Transcript for:
Exploring the Great Law of Peace

scano my name is Rick Hill I'm the senior project coordinator at Deo Haag the indigenous Knowledge Center at Six Nations poly Technic today we're going to take a journey back in time and take a look at the formation of the Great Law and all of the lessons that we learned from The Peacemaker all of his teachings that were codified in a series of wamp bels some of them you may be familiar with and some you may be seeing for the first time this is one of the earliest depictions of the formation of the Confederacy who see it was done in 1853 it's kind of cartoonish like but it shows The Peacemaker and his helper henta confronting taro's head covered with snakes he's bringing the message of peace to him this more modern depiction by Orin lions from onandaga shows The Peacemaker now all dressed in white with henta and the other HUD nooni Chiefs as they're singing this song in order to pacify tadao waren said that he kind of altered the painting Because the actual depiction of tdo in the oral history has his body look much more fearsome it's face quite terrible so that is why Orin has Todo facing away from us so we don't see his horrific look originally he had actually had his hand on a skull because toodo was known to kill many people but this was done for the anaga Savings Bank and he thought for public consumption who might want to change it this is a painting that I did in 1981 trying to show The Peacemaker and haa his helper as they're actually carrying this wamp belt that was used when the Confederacy was formed this great message of peace now as I learned from a lot of old people a lot of the Chiefs a lot of our mentors that helped me understand what the Great Law is I also had to help recover these wamp belts so what I'm going to share with you is a combination of the stories that I heard some of the things that I read interviews of our people from the past and and then my own reflections of studying the teachings of the wampum belts wam which is made from clamshells is very important to the H Shon in fact to many of the native nations in the Northeast we can see these big belts that are used to commemorate our history attest to the significance of the message they have there but every generation would create a wamp and belt reader somebody who would know how to interpret the message they would have been taught from a very young age but also wam is said to have this ability to capture our words so as you hold the belt you're able to recover its message and this way our oral history has remained true throughout the years there are many different names for the Great Law some people say it actually means this great goodness or this great movement towards goodness it's really all about the same thing that there's this founding principle this law this way of being that enables us to head towards peace and then maintain that so peace is supposed to be the goal in our lives but from the creation story reaffirmed in the Great Law but as we all know it's been a very difficult way of life to maintain henta was suffering from the death of his daughters tahu had used his ability power to uh kill three of his daughters he got so depressed he wandered in the woods dejected he just looked at the ground but slowly these words came into his mind he began to think that if I ever met somebody who was suffering from the same kind of grief these are the kind of things that I would tell him magic was taking place somehow the earth and its power and the historic setting the time was right for this message of condolence to come to his mind he began to string these beads made out of wood to remember the words that he was hearing and then Along Came The Peacemaker and he heard him he picked up those beads and began to recite these words that were used to restore ha's good mind the metaphor for that state that he was at it's called at the edge of the woods in the thorny bushes as if like this arduous Journey you know you get all kinds of dirt and crators attached to you get these Thorns that would pierce your moccasins and make your life quite uncomfortable and you have have to take this rest and as you would sit there then we would restore this mind there are several different stories of the origin of wam this one here by John Arthur Gibson in 1912 talks about transformation originally we used uh beads made out of Elderberry wood has a soft Center in it or we would use the beads made out of feather quills to send the messages so the feather quill or the wood beads would be carried from a runner carrying the message to another Village or another leader but hienta they said he was in his depression he was wandering around the Lakes south of onandaga the Tully Lakes he came to this one Lake and there's a whole bunch of ducks on there and he watched them for a long time but then as he stepped forward probably stepped on a twig and made made a noise all of those ducts they flapped their wings and you can imagine that they're able to lift the water up with them and then as he looked out on the dry lake bed he began to see this white substance kind of sparkling he went out there and there were wamp beads they were already formed they were like gifted to him and he picked them up in this painting then we can see what it must have been like to have the ducks or the geese flap their wings together pick up this this water and then these beads were revealed to him so they were already made they came from the Creator to him because he needed to take those words that he was contemplating on the condolence put them into these beads and then use those beads to begin to heal the minds of everybody there two types of wamp beads they're tubular beads only about 1/ qu inch long the white beads are made from this channeled wel shell as we can see here the center column is broken down into pieces and then eventually cut ground down drilled in order to produce the white beads the purple beads come from the Quahog clam cell you can see the outer ring of the shell is purple now the old shells were quite large maybe 6 to 8 Ines in diameter today it's really hard to find a Shell with all that purple in it but white and purple become the two primary colors used in wam white generally represents peace Purity powerful ideas the purple would represent the opposite of that death Darkness when your mind gets fallen on the ground because of death it represents all of that so we have both life and death sorrow and renewal represented in these wamp beads so in what they call a condolence ceremony the clear-minded side that that hadn't suffered the Lost lifts the minds of the mourners those who are suffer the loss of a loved one so this what happened to high went with his daughters becomes the model for our Chiefs and our clothers and for our people that you have to resolve the grief that death comes you're supposed to straighten not your house put everything in order so the people are able to do their duties in order to keep peace in the house so through this process we're able to restore what we called a good mind now the good mind actually started in the creation story was part of the Creator's mind it was brought back to us by The Peacemaker and he's encouraging us to use this good mind which means to be fair to all people we can see in this practice set of wam strings that are used by the cugas that were collected in 1930s by a guy named Frank Speck and he wrote down in this chart that we can see what the main message of each of to these strings are and there's a long speech that goes with each one of them these were actually glass beads that were used to practice the condolence because to actually use the real beads that was big stuff so as we can see they start with wiping the tears on your eyes to clean out your ears to clean out your throat straighten up your whole body they go through this long list of rebuilding the mind the spirit and the body of the individual who's suffering this loss so condolence is used within the Great Law in order to replace a chief who passes away and then we put ant on that new candidate to show that he's now become the chief picking up where the old man left off so it's this seamless transformation from the old Chief to the new chief he has the same title he wears the antlers of authority and he's also given a wam string by the clan mother as we can see here in this painting by Arnold Jacobs he's placing the deer on his on his headdress showing that he now has the authority to act as a chief but those first three parts of the condolence are very important the wiping of the tears clear of the ears clear the the throat it's like your mind can't work well when you're carrying this grief and when you're carrying that grief you can't see well because of the tears in your eyes it's almost as if dust settles over your whole body Gets In Your Eyes causes the tears so we have to remove those tears so you can see how beautiful the world really is we can restore the brightness of the day and that dust also settles in your ears and so it makes you hard of hearing so you have to clean out your ears so that you'll hear the kind comforting words of the people around you you also hear the Joyful Noise of children and birds as they sing again and then we would take some cold water and help you clear your throat to restore your voice also to encourage you to eat again those three things become very important part of understanding the Great Law and these are some other wamp strings that came from Grand River that were collected by the Smithsonian J&B huitt who was a tusor scholar coined the term the re quickening that's what he calls this part of the ceremony where the all of these things that we're talking about were taking place you can see here then the tears the ears the throat but he also continues on with the heart limbs your feet your seat and this became also a tradition that we would use in making treaties the only way we could make treaties with somebody is if we were to condole them for their losses to lift up their mind and their body and their spirit so they can hear us and see us and understand us so what started in the Great Law of a way of helping people get ready to receive the message of the Great Law became the mechanism by which we were engaged the newcomers to extend the rafters of our long house to ensure that peace would exist so when a man is made a chief through this condolence ceremony he's given a short string of wamp beads it's white wamp that represents his title or this is what they call the horns so placing the horns on the chief means that you're actually giving him this wam string but as we can see in this old photograph of a tus s Chief Isaac Patterson his wam strings were a bundle of strings many multicolored so things uh change Through Time a different Chiefs different positions might have a different set of strings but generally all of the original 50 Chiefs would would have a string of wamp like the one shown here so one of the first wamps that was made was this circle WAM and it said it circles the people think of it this way all Hy people are born inside this circle and we have a Birthright then to all of the laws the Traditions the beliefs the way of life of our ancesters there are 50 strings hanging down here that represent each of the 50 titles of the Chiefs there's a double row of beads that go around the outside there and they're Twisted together and they used to say this represents the Great Law and the great pieace that would result from the Great law for each string they said there's a clan mother and then there's a chief standing there together in a circle so think of it it's almost like a circle of trees standing there all of the same height and for some unknown reason there's a different number of chiefs anagas have 14 sonas have eight Mohawks have nine Cugat have 10 the onitas have nine now in The Narrative of the Great Law it kind of talks about The Peacemaker going to these Villages he wanted to meet the most evil-minded men in every community and he want to transform their thinking turn them from men who were advocating for war into men advocating for Peace So with these 50 titles you could assume there are 50 Villages uh 50 main leaders that he confronted throughout our time so it's hard to say exactly why we have these different numbers but there's also a story of how these nations relate to one another in that Circle wam as you can see here there is one string that's a little longer than the rest a lot of people are confused about that they think it represents toodo but when you look at the names around the circle you realize it's not him there's a different way of recording which Chief goes along with which title it's almost like a seating plan this is the way the nations are supposed to sit in Council the anod is at one end the son is the Mohawks on one side the What's called the Elder brothers or three brothers and then the onitas and the cugas on the opposite side so when counil it's kind of a male oriented system it's a male Chiefs talking to other male Chiefs but behind every Chief is this clan mother so it's a balance between the women and and the men into how we govern ironically the canidate chose the symbol of the circle Wampum to represent a submarine that they commissioned in 1965 called the onandaga so you could see how that wamp was replicated behind the back so it's kind of amazing for us it represents peace for them they use it as a symbol to defend the same time look at the title in Latin invicta means the unconquered maybe unintentionally but it turned out to be true we still are the unconquered OD shy people a condolence cane was developed a long wooden stick with h graphics for each one of the titles as we can see here and this stick is used to help to keep track of the the sequence of names and the ceremonies but also a little indicates about a story behind each one of the titles so there's 50 titles they're divided into the five nations and on the cane they're shown on opposite sides with the Mohawks the anagas and senas on one side of the cane and the onitas and the cugas on the other this is a set of wam strings that are attached to a single piece that represent the nine Mohawk Chief titles three for each of the Clans so there's three Turtle Clans three wolf Clans three bear Clans each with their own Clan mother each with their own Chief's title I imagine each Nation had a set of strings similar to this unfortunately some of them become lost and even this one was removed for a long time it's only been recovered within the last decade or so they said when The Peacemaker assembled the Chiefs in that circle like the circle W them he gave them their instruction told them how to be achieved the things that they have to think about and how to use their good mind to render good decisions for the sake of the people and the future generations and he took an arrow and he broke it so see how easy one arrow is to break but then he took five of them bundled them together and showed how strong it is if the Chiefs can remain United in their thought can remain committed to each other they can ensure peace for many generations to come however if they start arguing they start disagreeing they stop coming to the meetings it's almost as if they're pulling their Arrow out of that bundle and each one that gets pulled out weakens that bundle so so he placed this bundle arrows in the center of that Circle reminding the Chiefs that their job is to use the good mine to render good decisions for the sake of the future Generations then The Peacemaker planted a pine tree tall white pine in the center of that Circle old white pines are really huge I was in the woods near Rochester New York I was looking at 300y old white pines they were probably about 6 7 ft in diameter so imagine how big these trees could get to be but The Peacemaker used the white pine as a symbol of strength that peace will never grow old if people are tending to it we put our minds to it but peace often gets tested from without or even from within it's like a big wind's going to come and try to knock that tree over so the chief's job is to make sure that whatever Trouble Comes our way they they remain strong in their minds that they remained one counsel using one mind to render good decisions so The Peacemaker instructions to the Chiefs to remain strong are seen in this swamping belt on the bottom we can see what it probably originally looked like unfortunately it was cutting into two as we see on the top part 1877 and chief John Buck the scan he was the wam Keeper of the time he said this belt represents the tribe standing in a ring joined hand in hand and the compact was so strong that even though the tree might fall in could never break this chain of unity so linking their arms becomes a symbol of the chief's job when their arms are linked and their minds are together it's an unbreakable Circle and if that Strife ever tried to push that tree over the Chiefs would keep it from touching the ground so linking our arms becomes an important symbol joining our hands set together whenever we made treaties with other native nations of the Europeans when they arrived we would link our arms together in a chain of unity we would add them to this circle they would come in and join us because we realize in order to be at peace in our land we have to treat each other as if we're members of One family and that was one of the founding principles of the great law that all people are equal all people are deserving of Justice so we have to stand together in that Unity of thought this is a painting they did a long time ago 1975 and they're trying to illustrate what the First Council was like we're working with some Community elders and some traditional Chiefs and they described this swamping belt that I depicted here white belt with five purple diamonds unfortunately I've never been able to find that belt but they said that was the first belt but those were the only people I ever heard that from and so it's really hard to say but I tried to show the Chiefs gathered in the circle and The Peacemaker NE go with Taho to remove the snakes from his hair so that he would join this Confederacy and when he did the snakes fell out of his hair his body was straightened up his mind became good the good mind and he were able to form then this Confederacy so on this swamp belt here although it's usually called high went the Wen Bel it's really this five nations Union or five lands belt five lands put together in one so that we're one people and this is when we begin to call ourselves the r people of the long house it's one family living together and the symbols we can see here the tree in the center represents Yaga Nation the square on the far left represents the Mohawk Nation then the United Nation anadas in the middle the cugas and then the senas so together we form this Confederation and the little white line represents the unity it almost looks like a chain the unity of thought the path of peace now the reason why the belt is purple is because this was in very dark times our people were are they actually hunting each other down there's murder and warfare all over the land it was very dangerous even to go get some water so this belt represents that hope that peace will sustain the people in the future so wam has these symbols of memory and it's ironic because there's been a big discussion among our people is it a tree or is it a heart depends on which way you hold the belt some of these belts were held up and the message read or recited halfway through the belt would be turned over and the rest of the message recited so I could very well see that at one point it may be start off as a heart get halfway through the store you turn it over and then it's the tree being erected when the belt was first photographed as we can see in this picture the belt was shown what most people would say is upside down but when you hear what the anadas had to say at that time in early 1900s they talk about it representing the heart that were in Union together to form one so I would like to say it's not an argument which one it is cu it's actually both that in our heart should be this tree of Peace that's what unites us together one heart one Mind One Voice one people so the great law has these three principles then and we're supposed to use this good mindedness supposed to be fair have justice for all people and if we combine our our thinking together with strength the unity of thought it creates a great power but it's not just a military power it's a different kind of power it's almost like a spiritual power and that allows us to relate to one another the way that we're intended and then allows peace to Prevail in the land and when peace prevails we're very healthy people so this is a health plan as it is a government plan healthy Minds can make good decisions when you have an unhealthy mind like Taho did in the beginning you can't make a good decision so you have to deal with dealing with the stresses the grief the troubles that your mind may have in order to be a good leader I mentioned that The Peacemaker planted a tree of peace and the original trees put together a w Bel to symbolize that tree you see the details here this this stylized pine tree growing tall it's a huge belt now sometimes it was called the dust fan or the council president because the story behind this belt is that one of the jobs of the Chiefs one of the jobs of toodo is to keep what they call the creepy crawly things from entering the council that was really his descent to always have a good mind and use an even tone not to get angry with one another and they have to sweep away all the negativity keep it away from the council fire keep it away from the place where the Chiefs sit because that negativity can destroy the unity so this piece will never grow old as long as we're meeting in Council using the good mind and thinking about the future Generations so you can see how the tree of Peace wamp bel's stylized version of the white pine the ever growing tree the white pine was chosen because it has these great white roots that grow and as you can see here they kind of grow right on the surface they can grow over rocks and they're huge in the woods when you see them there and the idea was you could follow those routs to their source that would lead you to is a tree that was planted in Onaga over a thousand years ago on the branches of that tree you can see five needles coming together in each little bundle represents like the Five Fingers of our hand the five nations all coming together as one so the white P becomes the symbol of the great law symbol of this peacefulness but there was also a w Bel dedicated to tododo and his duties his primary responsibility is to bring the Chiefs together when matters are affecting all of us and this is a Confederacy matter something that comes up that affects all all of the people each nation and each Clan were supposed to deal with their local matters but when they couldn't resolve things sometimes it would make it way to the Grand Council which was held at Onaga taho's job was to invite the Chiefs to there explain to them the nature of the matter before them and then monitor their discussion as they go along so this belt reminds me of the tree of Peace belt the white pine is unusual because the bottom branches kind of face down towards the ground the top branches kind of face up towards the sky and then there's this diamond pattern running up the middle some people thought it represented the 14 onoda Chiefs some thought it represented the unity of all of our people whatever it is we show it tada has a primary job to make sure that our leaders gathered together make sure they use the good mind and then they render decisions that represent this Justice and fairness but sometimes they also have to defend our people and get our young men to come forward in defense of our great peace this is a painting I did of the T at the time his name was Leon shanoa and I have him as if he's having this conversation with the original tdo one thing they told me is that evil or dark thoughts disruptive thoughts this bad mindedness can always invade our counsel it's always constantly struggling to get the attention of the Chiefs away from the Great Law so Chiefs have to be extraordinary people they have to be really strong people to keep their mind focused on on their task which is to maintain the Great Law maintain the great peace so you can see here the old tados almost trying to reason with him almost trying to talk him into forgetting his duties and I think this is something we all have to wrestle with it's not just our Chiefs that go through this but all of us have to do it we are all part of the Great Law and the quality of our mind determines how well the Great Law is going to function they say that they made a big white mat that the chief sat on this is a section of that mat it's a metaphorical map it was made out of white wam it was probably four 6 feet long when it was first made they laid it upon the ground and they said that the Chiefs will use this so this is a reminder of the peace and purity of the Great Law it's hard to see in this Photograph but the center part is white and there's two purple rows where the purple beads run horizontally on that it's very unusual belt we only have a small section of it left they also gave this Chiefs this wooden cane this wooden St St they said whenever something comes to cause harm tries to upset the fire they have to use this stick to flick it away from the fire to they have a wing fan to dust the mat off but then they also have this Rod took me a long time to realize what this was about and it's really about the Chiefs particularly tdo having the authority to call the young men to come to defend the Confederacy when people are trying to destroy the council trying to destroy our Chiefs trying to destroy this great law we have to have a vigorous defense of it and so that stick the thing that flicks that away from us represents the young men willing to use their minds and their bodies to defend the Great Law when The Peacemaker gathered the Chiefs together he asked them to share a meal from this common dish and inside that dish was a beaver tail they said it was the most nutritious meal they said this is what our chief should eat so we can see it in this wamp belt here we can see the dark figure in Middle representing the bowl the white rectangle representing the beaver tail sometimes I wonder if this is one of our problems today because I have never seen beaver tail served at a grand council meeting maybe we've been eating too much chicken we have to get back to the power of the beaver tail women were given a special responsibility within the Great Law particularly those of the clan mothers so we see in this belt called the women's nomination belt and it shows the clan mothers there they are arms joined together in unity they have a responsibility to ensure that young men can be stood up who can handle the responsibility of the Great Law the clan mother is always tried to help the young men be good young men to maintain this great law so she has to pick a candidate out of the men in her clan to become the next chief and this swamp Bell tells about that it also tells about how she has a responsibility to supervise their work to work with them and if necessary to remove them if they don't fulfill their duties we can see this detail of this a little purple Square now one story says that that represents the council fire of the clan mothers that the clan mothers is supposed to gather from time to time renew their strength renew their stories and help each other do a good job so we have 50 titles 50 Chiefs we also then have 50 Clan mothers so the clan mothers function in unity and harmony with the Chiefs but they have a special Authority and responsibility to ensure that the chief represents the voice of the clan in 1907 John Arthur Gibson dictated a tradition called the female chief he meant the clan mother he said she has special duties she's supposed to provide the cooking for all of those that attend the council now at first this sounded a little sexist you know just women do the cooking and men will do the thinking but what it says is that by the quality of the food that she provides it will satiate the people and make them peaceful and they will become right as to their strength and also their minds so it's metaphorical as well as it is physical yes she has to ensure that good food is there like the beaver taale so that the men and can think well that all the people attending the council will be in their right mind but it also said everything is put on her shoulders the decisions uh for her family rest in her hands she has to nominate the male leader she has to work with that man if the chief waivers away she has to kind of bring him back in line she's always thinking about what's good for her family and what's good for the Hino Shi generally it's a big responsibility that the clan mothers have it's a very unusual set of wam strings that was in a mum collection talks about when they do stand up this candidate you actually stand up five people you see the nominated Chief only represented by the white string the one with white and purple beads that represents his assistant and then there's some other strings one would represent that of the clan mother and then the two purple strings represent what was called the female cook and the male cook now this is based upon the note attached to this swamp string that was collected for this cuga title today people may say the female cook and the male cook are the faith Keepers but there is this metaphor about cooking about providing good food in order to come to a good mind just as the chief is given one wamp string to be his antlers or his horns of authority there's also a purple string attached when that Chief passes away they would send this string around to notify everybody that this man passed away uh when they were going to have his funeral and then hopefully soon after that they would find a way to put a new person in his place another important one them was the Confederacy Ember as we called or the council fire and as we can see here it's five strings long strings of woman that's tied together at one end one scholar wrote that when he attended a grand Council they laid it out so it' be like spokes of a wheel all coming together in the center Taho or anaga which give the Thanksgiving address holding these strings they would talk about what the meeting is about they would lay these strings out during the council and at the end they would pick them up so it represents what we call the fire the council fire almost like five logs put together attached at one end when the tus scers joined a string was added to it and sometimes that string is all purple or sometimes half white and half purple and what it said was when the tusar came basically a lot of them were Christians because they were had a big battle going on in North Carolina and what the other Chiefs said is you can join us you can take a seat among the younger brothers and then once you restore your traditional ceremonies we'll transform that string produce it all white the Tusc nation is very active at restoring their ceremonies trying to retain their language so maybe in the near future we'll see this Council fire become six strings of all white wom in 1924 the RCMP moved in at Grand River and ousted the Chiefs and tried to establish an elective system a lot of people believe They confiscated all the wamp and belts but this are the only things I could find that actually confiscated a string of beads it's either purple and white that was used as the council fire in the old Council house in the village and a bag of loose beads that's all they were able to acquire they tried to acquire the others because they understood who holds the wam holds the authority and they kept us for a long time as basically it was returned to the Chiefs I think it was about 1986 when the Electric Council returned this swamp back to the Confederacy Council whenever Council was called Taho would have a runner send wamp and Beads to all of the delegate Chiefs so a not stick each knot would represent a night or how many nights before the grand Council would be convened now today it's usually just one string of white beads attached to it but in the past depends on the nature of the message you could have many different strings like this one from 1714 to about 1722 the tusar nation joins the hinoi enters into this confederation these two wamp and belts acknowledge that the one on top where you can see it almost looks like Steps those are considered Rafters to the long house so we can see five of these Rafters strengthening the old long house the grand Council and then we see a six rafter it's not quite as the same being added to that and you'll notice down in the lower right corner of the belt on the top there's one little segment of that rafter the story attached to this belt also explains now that the non-natives in our backyard and they were causing the tusers a lot of problem we had to find a way to bring them within the L house once again how do we extend the rafters to the people who are building their Villages next to ours the belt on the bottom acknowledges then that we're going to be called The Six Nations I think it was first mentioned in 1722 and we've been known that ever since now some people argue that the tus scores weren't included in the Great Law because there's only 50 titles and 50 Chiefs but at this time 1714 to 1722 our grand Council made a decision that the tus scorers are going to be the sixth nation of the Confederacy the United Nation also has a w Bel it relates to the great law but also talks about the recovery or the restoration of our alliance after the American Revolutionary War where our Nations fought against each other in many ways the Great Law was severely tested during the French Indian wars during American Revolutionary War during the War of 1812 the onitas and the tusor allied with the Americans other nations allied with the British and we actually fought one another we spilled our blood on the battlefield many ways betraying the underline message of the great law but like all things we had to restore that we had to use our good mind to be fair to everybody bring them back in so that we can say that we're holding on one people living under one law and this swamp Bel to test to that whenever we wanted to invite another Nation to come to the Grand Council we would send them this swamp and belt or if we wanted to admit them in now there's many different ways people can get admitted into the Confederacy it could be a full adoption or or they could come in as a member Nation like the tus scores and many variations in between but we would invite people to come but they also say that this belt serves as a memory of the clan law that was established in the Great Law which means Clans are the primary political unit within the hinoni and that you're not supposed to intermar between our Clans so we have a Unity of Clans all members of the bear clan are related no matter whether they're anander senar Mohawk we also recognize that people in the same Clan will not marry one another because that will create some disunity and harm in the future when other nations came to the Grand Council we would offer them this Hospitality or welcome belt the diagonal lines represent what we call Rafters or their braces metaphorically they're supporting our Confederacy supporting our house because they are coming to join in a discussion peace a lot of our Council meetings with other native nations were a way of forming treaties and forming an alliance uh creating Unity joining our arms together with them so that we can coexist this belt again we can see the rafters it represents when aaasne was admitted into the hinoni Confederacy in 1888 what it really means is that after the American Revolution Mok nation became split some people came to Grand River some went to tyona earlier some went up to towards Montreal where gwag and ganag are those that were allied with the Catholic religion and their French allies but after the American Revolutionary War we had to reassess how are we going to coexist and the Confederacy kept meeting but sometimes the Mohawks were weren't attending those meetings so 1888 the grand council at meets at anaga decided that the Mohawk fire of the council that meets there will be represented by Aquas hassi that's what this swamp Bel talks about today there's a great movement to recover the understanding of our ancestors and recover the hidden story of these wamp belts what are the teachings at there these are two of our leaders jock Hill and Sid Hill who were involved in this recitation of the Great Law were able to actually have the wamp belts in our possession you know for a 100 years they disappeared taken away by collectors anthropologists museums and it was a century long struggle to recover them here's a very unusual Bel that we I just received a back from the Smithsonian there was a painting on a it and the story attached to the painting says that the belt was cut in two during the American Revolutionary War CU our people couldn't decide what side to support and that's why it has these six star-like figures uh between these two Rafters but I've since found another report another part of the Bel was still intact so it's really hard to say you can't always trust what's written sometimes the historians got it wrong sometimes anthropologists did understand and then sometimes our people told them things kind of to distract them away from the real truth so to recover the knowledge of the wamp belts you have to become like a cultural detective trying to weed through all of the evidence try to determine what is the real story of this belt and unfortunately there are several belts where we don't know the story but look at the imagery this big belt on top it's a huge belt with five white squares most likely representing the five nations or the other belt with the five diamonds representing their nations of their fire a lot of times these belts would be used in treaties it send messages back and forth they could be reassigned a story several times and sometimes the messages just get lost in history there's also some wamp belts that are attached to condolence these are very unusual this is one that was identified with corn planter it's a purple belt which represents condolence but there were five spaces in the belt where beads were intentionally left out representing the five nations this is the wolf Klein condolence belt associated with a senica chief it was last used when Edie Parker passed away they had this wamp belt on his casket and you see it's got these five hexagons representing five nations then there's these white lines at either end which were interpreted to be that they're the doorkeepers so this was associated with the function of the Sega Nation to be the doorkeepers of the hudi there was a very similar belt almost the exact duplicate of it that came from ganag so it made me wonder if the one belt represents the senica's doorkeepers does this belt represent the Mohawks as storekeepers but there are two other belts that specifically talk about that the one on the top is the center a doorkeeper belt where the senas are going to be like guards to the long house some like like dogs or Wolves who will announce when danger is approaching and we'll step forward and gather the young men to defend the Confederacy there's another belt on the bottom it's called The Mohawk wolf belt see these two figures holding hands and then these two animals dogs or Wolves at either end and then we can see these lines going off the end now there's seven lines there so some people have thought this belt represents uh the Seven Nations of Canada there's various interpretations about that belt this condolence Council summons belt was collected a gagi they said it was used to invite delegates to ensure that they send leaders when we're going to install a new leader they said this belt was used to remind other Chiefs to send their delegates to the condolence Council make sure that you have people there to help install the new leaders there are many many other W and belts some of them are directly related to their Great Law a lot of them are premised by the principles of the Great Law this was a photograph taken here at Grand River about 18 7 when Horatio hail an anthropologist came to study the wamps imagine we were all living back then imagine we would see these belts in Council we would know their stories you can see some of them that we talked about here today wam has an everlasting value to our people it codifies the words of The Peacemaker it carries the words of our ancestors forward gives us some sense of hope about the path that we're supposed to follow it's two interesting examples here two contrasts one is a US coin that was designed in 2010 where we can see that ha went through that Confederacy wamp belt wrapped around these Five Arrows this was to commemorate the hudi the other is the grand seal of the houdin Shoni designed by or lions so we can see those 50 men standing in a circle their hands held together see the tree of Peace in the middle you can barely make it out but there's the figure Of The Peacemaker there holding the Five Arrows as he stands on the white roots of peace with the weapons of war buried beneath it and then all of the family Clans born within that Circle two very different ways of looking at what means what the great law means to our people for the last several years the Chiefs have taken on the responsibility to have recitations of the Great Law in our various communities they started at Onida Nation went to the anaga nation alasi and next summer they're going to be at Grand River we have to understand it's kind of a work in progress these all fairly young people we're trying to recall what our ancestors said we're trying to learn the teachings of the wamp abouts we're trying to put the narrative back together as best as we can so that we can make sure that at least for one more Generation The Great Law of Peace will continue but we're lucky that we have these wamp belts back we're able to recover them from the museums and this is the first time in a 100 years that the wamp and belts were actually there all of the wels associated with the reading of the Great Law so it's a great moment in time a few more years of this we should all become more knowledgeable about what the Great Law is so I'd like to thank you for your time hopefully you'll join us for our next uh lecture series it's going to be on the two wamp and trying to take a look at what does that mean to us today to have a treaty relationship with our neighbors Don