinds.
...Peasants have no rights, save those granted by their lord. They cannot own the land as a people. Only the Sovereign owns or possesses sovereignty. Peasants were often treated as chattel. They were bought, sold, and inherited with the land. They were a people who had been dispossessed of their freedom. At some points in history, the tribal peoples of Europe became peasants through a combination of forces, the most direct being military pressure.
A peasant is not a member of a true community of people. His society is incomplete without the town or city.
It is especially interesting to keep in mind that this document was prepared by outsiders to the academe nearly 35 years ago, when it offers such insights about modern times:
The air is foul, the waters poisoned, the trees dying, the animals are disappearing. We think even the systems of weather are changing. Our ancient teaching warned us that if Man interfered with the Natural Laws, these things would come to be.
…The European invaders, from the first, attempted to claim Indians as their subjects. Where the Indian people resisted, as in the case of the Hau de no sau nee, the Europeans rationalized that resistance to be an incapacity for civilization. The incapacity for civilization rationale became the basis for the phenomenon in the West which is known today as racism.
…Many Western institutions are in fact colonial institutions of Western culture. The churches, for example, operate in virtually the same manner as did the feudal lords. First, they identify a people whose loyalty they wish to secure in an expansionist effort. Then they charter a group to conduct a "mission." If that group is successful, they become, in effect, the spiritual sovereigns or dictators of those whose loyalty they command. That process in organized Christianity may actually be more ancient than the process of political colonialism described here.
Modern multi-national corporations operate in much the same way. They identify a market or an area which has the resources they want. They then obtain a charter, or some form of sanction from a Western government, and they send what amounts to a colonizing force into the area. If they successfully penetrate the area, that area becomes a sort of economic colony of the multi-national. The greatest resistance to that form of penetration has been mounted by local nationalists.
In North America, educational institutions operate under the same colonial process. Schools are chartered by a sovereign (such as the state, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs,) to penetrate the Native community. The purpose in doing so is to integrate the Native people into society as workers and consumers, the Industrial Society's version of peasants. The sovereign recognizes, and practically allows, no other form of socializing institution for the young. As in the days of the medieval castle, the sovereign demands absolute fealty. Under this peculiar legal system, the Western sovereign denies the existence of those whose allegiance he cannot obtain. Some become, by this rationale, illegitimate.
…We are living in a period of time in which we expect to see great changes in the economy of the colonizers. The imperial powers of the world appear to be facing successful resistance to expansion in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. We will soon see the end of an economy based on the supply of cheap oil, natural gas, and other resources, and that will greatly change the face of the world.
For the moment, there is more wealth, more goods and services, more automation than has ever existed in the history of mankind. The world is living in an age of manufactured affluence. But the people of the world have rarely been told the costs in terms of peoples' lives and suffering, that this affluence has extracted from each of us. Even the people in North America, who seemingly benefit from all these "advances" seem to be unaware of the destruction they are experiencing. The "Modern Age," and its consumer values, has altered, in very basic ways, the very structure of human society, and the basic conditions of the Natural World.
The whole document is long, but worth reading, as it also imparts a fuller sense of the Haudenosaunee philosophy and worldview, as well as their struggle for sovereignty, which continues to this day.
- Part 1— Spiritualism: The Highest Form of Political Consciousness
- Part 2— The Obvious Fact of Our Continuing Existence: Legal History of the Hau De No Sau Nee
- Part 3— Policies of Oppression in The Name of "Democracy": Economic History of the Hau De No Sau Nee
Posted by: astro.nj | November 03, 2011 at 03:17 AM
astro.nj
Since I liked this piece, let me tell you how I read that line. I'm sure you'll agree that facts are one thing, their interpretation another. An eye forged by radically different experiences and historical memories might interpret the same factual material quite differently, and no less legitimately. We see an outsider's narrative here (from 35 years ago, more novel then), not of a cultural insider to the academe. The point is not that an outsider's view is necessarily better; just that it's different and may be worthy of consideration. Take, for instance, the Dalit interpretations of Hindu culture and its sacred/literary texts (e.g., "Why I am not a Hindu" by Kancha Ilaiah), which can be very different from mainstream interpretations in the Indian academe. The Dalits clearly didn't learn in isolation of the academe's output.
Posted by: Namit | November 03, 2011 at 05:09 AM
astro.nj,
If I'm understanding your question, I think Namit's answer is spot on, and the parallels with the Dalit perspective on Hinduism are apt. For sure, the writers of this document have studied academic texts on western history, culture, and anthropology, etc. However, reading, studying, and even graduating from university doesn't by itself make one an academic, an insider or subscriber to the establishmentarian arbiters of western knowledge. I think there's little about this document that conforms to a western academic take on history and society, especially not from the time in which it was written.
For starters, western history has conventionally been told as a story of exploration, conquest, technological progress, and enlightenment. Insider critiques have argued that some mistakes were made along the way; innocents have sometimes paid the price for our progress; perhaps we took a wrong turn somewhere, or corruption has set in, and we must steer ourselves back toward the true course of human betterment. But the view presented here is completely oblique to those arguments. Instead, this history is primarily a story of human alienation from nature, to the detriment of both. It doesn't subscribe to the values of the western project, in which "civilization," consolidation of power, and urban life have seemed to be the goal. Similarly, western narratives have generally assumed that patriarchal systems are either the natural state of human societies, or they are the progressive state of human societies (with perhaps, at best, the occasional quaint and colorful exception); whereas, here patriarchy is given as an aberration, a result of our earliest separation from nature. It's unlikely any western academic insider would present such a paper to the UN, especially not 35 years ago. But these folks were just telling it the way they saw it; you may or may not find merit in their views.
And isn't it interesting that back in 1975, when few academics were concerned about environmental degradation, when fewer still had noticed human-made climate change (and no one was openly speaking about it) the writers of this document thought these things were worth mentioning to the UN? I'm reasonably sure that the Haudenosaunee did not arrive at this observation by doing scientific studies or reading about climate change in a book; they figured it out based on their own bodies of knowledge and their own ways of paying attention to their environment. Incidentally, other tribal groups living very close to nature in other parts of the world had also made such observations before scientists were openly discussing them, so, I don't think the point here is about originality (whatever that might mean), but simply appreciating a perspective that comes from outside of our knowledge establishment. Often there is something to be learned by the exercise of looking at oneself from the outside.
Posted by: Usha | November 04, 2011 at 08:57 PM