{"id":9359,"date":"2022-10-16T21:59:52","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T19:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/?p=9359"},"modified":"2022-10-16T22:20:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T20:20:51","slug":"haudenosaunee-irokezska-konfederace-a-velky-zakon-miru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/haudenosaunee-irokezska-konfederace-a-velky-zakon-miru\/","title":{"rendered":"Ji\u0159\u00ed Zem\u00e1nek: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and the Great Law of Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

"Just as today is a young day when the sun rises and illuminates the earth, bringing warmth throughout the land for all people, so we will help the people of all nations. And just as many things grow on the earth that strengthen people, a new Great Law will come to enlighten the minds of all people, old and young and even children, and you will work on it. All will become related to each other, so that they will be one family composed of all tribes; and all people will be kind to each other; and this is what will unite them: Good News and Strength and Peace."<\/p>Deganawida (Concerning the League)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Haudenosaunee, or "Long House People", commonly referred to as the Iroquois or Six Nations, are members of a confederation of indigenous peoples known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It was originally a confederation of five nations\u2014the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk\u2014inhabiting upstate New York in the southern Great Lakes region (the St. Lawrence River, the Potomac River, and part of the Tennessee River basin), which was joined by the Tuscarora Nation in 1722.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Iroquois tradition, all the tribes of this region were once in conflict with each other. It is believed that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was founded between 1450 and 1660 by the legendary prophet Deganawida, the Great Peacemaker, in collaboration with Hiawatha, the chief of the Onondaga and Mohawk, and the woman Jigonhsasee, known as the Mother of Nations. However, other research indicates that the founding of this powerful Indian confederacy occurred as early as 1142, and some scholars assume that it existed in this area for more than 4 thousand years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deganawida brought a message to the warring nations, known as the Great Law of Peace (Gayanashagowa), which he passed on to Hiawatha, and they formed a confederation. The Great Law of Peace united all five tribes and is considered a civil, social, and ethical code, a political constitution, and a philosophy of life that determined the path of the Iroquois, united in this confederation. The Iroquois use the metaphor of the longhouse, a specific type of dwelling in which they lived at the time of the formation of the confederation, to describe their political alliance, which also extended to their social and cultural life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deganawid's teachings on peace are understood primarily as referring to a state of mind essential to good living and good government. The Peacemaker taught the Iroquois a system of self-government that was democratic in nature. It was the first democracy practiced in the New World, a democracy developed on a spiritual basis, a form of participatory governance that is still alive among the Iroquois peoples today. Benjamin Franklin and others borrowed freely from this part of the Haudenosaunee oral tradition and practice in formulating the principles of democratic government upon which the United States was founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The peacemaker emphasized the importance of diversity in human society for sustainability and renewal and called for the establishment of a universal tradition of thanksgiving (Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen \/ Words First and foremost to others). To this day, every social, cultural and political event that takes place among the Iroquois begins and ends with this speech of thanksgiving, which is their central prayer and invocation and reflects the relationship of gratitude of these indigenous people for life and the world around them; it teaches them mutual respect, protection of nature, love, generosity and responsibility. When a person gives thanks to the natural world, he thanks every life-sustaining force in it and feels spiritually connected to it. Gratitude is the foundation of their spirituality and the key to peace for the Iroquois; their Thanksgiving is a great gift to contemporary humanity. They believe that they have a responsibility not only for their own lives, but also for the lives of future generations, who need to be protected; that they have a duty to prepare the seventh generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Peacemaker is sometimes simply called a "messenger," someone sent by the Creator. The Haudenosaunee mother clans, along with the sitting chiefs\u2014such as Oren Lyons, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy Council of Chiefs for the Onondaga and Seneca tribes today\u2014are considered "runners," the people responsible for maintaining the rules given to them by the Peacemaker and renewed over time. The confederacy was governed by the Grand Council, an assembly of fifty hereditary chiefs, or sachems, of equal rank, each representing a clan of a particular nation (tribe). It was an elaborate political system that included a bicameral legislature: the chiefs of the Seneca and Mohawk tribes sat in one house, while the chiefs of the Oneida and Cayuga tribes sat in the other; the Onondaga cut ties and had the right to veto the decisions of the other tribes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elected chiefs conducted all the affairs of the confederation and met whenever necessary; they decided on peace or war with other tribes, negotiated intertribal matters, and received foreign envoys or envoys. The chiefs of the confederation are exclusively federal representatives and have no legal power in any event directly concerning the clan or tribe. The main meeting place of the Haudenosaunee was and still is on the territory of the Onondaga, the keepers of the fire, who resided right in the middle of the five tribes of the confederation, whose great councils they usually convened. The Onondaga were also formerly the custodians of the tribal archives in the traditional form of wampum belts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Huadenosaunee Confederacy created a highly egalitarian matrilineal society from six Iroquois tribes and united them into a powerful nation. Today, the Haudenosaunee are the longest-running confederation in North America that has been recognized as a legal political entity by the United States. It is one of the first and longest-lasting participatory democracies in the world, and many members of the six Iroquois tribes still adhere to it today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See: haudenosauneeconfederacy.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Zemanek<\/p>\n\n\n

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Emblem of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cJust as today is a young day when the sun rises and illuminates the earth, causing warmth throughout the land for all people, so we will help the people of all nations. And just as many things grow on the earth that strengthen people, a new Great Law will come to enlighten the minds of all people, old and young and even children and on that\u2026 Continue reading Ji\u0159\u00ed Zem\u00e1nek: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and the Great Law of Peace<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nezarazene","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9368,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9359\/revisions\/9368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}