1 00:00:00,192 --> 00:00:02,775 (upbeat music) 2 00:00:08,770 --> 00:00:11,730 -: Hello, my name is Fern Naomi Renville. 3 00:00:11,730 --> 00:00:14,740 I'm a teaching artist, I live in Seattle. 4 00:00:14,740 --> 00:00:18,750 I'm also an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. 5 00:00:18,750 --> 00:00:21,170 We're in eastern Dakota band from South Dakota, 6 00:00:21,170 --> 00:00:22,920 which is where I'm from originally. 7 00:00:23,770 --> 00:00:27,880 I'm also a member of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe 8 00:00:27,880 --> 00:00:30,470 and the Omaha nation through my grandmother 9 00:00:30,470 --> 00:00:32,010 and great grandmother. 10 00:00:32,010 --> 00:00:36,227 This story is called "The Great Law of Peace." 11 00:00:37,570 --> 00:00:41,340 There was a time a long time ago 12 00:00:41,340 --> 00:00:45,870 when the nations of the Hudna Shawnee Alliance were at war, 13 00:00:45,870 --> 00:00:48,260 not just with one another, 14 00:00:48,260 --> 00:00:52,530 but within each of those tribes there was terrible conflict 15 00:00:52,530 --> 00:00:55,253 and people were fighting with one another. 16 00:00:56,260 --> 00:01:00,370 They say it was a dark time in which women and children 17 00:01:00,370 --> 00:01:03,143 cowered in fear of their own men. 18 00:01:04,730 --> 00:01:08,980 In this dark time, a young man appeared. 19 00:01:08,980 --> 00:01:13,200 This young man came to be known as the peacemaker. 20 00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:18,200 The peacemaker wondered why people couldn't stop fighting. 21 00:01:20,090 --> 00:01:24,680 The peacemaker worked to bring understanding and peace, 22 00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:27,863 and to put an end to all the violence and conflict. 23 00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:33,100 Now, this peacemaker was staying 24 00:01:33,100 --> 00:01:36,160 in kind of like a boarding house. 25 00:01:36,160 --> 00:01:37,490 There was a lodge. 26 00:01:37,490 --> 00:01:42,420 This lodge was run by a woman known as Jakunsasa. 27 00:01:42,420 --> 00:01:44,560 Jakunsasa was well-known, 28 00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:49,560 because she alone ran a boarding house for travelers. 29 00:01:49,690 --> 00:01:51,810 Now, she didn't charge money either. 30 00:01:51,810 --> 00:01:55,280 Anyone at all who needed or wanted a safe place 31 00:01:55,280 --> 00:01:57,930 to lay their head and be fed at night, 32 00:01:57,930 --> 00:02:02,560 she would give them a place in her lodge, but she had rules. 33 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:06,650 You may come into my lodge and you'll receive hospitality, 34 00:02:06,650 --> 00:02:09,400 but first you must leave your weapons outside the door. 35 00:02:10,420 --> 00:02:12,070 And that's what happened. 36 00:02:12,070 --> 00:02:16,350 No matter if people were at war outside of her lodge, 37 00:02:16,350 --> 00:02:19,430 inside her lodge, they enjoyed meals together 38 00:02:19,430 --> 00:02:21,730 and slept next to one another 39 00:02:21,730 --> 00:02:24,693 and were safe in Jakunsasa's lodge. 40 00:02:25,850 --> 00:02:29,820 Well, the peacemaker was very impressed 41 00:02:29,820 --> 00:02:32,880 by Jakunsasa's wisdom and he took note. 42 00:02:32,880 --> 00:02:34,390 He took note. 43 00:02:34,390 --> 00:02:37,890 Now, the peacemaker was having difficulties 44 00:02:37,890 --> 00:02:42,860 convincing everyone to agree to peace, 45 00:02:42,860 --> 00:02:44,180 to lay down their weapons, 46 00:02:44,180 --> 00:02:47,180 to decide that the things they were fighting over, 47 00:02:47,180 --> 00:02:50,090 were not as important as the things 48 00:02:50,090 --> 00:02:51,840 that they could fight for together. 49 00:02:53,020 --> 00:02:57,520 Now, there was a leader at the time of the Onondaga. 50 00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:00,850 This leader was called Tadodaho. 51 00:03:00,850 --> 00:03:04,910 Tadodaho was the angriest, and they say the meanest 52 00:03:04,910 --> 00:03:08,563 of all of these warring tribes, their leaders. 53 00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:13,460 Tadodaho had committed so many terrible crimes 54 00:03:13,460 --> 00:03:17,480 that they say that his hair was replaced by snakes. 55 00:03:17,480 --> 00:03:21,760 Snakes grew out of his head and replaced his hair. 56 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:25,173 And his face had no humanity in it. 57 00:03:27,010 --> 00:03:30,640 Also, he lived in the swamp. 58 00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:34,133 Tadodaho was more comfortable in the swamp with his people. 59 00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:38,343 The peacemaker went and visited Tadodaho. 60 00:03:39,510 --> 00:03:42,427 The peacemaker said, "Look, look at this arrow, 61 00:03:42,427 --> 00:03:43,867 "see this one arrow? 62 00:03:43,867 --> 00:03:45,653 "It is so easy to break, 63 00:03:46,837 --> 00:03:49,477 "and a bundle of arrows together, 64 00:03:49,477 --> 00:03:53,077 "they are strong and cannot be broken. 65 00:03:53,077 --> 00:03:56,947 "The Hudna Shawnee Alliance needs to work together 66 00:03:56,947 --> 00:03:58,607 "for all of our good." 67 00:03:59,690 --> 00:04:04,240 But Tadodaho could not be swayed, could not be convinced, 68 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:07,270 he did not want to leave his warring ways. 69 00:04:07,270 --> 00:04:12,270 And so the peacemaker decided to asked for advice 70 00:04:12,290 --> 00:04:16,223 from Jakunsasa, the woman who ran the boarding house. 71 00:04:17,437 --> 00:04:19,317 "Jakunsasa, what do you do? 72 00:04:19,317 --> 00:04:20,377 "What should we do? 73 00:04:20,377 --> 00:04:22,527 "Do you have any wisdom? 74 00:04:22,527 --> 00:04:26,117 "Anything that you can help, any ideas?" 75 00:04:27,010 --> 00:04:28,023 Oh, she did. 76 00:04:29,087 --> 00:04:33,277 "It's funny that you should ask," she said. 77 00:04:33,277 --> 00:04:34,770 "It's funny that you should ask 78 00:04:34,770 --> 00:04:37,860 "because recently the birds have been coming 79 00:04:38,700 --> 00:04:41,310 "to me every morning and singing a song, 80 00:04:41,310 --> 00:04:43,060 "a new song I've never heard before. 81 00:04:44,992 --> 00:04:47,520 "This song is beautiful 82 00:04:48,410 --> 00:04:50,343 "and I can't get it out of my mind." 83 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:56,493 And Jakunsasa sang the song for the peacemaker. 84 00:04:57,950 --> 00:05:02,800 And when he taught everyone else to sing that song, 85 00:05:02,800 --> 00:05:07,790 together, together the people went into the swamp 86 00:05:07,790 --> 00:05:11,350 and they appealed one last time to Tadodaho 87 00:05:12,270 --> 00:05:13,543 who said no again. 88 00:05:14,570 --> 00:05:16,400 And then they sang to him. 89 00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:21,400 The people sang the song that Jakunsasa had taught them 90 00:05:21,410 --> 00:05:24,100 that she had been given by the birds. 91 00:05:24,100 --> 00:05:28,930 They sang that song and Tadodaho started to get drawn 92 00:05:28,930 --> 00:05:32,670 out of the swamp almost against his will. 93 00:05:32,670 --> 00:05:35,240 they pulled him out of the swamp with that song, 94 00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:39,830 and has he got closer, his snakes on his head, 95 00:05:39,830 --> 00:05:41,630 they started to fall out. 96 00:05:41,630 --> 00:05:42,803 They fell off! 97 00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:45,963 His face started to soften. 98 00:05:47,310 --> 00:05:51,110 As Tadodaho came out of the swamp, 99 00:05:51,110 --> 00:05:53,513 as the song brought him closer, 100 00:05:54,830 --> 00:05:57,070 he returned to himself. 101 00:05:57,070 --> 00:06:00,290 He returned to his own humanity. 102 00:06:00,290 --> 00:06:04,967 He returned to his humanity and he agreed to listen. 103 00:06:07,740 --> 00:06:12,710 Tadodaho, if you agree to this law of peace, 104 00:06:12,710 --> 00:06:15,330 the Onondaga nation will be the keepers of the faith 105 00:06:15,330 --> 00:06:17,763 and you will always have a special place. 106 00:06:19,240 --> 00:06:20,543 Tadodaho agreed. 107 00:06:21,390 --> 00:06:26,030 Tadodaho agreed, and then the peacemaker 108 00:06:26,030 --> 00:06:30,630 directed that everyone should find the tallest pine tree, 109 00:06:30,630 --> 00:06:32,970 the tallest white pine tree, which they did, 110 00:06:32,970 --> 00:06:36,760 and at the roots of that pine tree, they dug the big hole. 111 00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:39,930 They dug a big hole and they threw all their weapons 112 00:06:39,930 --> 00:06:42,933 in that hole and then they covered them up. 113 00:06:45,250 --> 00:06:48,300 And then the peacemaker gave 114 00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:51,300 the Hudna Shawnee people the laws 115 00:06:51,300 --> 00:06:55,430 that are the reason that they're now called 116 00:06:55,430 --> 00:06:56,850 the Hudna Shawnee people, 117 00:06:56,850 --> 00:06:59,660 because that means the people of the long house. 118 00:06:59,660 --> 00:07:02,380 The long house that's been described 119 00:07:02,380 --> 00:07:07,380 is the house of law and justice and health 120 00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:11,410 that is described in the law of peace. 121 00:07:11,410 --> 00:07:16,037 Now, the peacemaker said, "The first thing 122 00:07:16,037 --> 00:07:20,587 "that we must establish is that the wisest people 123 00:07:20,587 --> 00:07:22,037 "are the women. 124 00:07:22,037 --> 00:07:25,337 "The women are the wisest among you 125 00:07:25,337 --> 00:07:29,447 "and the women are also the keepers of the earth, 126 00:07:29,447 --> 00:07:33,150 "and so we must respect the women." 127 00:07:33,150 --> 00:07:38,150 And the peacemaker created the council of grandmothers. 128 00:07:38,890 --> 00:07:42,610 This council of clan mothers or grandmothers 129 00:07:42,610 --> 00:07:46,320 were the wisest oldest women in the villages, 130 00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:51,320 the ones agreed upon by all that they had the longest 131 00:07:51,500 --> 00:07:55,870 demonstrated track records of working for their people 132 00:07:55,870 --> 00:07:58,360 and caring for their people. 133 00:07:58,360 --> 00:08:02,740 Those were the wise grandmothers who oversaw everything 134 00:08:02,740 --> 00:08:05,160 in Hudna Shawnee society. 135 00:08:05,160 --> 00:08:09,580 The peacemaker created the elder brothers council 136 00:08:09,580 --> 00:08:11,480 or the grand council. 137 00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:15,310 The grand council included two representatives 138 00:08:15,310 --> 00:08:19,323 from every village, or every council. 139 00:08:20,780 --> 00:08:23,890 In those villages, or clans, 140 00:08:23,890 --> 00:08:28,210 the people chose these two representatives. 141 00:08:28,210 --> 00:08:31,650 They sent them with a consensus message 142 00:08:31,650 --> 00:08:36,280 from the village overseen by the council of grandmothers, 143 00:08:36,280 --> 00:08:38,123 the wise clan mothers. 144 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:42,810 There was also, created by the peacemaker, 145 00:08:42,810 --> 00:08:47,350 a younger brothers council with the Onondaga and the Oneida. 146 00:08:47,350 --> 00:08:51,090 Now, this younger bothers council was just the same. 147 00:08:51,090 --> 00:08:54,840 There were two representatives from each clan or village 148 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:57,300 who were sent to represent 149 00:08:57,300 --> 00:09:01,773 the consensus opinion of their village. 150 00:09:02,670 --> 00:09:07,670 Now, this method of democratic governance 151 00:09:08,070 --> 00:09:13,070 did not go unnoticed by the colonists 152 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:19,320 who arrived in 16th century in Hudna Shawnee lands. 153 00:09:19,610 --> 00:09:22,010 The people who arrived from Europe 154 00:09:22,010 --> 00:09:26,290 had never experienced democratic governance. 155 00:09:26,290 --> 00:09:29,353 The colonists were familiar with monarchy. 156 00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:35,050 The colonists remarked on and noted 157 00:09:35,050 --> 00:09:39,920 and were deeply influenced by Hudna Shawnee culture, 158 00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:44,240 by this representative governance that they could see 159 00:09:44,240 --> 00:09:47,550 for themselves in the communities around them. 160 00:09:47,550 --> 00:09:50,610 Keeping in mind that there was some pretty intimate contact 161 00:09:50,610 --> 00:09:54,083 between the colonists and the Hudna Shawnee people, 162 00:09:55,190 --> 00:09:58,800 pretty much the survival of the colonists 163 00:09:58,800 --> 00:10:01,113 was dependent on tribal peoples, 164 00:10:02,170 --> 00:10:05,550 and it wasn't just about how to grow food and eat 165 00:10:05,550 --> 00:10:10,550 in the New World that was being learned by the colonists. 166 00:10:11,110 --> 00:10:14,220 Now, fast forward a hundred years, 167 00:10:14,220 --> 00:10:19,220 in 1776, a gentleman by the name of Benjamin Franklin 168 00:10:21,130 --> 00:10:24,270 who is described as one of America's quote unquote 169 00:10:24,270 --> 00:10:28,900 founding fathers was intimately familiar with, 170 00:10:28,900 --> 00:10:31,940 deeply influenced by 171 00:10:31,940 --> 00:10:35,770 and fascinated with and a big booster of 172 00:10:37,040 --> 00:10:40,680 what was known as the Iroquois Law of Peace, 173 00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:44,830 because he could see for himself 174 00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:50,370 what a unique form of government this was 175 00:10:50,370 --> 00:10:53,193 that the Hudna Shawnee people were practicing. 176 00:10:54,440 --> 00:10:59,440 And Benjamin Franklin absolutely was directly inspired 177 00:11:00,970 --> 00:11:04,200 in building the U.S. Constitution 178 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:06,323 by the Iroquois Law of Peace. 179 00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:11,070 Now, you could say that they elder brothers council 180 00:11:11,070 --> 00:11:14,510 is the U.S. Senate and you may remember that we still 181 00:11:14,510 --> 00:11:18,840 send two people from each state to the Senate. 182 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:21,080 We have a House of Representatives, 183 00:11:21,080 --> 00:11:22,623 a younger bothers council, 184 00:11:23,490 --> 00:11:26,880 and our U.S. Supreme Court is surely supposed to be 185 00:11:26,880 --> 00:11:30,510 the council of clan mothers or grandmothers. 186 00:11:30,510 --> 00:11:35,510 In 1987, 187 00:11:35,520 --> 00:11:38,263 skip forward another hundred odd years, 188 00:11:39,430 --> 00:11:43,770 under the leadership of Senator Daniel Inouye, 189 00:11:43,770 --> 00:11:47,710 the U.S. Congress past resolution number 76, 190 00:11:47,710 --> 00:11:50,300 which recognized and acknowledged 191 00:11:50,300 --> 00:11:52,240 the debt of the U.S. Constitution 192 00:11:52,240 --> 00:11:54,320 to the Iroquois Law of Peace. 193 00:11:54,320 --> 00:11:59,320 And on the day that this was signed into law and passed, 194 00:12:00,660 --> 00:12:04,180 Oren Lyons, who's the chief of the Onondaga nation, 195 00:12:05,210 --> 00:12:08,633 made an appearance in Congress and opened the session up 196 00:12:08,633 --> 00:12:12,263 with the telling of The Peacemaker, which just, it does, 197 00:12:12,263 --> 00:12:14,350 it gives me chills when I think about that. 198 00:12:15,450 --> 00:12:18,600 He'd been asked there by his friend Vine Deloria, 199 00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:21,480 a prominent Dakota thinker and professor, 200 00:12:22,810 --> 00:12:27,810 who created, for Congress, a 400-page document 201 00:12:29,910 --> 00:12:31,830 that is a side-by-side comparison 202 00:12:31,830 --> 00:12:35,270 of the Iroquois Law of Peace and the U.S. Constitution 203 00:12:35,270 --> 00:12:38,970 and takes a deep dive into the scholarship 204 00:12:38,970 --> 00:12:42,490 that documents the interest of Benjamin Franklin 205 00:12:42,490 --> 00:12:46,890 and other of the founding fathers in the political processes 206 00:12:46,890 --> 00:12:50,623 of the Hudna Shawnee and the Iroquois Law of Peace. 207 00:12:51,500 --> 00:12:55,410 That document is still there, it's still available. 208 00:12:55,410 --> 00:12:58,120 All you have to do is go to the U.S. Congress website, 209 00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:00,920 you can download it in PDF form. 210 00:13:00,920 --> 00:13:02,810 It's an incredible piece of scholarship 211 00:13:02,810 --> 00:13:07,250 and it's really fun to look at the particulars 212 00:13:09,430 --> 00:13:12,910 and I'm encouraging everyone to go do that. 213 00:13:12,910 --> 00:13:15,640 This is a story I haven't told a ton of times, 214 00:13:15,640 --> 00:13:20,640 because I'm not as familiar 215 00:13:21,190 --> 00:13:26,190 with my Seneca-Cayuga heritage, as I am my Dakota heritage. 216 00:13:26,443 --> 00:13:28,650 I was raised in South Dakota in a Dakota family, 217 00:13:28,650 --> 00:13:32,800 so my Hudna Shawnee roots are, 218 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:37,060 I'm less in touch with, less knowledgeable about. 219 00:13:37,060 --> 00:13:41,240 And this is a part of me learning my own culture 220 00:13:41,240 --> 00:13:44,550 and thank you, Creative Advantage and Tina LaPadula 221 00:13:44,550 --> 00:13:48,040 for inviting myself and Roger Fernandez 222 00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:49,960 to share these stories. 223 00:13:49,960 --> 00:13:50,816 Thank you. 224 00:13:50,816 --> 00:13:53,399 (upbeat music)