We can’t afford, now, to have these national borders. We can’t afford to have racism. We can’t afford apartheid. We cannot–it’s one of those luxuries that we can’t have anymore as human beings. We’ve got to think now, in real terms, for that seventh generation. And we’ve got to move in concert. We’ve got to sing the same song. We’ve got to have the same ceremony. We’ve got to get back to spiritual law if we are to survive.
– Chief Oren Lyons in a July 3, 1991 interview with Bill Moyers for Public Affairs Television
At a time when the citizens of the United States are probing the question of what constitutes a leader, the voice of Oren Lyons, chosen by Clan Mothers as Chief of the Onondaga people, sounds a clear note of authentic leadership for his people and for our time. He is Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, tireless advocate for indigenous rights and sovereignty issues, professor, author, publisher, painter, father, and grandfather. We are honored that Chief Lyons has agreed to speak at the Twenty-Fourth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, “Visionaries Among Us,” October 23rd, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Judy Wicks—owner of the White Dog Café, founder of BALLE, and a passionate spokesperson for local ownership and local production—and Stephanie Mills—author and eloquent observer of the natural world, turning her fine perception to the economic, peace, and social activist world of Bob Swann—will also speak. We look forward to a remarkable gathering. Please join us if circumstances so permit. Registration details are below.
Further quotes by Oren Lyons excerpted from the Bill Moyers’ interview.
This painting is a depiction of the Great Tree of Peace . . . The Tree of Peace, of course, is the great spiritual law and it sits on the back of the turtle, which is our metaphor for this island. We call North America the Great Turtle Island.
When the Great Peacemaker uprooted this great tree, he asked the Nations to come forward and cast down their weapons of war, he said, “We now do away with the warriors and we do away with the war chiefs. And in their place we plant the Council of the Good Minds who will now counsel for the welfare of the people.'”
When we were given these instructions, among many of them, one was that when you in sit in council for the welfare of the people, you counsel for the welfare of that seventh generation to come. They should be foremost in your mind, not even your generation, not even yourself, but those that are unborn. So that when their time comes here they may enjoy the same thing that you are enjoying now.
We have a long perspective. We’ve been in one place a long time. We’ve seen the sun come up in the same place many, many hundreds, thousands of years. And so we have a familiarity with the Earth itself, with the elements. We know about them and we know what it is to enjoy that.
The ceremonies, which are as ancient as we are, carry forward this respect. Our people were always spiritual people, religious people. They always had ceremonies. This was our first instruction, how to carry on the ceremony. The ceremonies are our thanksgivings, every one of them.
So we had these extraordinary rounds of thanksgiving every year; all the same songs again at certain time, all the same dances at certain time, are very familiar. Again if you go down and watch the Pueblos as they do their Deer Dance, as they do their Bean Dance, and watch the Hopis as they do their Snake Dance, these are old, ancient ceremonies. Everybody knows them and everybody participates in them. You continue because they are what you are instructed to do which is to give thanks.
And so we have these well-springs of knowledge about places that only aboriginal people would know because they have lived there. They have intimate knowledge of what’s there. And when people are destroyed and languages are destroyed, you destroy that knowledge along with it. So what do indigenous people have to offer? Indigenous people have the long-term thinking required for proper context.
What Indians are about, I think, first of all is community. They’re about mutual support. They’re about sharing. They’re about understanding what’s common land, common air, common water, common and for all. They’re about freedom.
We are now. Now is us. We’re the seventh generation. I’m sitting here as the seventh generation because seven generations ago people were looking out for me. Seven generations from now someone will be here, I know. Each generation makes sure that seventh generation is coming, all the time.