By Larry W. Green
I have now had opportunity to listen to five presentations of “Great Law”. The repetition is helpful for clarification of the Peace Maker story. I have also engaged in discussion with those that are willing to reveal their thoughts of this matter. Variations of the story are available through archival references and engagement of discussions on Peace with many has caused great interest.
The present challenge is to envision and use principles of the story to guide one’s steps on the path we call life. 1) Peace — do no harm. 2) Good mind — thoughts that are consistent with peace. 3) Doing the best that one can — are founding principles that the Peace Maker left. Each has the capacity as gift of the Great Spirit that has animated all.
The present environment is different from what was in the time of the Peace Maker.
That difference needs discussion and analysis as to issues that may be of common concern. Under analysis, the potential to motivate great masses of people to co-ordinate effort on any specific issue may be well intended, but I submit, is to be ineffective by false/wrong thinking. This is the intent of Residential Schools that by definition was to “kill the Indian and save the man”.
What we are facing is the death of our common vision (world view). That vision was the common knowledge of life on Earth in the environment called the North American Eastern Woodland (Carolinian Forest). What is available to us is vastly limited from that of our ancestors. Life on a “Canadian Indian Reservation” is not our Indigenous Environment. We now have the task of re-envisioning our future in a hostile environment.
Year 1492 may represent the present invasion of Indigenous North America and the death of the Indian as per the residential schools or the rejection of the claim to “lawful authority” by forces that need to suppress the Human Spirit may be our common and liberating goal.
Our journey through life when all is done is for each to measure this life on Mother Earth on the principles embodied in the Peace Makers (and the many other stories of Indigenous People) story. The Great Spirit and Leader of life on Earth has made it so that our mind and therefore our actions are the measure of success as to qualities of those actions.
Yours Truly
Larry W. Green
