Post by Okwes on Oct 26, 2006 13:52:15 GMT -5
WITHIN A FOUR MILE SQUARE
The History of the Onondaga Nation
by JEANNETTE COOK
Copyright 2001
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
Xlibris Corporation
1-888-7XLIBRIS
www.Xlibris.com
11756-COOK
ISBN: 1-4010-2419-X
BORDERSBOOKS, CAROUSEL CENTER
www.borders.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.amazon.com
The English name Jeannette, Native American name Wan-dose (just before dawn) was born on the Onondaga Nation Territory just south of Syracuse 69 years ago. Writing this book was inspired by a Clan Mother that a book should be written about the modern day problems, facing the indigenous Native American people, native against native, tribe against tribe.
The life given to me, seeded on land that belongs to the Creator, has taken many twists and turns. As it was thousands of years ago, the Great Law is needed again as the gateway to Peace, Power and Honor. We need it to stop the warring of Native against Native, and tribe against tribe, to once again unite the Onondaga Nation. We, the people, have lost our voice. Now I know what the trees and the winds were trying to tell me.
There are many sides to every story. You have yours. I have mine, and still others have theirs.
Page 51-53
Today I fear the courtship of some of our Chiefs or their helpers who have the power to shape our destiny. Oren Lyons, a Seneca, an adopted Onondaga, resides on our Nation. As Jesse Jackson is to African Americans, Mr. Lyons is to the Indigenous Native Americans. When an issue is newsworthy the media seeks him out and he addresses them with his practiced rhetoric. However, he evades the true hardships of our people and his adopted home.
A graduate of Syracuse University and an all-American Lacrosse player, Lyons has made great strides to enter the world of environmental restoration. His title of Sachem within the Onondaga Council of Chiefs has been self-determined. He has accepted the title of Chief and, most recently, of Faithkeeper. The true meaning of the position he holds is helper to his principal Chief. His role is to stand and protect the tree of Peace. The Great Law states that no one of another Nation can sit with the Chiefs who is not of their original choice.
Although he was installed as a helper to his principal Chief, to sit behind his Chief, Lyons has become a Chief in his own eyes. His favorite words, "We as Native Americans are keepers of Mother Earth," as most fashionable. Lyons, with his practiced wisdom and eloquence, entranced the people of the Global Forum of "Spiritual Leaders for Human Survival in Moscow". His work with the indigenous people of the world is wonderful, but his work around the world would not be so confusing to our people if his words were carried back home and implemented on our Nation.
Anyone who advocates for a great cause should be commended for their efforts. However, overshadowing his many awards of distinguishing merits, are the poor living conditions of his adopted home. There is no help for our elderly and no running or potable water. Our land is littered with dumps and junkyards dispersing harmful chemicals into our earth. The fictitiousness of his words about sharing and fairness is obvious to us. Pomp and circumstance, recognition and reward are his personal gain. How can the thundering applause of an audience brought to its feet by empty words of we are, "the keepers of the Mother Earth," cure the world from environmental disaster?
On our land the echoes of the applause brings us to our feet in disbelief for he does not practice what he preaches. For as far as I can see on our territory an environmental disaster is already at hand. Whitewashing our oppression and weaving crafty words for the indigenous people is merely entertainment and it is a show we have seen before. Why go so far to save the planet when you can find polluted air, stagnant water, and poisoned earth outside our back door?
The junkyards have been seeping toxic materials upon the face of our land for generations. These dumps that cover the landscape leak oil, gas, batteries and antifreeze. The underground seepage from the dumps together with the medical waste refuse is doing irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
Lyons is a professor at Buffalo University. He receives a paycheck from the State of New York. Can I be in the Kremlin in the Russian republic and also have an authoritative position with a seat in Congress? His work with the State of New York and his position on our Nation makes for a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is disharmonious. Instead of helping to craft a solution it adds to the problem. He is like the hostile War Chief. I can feel it for it is in the wind. They are learning from him the lure of temptation of individual greed and power.
We are now without voices, our lives judged by which affiliation we honor. Not long ago, an 86-year-old who'd devoted her entire life to supporting the Council became deathly ill. A call went out for an ambulance to transport her to the hospital. However, the ambulance responding from Syracuse had to stay off the territory until clearance was obtained from a Chief. The Chief had to decide if she was worthy of emergency care. He deliberated, but luckily for her, he decided that she was. The Clan Mother was in danger of not receiving care because she had given birth to a son who'd grown into adulthood with opinions different from the Council's. Though her son had been banished in 1993, she had always kept her devotion to the Council. Her dedication to the teachings of the Longhouse had taken precedence over her son.
In past times, the Council was filled with honesty and honor. We must not upset our culture, but the Council of Chiefs must reconcile with the people they were chosen to represent. They must abandon their plans for personal gain and plan coordination not totalitarianism. We are surrounded by vast opportunities with our Council that would benefit our people and our land, but only if qualitative controls by the Council of Chiefs are channeled without conflict. There is no plan to unify our Nation or our brothers of the Five-Nation Confederacy. Peace, Power, and Honor must be reinstated among our people. The Tree of Peace is dying as the pine needles that cast the shade of protection fall slowly to the ground. When there are no pine needles left, our Nation will be no more.
Page 91-93
A RETURN TO PEACE
In the spring, the Sky People showered us with rain and warm breezes causing the creek to overflow its banks and push the water, but not enough to cause us grief. We know the spillover will recede and continue to flow in the direction it should go. Like the creek, I remain committed and dedicated to the path I know I should go. I remain hopeful and that we may recapture Peace, Faith and Hope. I want the protection of the Great Tree of Peace. I want my Longhouse back in harmony with the Great Law.
There are many people with good minds who still reside within the circle and can make a difference and replace division with unity. We cannot let the Confederacy die, but as long as the quest for personal power and greed prosper, the division between the people and the Sachems is terminal.
There is no more time for dreaming. The Messenger said when the Chiefs veer from their duties the people would walk away from the shade of the Great Tree. There can be no unity as the Creator meant it to be. We have lost the principles of Peace, Power, and Honor as He meant it to be. We must once again devote ourselves to the Great Law and beckon the Eagle to his perch on the crest of the Tree of Peace, for he has spread his wings and flown away, saddened by the actions of the Haudenosaunee and our Sachems.
The monopoly and dominance of a few are blocking our path and destroying the bridges that could unite our people. I ask myself every day, what are we preserving for the next generation? What are our children learning from their elders?
I have contemplated fighting for an alternative government, a tribal government that means elections of our rulers and a limited run of authority. However, I have witnessed fighting within the Nations, where on faction ushers out the ruling government only to take on the same principles as their predecessors. We need our Council of Chiefs to avoid special interest groups and remember the Great Law's message of equality.
The Great Law has much cryptography for us to live by. If we followed its messages, we would need no other law. I still believe that we can recapture the reason the Creator placed us, the Onkwehonweh, on the Earth, but for that to happen we must once again use the nails in the Longhouse for our jackets instead of as weapons.
As it once was, it can be again. A few rulers are now in control of the people. However, the Creator did not send them. Their words are hypocrisy and their deed a separation of our people and Nation. We must stop and consider where we are headed and confront why we live in a dictatorship. Our Chiefs must use their gift from the Creator to put back together that which they have torn apart. They must heal the divisions in our community. It is their role to give voice to the voiceless, to replace our faces.
The prohibitive action of the private sector for business has to be compared to Lyons being the Nation's largest entrepreneur with his grants and funding. He is in the business of words. The opportunity to send messages and promises around the world is a powerful weapon. When we are opposed to the new idealism, the crescendo reaches out to all points. When we nit-pick with the new authoritative movement, the situation goes into books, circulars, and communiqués. Praise, obey and live with adherence to oppression. If we become stubborn and raise questions, we are like a plague and must be put in isolation, for we are contagious.
This is the advantage of misguided grants for communication. There are two ways of life---traditional, with our culture and freedom as given to us by the Creator; the other is the word of the Creator transposed into legal language that converts our traditional lifestyle into dictatorship and totalitarianism. This should not be our way. There are many sides to every story. You have yours, I have mine, and still others have theirs. Financing and grants for propaganda only cleans our pot, it does not give us indoor plumbing or potable running water. If only the funds of the Onondaga people could be diverted from the costly legal fees into the seriousness of refreshing our Native language for our youth. This is our passage into the future and we must hold on to it for our children not yet born. The Great Law cannot be explicitly understood in English. In order to practice the Messenger's words, it must be understood as specifically as it was intended in our Native words. But the Chiefs and their attorney have replaced the Creator's words with their own unofficial rhetoric.
The people should enact a plan to curb oppression and dominance. We must eliminate the need for power, greed and hypocrisy. We must work together, for only the Creator stands higher than the rest. Through the years, factions have organized to run contrary to the powers in the Longhouse. Suddenly I find myself suffering from such a thing as a lack of simple words. In times past, weapons of war were used to make the Natives concede to their demands. Today the weapons are now powerful words that limit us and censor our human rights. We are the losers, the Onkwehonweh. Slowly the ponds are drying. The animals leaving. I am fearful that the water drum and the beating of the rattle that brings the rhythm and dance to the Creator will be forever silenced.
EPILOGUE
LIKE THE FLOWERS THAT SPROUT AND UNFOLD TO FULL FOLIAGE THEN CONCEDE TO THE DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE SEASON, WE CONTINUALLY FIND OURSELVES IN DIFFERENT PLACES IN LIFE. AFTER SUMMER COMES AUTUMN TAKING THE COLORS OF SUMMER AND TRANSFORMING THEM TO GREATER BRIGHTNESS BEFORE THEY RECEDE AND WAIT FOR WINTER. TO PASS. AS AN INDIGENOUS NATIVE AMERICAN, TO HEAR THE WORDS OF THE MESSENGER AS IT WAS SENT FROM THE CREATOR TO OUR PEOPLE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO ARE A GIFT AND A BLESSING. IT IS A CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DESIDERATUM TO ATTEND THE LONGHOUSE AMONG THE ONONDAGA NATION PEOPLE. AT SIXTY-NINE YEARS OLD I HAVE SAT THROUGH COUNTLESS THANKSGIVINGS, SACRED CEREMONIES, WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS. ALSO UNDER THE SAME RAFTERS I HAVE ATTENDED MEETINGS OF GREAT DECISIONS DEALING WITH LAND AND FAMILY DISPUTES, AND THE THREATS FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS THEY TRESPASS DEEPER AND DEEPER ONTO OUR LAND.
BEING ATTENTIVE TO OUR SYSTEM OF BELIEF, I HAVE ATTENDED THE LONGHOUSE WHEN THE WORDS OF THE CREATOR, KNOWN AS THE GREAT LAW WERE REPEATED. THESE WORDS WERE INTEGRATED INTO MY DAILY LIFE WHEN MY MOTHER USED THE RULES TO TEACH US HOW TO LIVE WITH MOTHER EARTH AND FATHER SUN AND WITH EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN. AS AN ADULT I USED THESE SAME RULES TO TEACH MY OWN CHILDREN AND WATCH AS THEY WANDER ON THE PATH ILLUSTRATED BY THE CREATOR'S WORDS.
The History of the Onondaga Nation
by JEANNETTE COOK
Copyright 2001
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
Xlibris Corporation
1-888-7XLIBRIS
www.Xlibris.com
11756-COOK
ISBN: 1-4010-2419-X
BORDERSBOOKS, CAROUSEL CENTER
www.borders.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.amazon.com
The English name Jeannette, Native American name Wan-dose (just before dawn) was born on the Onondaga Nation Territory just south of Syracuse 69 years ago. Writing this book was inspired by a Clan Mother that a book should be written about the modern day problems, facing the indigenous Native American people, native against native, tribe against tribe.
The life given to me, seeded on land that belongs to the Creator, has taken many twists and turns. As it was thousands of years ago, the Great Law is needed again as the gateway to Peace, Power and Honor. We need it to stop the warring of Native against Native, and tribe against tribe, to once again unite the Onondaga Nation. We, the people, have lost our voice. Now I know what the trees and the winds were trying to tell me.
There are many sides to every story. You have yours. I have mine, and still others have theirs.
Page 51-53
Today I fear the courtship of some of our Chiefs or their helpers who have the power to shape our destiny. Oren Lyons, a Seneca, an adopted Onondaga, resides on our Nation. As Jesse Jackson is to African Americans, Mr. Lyons is to the Indigenous Native Americans. When an issue is newsworthy the media seeks him out and he addresses them with his practiced rhetoric. However, he evades the true hardships of our people and his adopted home.
A graduate of Syracuse University and an all-American Lacrosse player, Lyons has made great strides to enter the world of environmental restoration. His title of Sachem within the Onondaga Council of Chiefs has been self-determined. He has accepted the title of Chief and, most recently, of Faithkeeper. The true meaning of the position he holds is helper to his principal Chief. His role is to stand and protect the tree of Peace. The Great Law states that no one of another Nation can sit with the Chiefs who is not of their original choice.
Although he was installed as a helper to his principal Chief, to sit behind his Chief, Lyons has become a Chief in his own eyes. His favorite words, "We as Native Americans are keepers of Mother Earth," as most fashionable. Lyons, with his practiced wisdom and eloquence, entranced the people of the Global Forum of "Spiritual Leaders for Human Survival in Moscow". His work with the indigenous people of the world is wonderful, but his work around the world would not be so confusing to our people if his words were carried back home and implemented on our Nation.
Anyone who advocates for a great cause should be commended for their efforts. However, overshadowing his many awards of distinguishing merits, are the poor living conditions of his adopted home. There is no help for our elderly and no running or potable water. Our land is littered with dumps and junkyards dispersing harmful chemicals into our earth. The fictitiousness of his words about sharing and fairness is obvious to us. Pomp and circumstance, recognition and reward are his personal gain. How can the thundering applause of an audience brought to its feet by empty words of we are, "the keepers of the Mother Earth," cure the world from environmental disaster?
On our land the echoes of the applause brings us to our feet in disbelief for he does not practice what he preaches. For as far as I can see on our territory an environmental disaster is already at hand. Whitewashing our oppression and weaving crafty words for the indigenous people is merely entertainment and it is a show we have seen before. Why go so far to save the planet when you can find polluted air, stagnant water, and poisoned earth outside our back door?
The junkyards have been seeping toxic materials upon the face of our land for generations. These dumps that cover the landscape leak oil, gas, batteries and antifreeze. The underground seepage from the dumps together with the medical waste refuse is doing irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
Lyons is a professor at Buffalo University. He receives a paycheck from the State of New York. Can I be in the Kremlin in the Russian republic and also have an authoritative position with a seat in Congress? His work with the State of New York and his position on our Nation makes for a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is disharmonious. Instead of helping to craft a solution it adds to the problem. He is like the hostile War Chief. I can feel it for it is in the wind. They are learning from him the lure of temptation of individual greed and power.
We are now without voices, our lives judged by which affiliation we honor. Not long ago, an 86-year-old who'd devoted her entire life to supporting the Council became deathly ill. A call went out for an ambulance to transport her to the hospital. However, the ambulance responding from Syracuse had to stay off the territory until clearance was obtained from a Chief. The Chief had to decide if she was worthy of emergency care. He deliberated, but luckily for her, he decided that she was. The Clan Mother was in danger of not receiving care because she had given birth to a son who'd grown into adulthood with opinions different from the Council's. Though her son had been banished in 1993, she had always kept her devotion to the Council. Her dedication to the teachings of the Longhouse had taken precedence over her son.
In past times, the Council was filled with honesty and honor. We must not upset our culture, but the Council of Chiefs must reconcile with the people they were chosen to represent. They must abandon their plans for personal gain and plan coordination not totalitarianism. We are surrounded by vast opportunities with our Council that would benefit our people and our land, but only if qualitative controls by the Council of Chiefs are channeled without conflict. There is no plan to unify our Nation or our brothers of the Five-Nation Confederacy. Peace, Power, and Honor must be reinstated among our people. The Tree of Peace is dying as the pine needles that cast the shade of protection fall slowly to the ground. When there are no pine needles left, our Nation will be no more.
Page 91-93
A RETURN TO PEACE
In the spring, the Sky People showered us with rain and warm breezes causing the creek to overflow its banks and push the water, but not enough to cause us grief. We know the spillover will recede and continue to flow in the direction it should go. Like the creek, I remain committed and dedicated to the path I know I should go. I remain hopeful and that we may recapture Peace, Faith and Hope. I want the protection of the Great Tree of Peace. I want my Longhouse back in harmony with the Great Law.
There are many people with good minds who still reside within the circle and can make a difference and replace division with unity. We cannot let the Confederacy die, but as long as the quest for personal power and greed prosper, the division between the people and the Sachems is terminal.
There is no more time for dreaming. The Messenger said when the Chiefs veer from their duties the people would walk away from the shade of the Great Tree. There can be no unity as the Creator meant it to be. We have lost the principles of Peace, Power, and Honor as He meant it to be. We must once again devote ourselves to the Great Law and beckon the Eagle to his perch on the crest of the Tree of Peace, for he has spread his wings and flown away, saddened by the actions of the Haudenosaunee and our Sachems.
The monopoly and dominance of a few are blocking our path and destroying the bridges that could unite our people. I ask myself every day, what are we preserving for the next generation? What are our children learning from their elders?
I have contemplated fighting for an alternative government, a tribal government that means elections of our rulers and a limited run of authority. However, I have witnessed fighting within the Nations, where on faction ushers out the ruling government only to take on the same principles as their predecessors. We need our Council of Chiefs to avoid special interest groups and remember the Great Law's message of equality.
The Great Law has much cryptography for us to live by. If we followed its messages, we would need no other law. I still believe that we can recapture the reason the Creator placed us, the Onkwehonweh, on the Earth, but for that to happen we must once again use the nails in the Longhouse for our jackets instead of as weapons.
As it once was, it can be again. A few rulers are now in control of the people. However, the Creator did not send them. Their words are hypocrisy and their deed a separation of our people and Nation. We must stop and consider where we are headed and confront why we live in a dictatorship. Our Chiefs must use their gift from the Creator to put back together that which they have torn apart. They must heal the divisions in our community. It is their role to give voice to the voiceless, to replace our faces.
The prohibitive action of the private sector for business has to be compared to Lyons being the Nation's largest entrepreneur with his grants and funding. He is in the business of words. The opportunity to send messages and promises around the world is a powerful weapon. When we are opposed to the new idealism, the crescendo reaches out to all points. When we nit-pick with the new authoritative movement, the situation goes into books, circulars, and communiqués. Praise, obey and live with adherence to oppression. If we become stubborn and raise questions, we are like a plague and must be put in isolation, for we are contagious.
This is the advantage of misguided grants for communication. There are two ways of life---traditional, with our culture and freedom as given to us by the Creator; the other is the word of the Creator transposed into legal language that converts our traditional lifestyle into dictatorship and totalitarianism. This should not be our way. There are many sides to every story. You have yours, I have mine, and still others have theirs. Financing and grants for propaganda only cleans our pot, it does not give us indoor plumbing or potable running water. If only the funds of the Onondaga people could be diverted from the costly legal fees into the seriousness of refreshing our Native language for our youth. This is our passage into the future and we must hold on to it for our children not yet born. The Great Law cannot be explicitly understood in English. In order to practice the Messenger's words, it must be understood as specifically as it was intended in our Native words. But the Chiefs and their attorney have replaced the Creator's words with their own unofficial rhetoric.
The people should enact a plan to curb oppression and dominance. We must eliminate the need for power, greed and hypocrisy. We must work together, for only the Creator stands higher than the rest. Through the years, factions have organized to run contrary to the powers in the Longhouse. Suddenly I find myself suffering from such a thing as a lack of simple words. In times past, weapons of war were used to make the Natives concede to their demands. Today the weapons are now powerful words that limit us and censor our human rights. We are the losers, the Onkwehonweh. Slowly the ponds are drying. The animals leaving. I am fearful that the water drum and the beating of the rattle that brings the rhythm and dance to the Creator will be forever silenced.
EPILOGUE
LIKE THE FLOWERS THAT SPROUT AND UNFOLD TO FULL FOLIAGE THEN CONCEDE TO THE DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE SEASON, WE CONTINUALLY FIND OURSELVES IN DIFFERENT PLACES IN LIFE. AFTER SUMMER COMES AUTUMN TAKING THE COLORS OF SUMMER AND TRANSFORMING THEM TO GREATER BRIGHTNESS BEFORE THEY RECEDE AND WAIT FOR WINTER. TO PASS. AS AN INDIGENOUS NATIVE AMERICAN, TO HEAR THE WORDS OF THE MESSENGER AS IT WAS SENT FROM THE CREATOR TO OUR PEOPLE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO ARE A GIFT AND A BLESSING. IT IS A CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DESIDERATUM TO ATTEND THE LONGHOUSE AMONG THE ONONDAGA NATION PEOPLE. AT SIXTY-NINE YEARS OLD I HAVE SAT THROUGH COUNTLESS THANKSGIVINGS, SACRED CEREMONIES, WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS. ALSO UNDER THE SAME RAFTERS I HAVE ATTENDED MEETINGS OF GREAT DECISIONS DEALING WITH LAND AND FAMILY DISPUTES, AND THE THREATS FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS THEY TRESPASS DEEPER AND DEEPER ONTO OUR LAND.
BEING ATTENTIVE TO OUR SYSTEM OF BELIEF, I HAVE ATTENDED THE LONGHOUSE WHEN THE WORDS OF THE CREATOR, KNOWN AS THE GREAT LAW WERE REPEATED. THESE WORDS WERE INTEGRATED INTO MY DAILY LIFE WHEN MY MOTHER USED THE RULES TO TEACH US HOW TO LIVE WITH MOTHER EARTH AND FATHER SUN AND WITH EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN. AS AN ADULT I USED THESE SAME RULES TO TEACH MY OWN CHILDREN AND WATCH AS THEY WANDER ON THE PATH ILLUSTRATED BY THE CREATOR'S WORDS.