400 years paperless treaty of friendship, peace, mutual respect FOREVER

As long as grass is green, water flows downhill, sun rises east, sets  west

Edited excerpt by 

Carolyn Bennett

Two Row Wampum (Treaty) Campaign calls concerned human beings living in North America to “work for treaty justice with Native peoples” and “environmental responsibility with our shared Earth.”  

 

Two Row paperless Treaty

“…The first agreement between the Haudenosaunee and the Europeans who were coming into our country was completed and recorded by the Haudenosaunee. It is called Guswenta, the Two Row Wampum belt…” 

Two Row Wampum belt contains white and purple beads. White beads denote truth. 

…One purple row of beads represents a sailboat; in the sailboat are the Europeans, their leaders, their government, and their religion. 

 The other purple row of beads represents a canoe; in the canoe are the Native Americans, their leaders, their governments, and their Way of Life, or religion as you say it. 

 We shall travel down the road of life, parallel to each other and never merging with each other.

Iroquois
Longhouse

In between the two rows of purple beads are three rows of white beads.

The first row of white beads is ‘peace’

The second row ‘friendship’

The third row ‘forever’

“The Two Row Wampum belt is the symbolic record of the first agreement between Europeans and American Indian Nations on Turtle Island/North America.

2013 marks the 400th anniversary of this first covenant, which forms the basis for the covenant chain of all subsequent treaty relationships made by the Haudenosaunee and other Native Nations with settler governments on this continent.

The Iroquois are also known as the Haudenosaunee or the ‘People of the Longhouse’, a league of several nations and tribes of indigenous people of North America.

After the Iroquoian-speaking peoples of present-day central and upstate New York coalesced as distinct tribes, by the 16th century or earlier, they came together in an association known today as the Iroquois League or the ‘League of Peace and Power’.

The Iroquois are a matrilineal society (one in which descent is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors, also a societal system in which one belongs to one’s mother’s lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles). The Iroquois have clan mothers or main women of the leagues.

The agreement between Europeans and American Indian Nations on Turtle Island/North America outlines a mutual, three-part commitment to:

friendship, peace between peoples, and living in parallel forever (as long as the grass is green, as long as the rivers flow downhill and as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west).

The Haudenosaunee throughout the years have sought to honor this mutual vision and have increasingly emphasized that ecological stewardship is a fundamental prerequisite for this continuing friendship.

Record in a Wampum Belt

Beads identify, carry messages, record events

“We think that in the future there will come a time when you will not have your piece of paper but we will still have our belt. 

Because we are meeting for the health and welfare of our people, we should make sure that this agreement lasts a long time ─ like forever.” 

‘Forever’ is described by our ancestors in this agreement in the following words:

‘As long as the grass is green, as long as the water flows downhill, and as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.’

Today the sun still sets in the west …. The grass is still green… and the water runs downhill. That agreement that we made back then is still effect as far as we are concerned ─ The Iroquois people.

Sources and notes

Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign http://www.wells.edu/events/2012/tworowwampumrenewalcampaign.aspx

http://honorthetworow.org/learn-more/history/

http://honorthetworow.org/learn-more/

NOON

A project of the Syracuse Peace Council, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON) is a grassroots effort of Central New Yorkers that supports the sovereignty of the Onondaga Nation’s traditional government and their Land Rights Action. The group collaborates with the Onondaga Nation on environmental protection and restoration; and joins the Onondaga Nation’s call for justice, reconciliation and healing. The group believes that the wider community has a great deal to learn from the Onondagas about living more peacefully with one another and more harmoniously with the Earth.

Today on the Democracy Now program Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, Oren Lyons; and project coordinator for the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign, Andy Mager (also a member of Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation) spoke of the project and the 400-year-old treaty.

“Onondaga Leader Oren Lyons, Pete Seeger on International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” August 9, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/9/onondaga_leader_oren_lyons_pete_seeger

Oren R. Lyons, Jr. (born 1930) is a recognized advocate of indigenous rights, a Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

He has authored many and illustrated children’s books in collaboration with Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Brulé Lakota). He publishes Daybreak Magazine. Among is published works are

Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution with Donald Grinde, Robert Venables, John Mohawk, Howard Berman, Vine Deloria, Jr., Laurence Hauptman, and Curtis Berkey (1992, 1998); Wilderness in Native American culture (1989)

In 1982, Oren R. Lyons helped establish the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples.

Commenting on hydraulic fracturing Andy Mager said during the Democracy Now discussion:

Water is the first law of life and (fracturing) has an amazing impact on water. Millions and millions of gallons of fresh water are being used and absolutely contaminated beyond any point of redemption. It is an attack on the future lives of our children and everybody else’s children ─ and life in general.

If you follow the laws of nature, those laws and rules, you have regeneration again and again. And if you want to challenge those laws, then you suffer the consequence.

That’s where we are right now. Fracking is probably the most damaging challenge that America has today in terms of its future.

Now serving as project coordinator for the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign, Andy Mager is a long-term activist and organizer who has worked extensively in peace, environmental and social justice movements. He has been a member of the staff of the Syracuse Peace Council for the past ten years where he coordinates the work of Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation and helps develop and implement the collaborative educational series “Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future.” Mager has also been editor and organizer in the War Resisters League http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andy-mager/30/a63/904

Additional reference: Wikipedia

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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