Dear friends,
An invitation to speak has brought me back to some roots of my work I haven't revisited in some time – the Iroquois Confederacy and its recognition of the intimate tie between democracy and peace – collective wisdom and collective tranquility. Peace between people requires their respectful, insight-seeking conversation. It requires, as Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Iroquois tells us, that “we meet and just keep talking until there's nothing left but the obvious truth.”
Lyons also notes – to us self-proclaimed modern people – that “The Earth has all the time in the world. We don't.” I strongly recommend his brief, vivid and moving video:
http://vimeo.com/50460060 (note for those who have trouble with online videos: in the lower right it give the option to use Flash or HTML5 video players).
Few Americans or people in other modern “democracies” realize how much our government structures owe to the Iroquois. We talk about ancient Greece giving us democracy. True, ancient Athens gave us the idea of “one man one vote” when adopting laws. But some scholars suggest that the Iroquois gave us our federal system (an alliance of free states under one greater power), the idea of “balance of powers”, and much of our sense of personal privacy and liberty from government interference, as well as the idea of taking turns while speaking in an assembly.
http://www.co-intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: 17 April 2013 Democracy, Peace, & the Iriquois Teleconference”