The sun still shines

A nation consisting of 16 wolves and 14 sheep are taking a vote to see if they will be eating blades of grass or lamb chops for lunch. American politics seems pretty insane and there is now a list of 15 celebrities who vow to move if Trump wins the election. Their voting system is a very strange thing.

It’s these weird electoral votes. How many Canadians understand the dynamics of the 538 Electoral College votes? Or how many Americans for that matter.

It would be very entertaining to hear the Donald explain over the course of 15 minutes how the system works. The American voting system was built this way to prevent a large population in one region of the U.S. from dominating the rest of the country. In essence, the 14 sheep can win sometimes.

Here, a world away in Six Nations, it’s also voting season. Six Nations Reserve No. 40 is showing their allegiances to the Crown and instead of forming our own country for the 57th time we will go the other route and play along with Canada’s imposed program.

That’s the problem with all of these temporary governance systems that have been installed throughout our lands. The American government is 240 years old. Canada, only 149 years by mainstream accounts although it was definitely a colony until the Statute of Westminster, 1931. If a constitution is necessary for a country to be a country, then Canada just turned 34 years old if we don’t count them changing the name of the British North America Act to the CONSTITUTION ACT. Why not pass a Revisionist History Act?

It doesn’t matter really because none of these hostile ventures will last, none of it is permanent. Like erosion, commercialism and capitalism must give way to nature and the earth will eventually reclaim all. We’ll be there.

Until then, the only real thing we can do as indigenous people is to educate others and remain patient as ever and hope this all blows over so we can get back to our peaceful world that was rudely interrupted by colonialism. We want both Hillary and Trump to go take their circus back to Europe.

Author Charles C. Mann concluded in his book 1491 that North America was a much better place to live than Europe before contact. His findings were confirmed by many well educated historians and anthropologists.

You may have been taught that before the Europeans arrived and saved us, indigenous people lived as violent, bloody savages engaging in never-ending war. Nothing could be further from the truth. This was the most peaceful place on earth and over 100 million people lived in relative harmony before the immigrants arrived. If you disagree you can debate the academics.

Foreign invaders have absolutely no right to establish anything on our land, especially governments, without our approval. These regimes have been able to squat here for two very good reasons.

 

  • In the year 1688 A.D. and before, the law of the land was the GAYANESHAKGOWA which is the Great Peace, which some say is our constitution, represented by the Hiawatha Belt. This was the year that we accepted the British people as Younger Brothers. If this event didn’t happen the First Americans may have went the way of the Viking. The Great Peace is still the law of the land, but this knowledge is heavily suppressed. We kept our sick little brother alive and you may recognize this story as the colonial holiday “Thanksgiving”.

 

  • Almost all indigenous people (90 per cent) died from smallpox and other diseases we had zero immunity to. Each editorial for the next 20 years could be written on this fact alone. Schools need to teach this kind of information to reach Canadian children with the truth at an early age. Instead the institution leaves the vague impression that Onkwehon:weh people faded into obscurity because we lost our land in a unknown war, or because we stood in the way of real progress. The truth is that we had social advancements that Canada may not fully understand or even perceive even after another 400 years of trying to assimilate us.

 

It’s kind of funny that Ontario is promoting Treaties Recognition Week. Their website says “This legislation is part of Ontario’s Treaty Strategy which is promoting constructive engagement and revitalizing treaty relationships between the province and Indigenous communities.”

We hope someone informs them that Treaties exist between countries not provinces and communities, so Ontario’s statement is confusing. It’s patronizing really. Our Two Row Treaty predates Canada and its numbered pseudo-treaties by a good 200 years or so and it was made between the five unified nations and James II King of England. Why can’t Ontario just be real and say that?

From their point of view the provinces became sovereign nations after the Statute of Westminster we previously mentioned, although we did not give our approval. If you examine the evidence it really seems like Canada has been moving the goal posts over the last century with legislation.

Another thing is the colonists also need to relax with their obsession with signatures. What is more Eurocentric than insisting that an agreement is only legal when signed? We had better methods of binding agreements than forgeable markings on an easily destroyed sheet of dried pulp.

According to Onondaga Chief Irving Powless Jr., we addressed our visitors this way, “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.”

The Two Row Wampum was not “signed” because signing wasn’t our way. If we were negotiating a Mohawk colony in Europe we would sign documents to make things official but when you are in our house it’s our rules. Or it was. Things are much different now, 400 years later.

We should just take a look at where we are right now. Let’s see if the Two Row Wampum agreement still stands.

The grass still grows green in the spring, check. The water still flows (but energy corporations are seeing about that), check. The sun is still shining, check. That’s how long we said our agreement shall last.

“The Haudenosaunee have never violated this treaty. We have never passed a law telling you how to live. You and your ancestors, on the other hand, have passed laws that continually try to change who I am, what I am, and how I shall conduct my spiritual, political and everyday life.” -Chief Irving Powless Jr.

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