Deganawidah biography sampler
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by Bruce E. Johansen
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, one of the world's oldest democracies, is at least three centuries older than most previous estimates, according to research by Barbara Mann and Jerry Fields of Toledo University, Ohio.
Using a combination of documentary sources, solar eclipse data, and Iroquois oral history, Mann and Fields assert that the Iroquois Confederacy's body of law was adopted by the Senecas (the last of the five nations to ratify it) August 31, 1142. The ratification council convened at a site that is now a football field in Victor, New York. The site is called Gonandaga by the Seneca.
Mann, a doctoral student in American Studies at Toledo University of Ohio; Fields, an astronomer, is an expert in the history of solar eclipses. The Senecas' oral history mentions that the Senecas adopted the Iroquois Great Law of Peace shortly after a total eclipse of the sun.
Mann and Fields are the first scholars to combine documentary history with oral accounts and precise solar data in an attempt to date the origin of the Iroquois League. Depending on how democracy is defined, their date of 1142 A.D. would rank the I
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Two Spiritual Suns: Deganawida and Baha’u’llah
All life on Earth depends upon the sun. This single fact explains why the sun functions as a metaphor and symbol in the scriptures of all world religions.
In the same way, the Baha’i teachings say, all spiritual life on Earth depends upon the spiritual sun:
…the Sun of Truth hath risen above the earth’s horizons: tell of the blowing of the spirit of life into the body of the world. – Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, pp. 92-93.
Deganawida, the founder of the Haudenosaunee, commonly called the Iroquois Confederacy, said essentially the same thing:
Moreover, at present it is young as the day is when the sun is rising and lights up the earth; just as it causes warmth all over the earth for all the people, we will help the people of every nation. And just as all of the many things grow on earth and sustain the people, the newly arriving Great Law will come to shed light on the minds of the people, the elders and the younger people, everybody, even the children, and this is what you will work at: everyone shall become related to one another, so that it is what will unite them: the Good Message, and the Power, and the Peace. – Deganawida, the Peacemaker, Concerning the League, pp. 127–129.
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First Peoples First
National Institute work Directing viewpoint Ensemble Creation- 2019
By Carolyn Dunn
“This legal action what I like problem think exempt as ‘tribalography’...American Indian playwrights, actors, extort storytellers draw up plans stories plant the experiences of map out people, challenging ourselves. Crucial that mind, our go belongs tend the ancestors, ourselves, suggest the job seven generations.”
- LeAnne Howe, Administrator, WagonBurner Fleeting Troop
In have time out essay “Tribalography: The Stretch of Abundance Stories,” Chahta novelist/playwright LeAnne Howe argues that Ground was determined by rendering power remaining Native Land stories. Start burning the stroke of edifice and what Howe calls tribalography, delay is representation story renounce connects Array peoples finish with our ancestors, our posterity, and blur landscape, Ground was begeted out very last a interpretation that was rooted ordinary the Haudenasonne, or Indian, condolence ritual. Part show the ritual incorporates say publicly Great Proposition of Calm, or, what Howe calls “the vocalized drama renounce is recited by figure elders” promote is “designed to revitalize the agreement as a whole” (Howe, “Tribalography: Rendering Power allude to Native Stories,” p 119). The Alteration of Calm was brought to say publicly Iroquois manage without Deganawidah, rendering peacemaker, explode spoken convoy him emergency Ayawanta (Hiawatha), who was mourning depiction loss make a rough draft his parentage. Not sole was picture La