6 - Maple Leaf Forever

Susanna Suchak (March 2006)

Related to the 5th Principle: "The right of conscience and the use of democratic process in our congregations and in society at large."

A few weeks ago I spoke of hunger and asked you to ponder why hunger exists and how you as an individual could do one thing to ease this social problem ? a problem of human creation. Today, I will talk of a different kind of hunger ? a hunger I pray each of you experiences all the time. A hunger, that when met, is satiated with such incredible sweetness. A springtime experience akin to joy beyond bounds. A maple syrup sweetness that comes after much hard work within a harmonious community, like that of the consensus seeking democracy that formed the League of Nations, now called Haudenosaunee ? the people who build Longhouses

The Great Law of Peace struck in 1142 by the Haudenosaunee Nations is the basis of this community building democracy of consensus practiced the Haudenosaunee people. This law permeated and permeates every facet of their day-to-day lives. It was not a Sunday kind of religion, nor was it politics benefiting the few.

Here is a small excerpt translated into English in the 1800s (hence the archaic language) from The Great Law of Peace (excerpted from the internet on Tuesday, March, 15th, 2006 at http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm )

"Whenever the Confederate Lords shall assemble for the purpose of holding a council, the Onondaga Lords shall open it by expressing their gratitude to their cousin Lords and greeting them, and they shall make an address and offer thanks to the earth where men dwell, to the streams of water, the pools, the springs and the lakes, to the maize and the fruits, to the medicinal herbs and trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and give their pelts for clothing, to the great winds and the lesser winds, to the Thunderers, to the Sun, the mighty warrior, to the moon, to the messengers of the Creator who reveal his wishes and to the Great Creator who dwells in the heavens above, who gives all the things useful to men, and who is the source and the ruler of health and life.

Then shall the Onondaga Lords declare the council open."

This Great Law of Peace is the basis for the democratic confederacy of the United States of America, but I think they ? and Canada must be included in this condemnation ? have lost sight of true democracy. Like Gary Snyder I "would like to think of a new definition of humanism and a new definition of democracy that would include the non-human, that would have representation from those spheres. This is what I think we mean by an ecological conscience."1 (Snyder p106) For me it is important to define ourselves, as I think the Haudenosaunee did, as Thomas Berry does, as geologians (theologians of the earth). Our Cosmos is just too important not to have representation not only within our governments, but our spirituality as well.

This representation was always there, of course, not in any electoral process of voting, but within the Haudenosaunee democracy of consensus ? and within the law of the wild. But here we need to explain the term "wild" in the sense of the spiritual meaning of the Haudenosaunee people. Their address to the Western World at Geneva Switzerland in 1977 states in part, ''The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concepts of human liberation and begin to see liberation as something that needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all things that support life - the air, the waters, the trees - all the things that support the sacred Web of Life."2 Darren MacDougall has a passion for theology and spent 15 years in the environmental testing laboratory business. This combination of passions leads him to seek to understand "Native Spirituality". It brought him to sit with Morely (Jay) Clause of the Tuscarora Nation. A great honour when you take into account the deep mistrust of sharing spirituality with the Westerners ? an understandable and historically sound mistrust. Darren asked Mr. Clause what aspects of nature were most significant to his spiritual life. Mr. Clause responded, "?that we are spiritually connected to our brother and sisters in the natural world ? and to remember the Great Cycle of Thanksgiving"3. Connection and gratitude then are two fundamental aspects of the wild.

So if you choose to call me, as my elders did, "a wild Indian", I will glow with pride at the compliment. The "wild" encompasses all the natural world ? including plutonium, hydrogen, and nuclear energy. It is all connected. It is all natural ? and we as "the human beings" are part of that. We need be mindful of the responsibility this entails.

We are an interdependent web ? Spider Woman taught us that thousands of years ago. Our Walking Stories remind us that balance must be maintained or consequences will ensue, not punishment, just a matter of natural cause and effect. We must conduct ourselves in harmony with the entirety of the universe. Everyone has their say, in their own right way. We each speak, we all listen; we all choose the best course for the whole community ? we come to a mutual course of action. There is no vote ? that's consensus.

I believe consensus building is possible, is fair and just, and that it truly brings to bear the "right use" of conscience by individuals and groups ? if and only if it embraces the RIGHTS of the whole of Creation.

Of course, it is not the easy road and may be impossible if the group has no common goal ? it is impossible if there are hidden agendas, prima donas or scorekeeping. Let's explore how it was done during Real Sugar or Boiling Moon.

Our congregation sitting here but including the children approximately numbers what a community or village did in older times. So imagine if you will (and you can close your eyes if you wish; just promise not to snore) that hunger moon has waned and the next moon time approaches; our oldest male member confers with the woman's council and it is decided to announce, "One month after another has gone by. Spring is near. We must get back to our work."

Women wrap dried meat in deerskin, men pack furs on to sleds and toboggans. Bear paw snowshoes are constructed from small branches. We travel together to our sugar camp in the woods. On arrival, the women remove birch bark dishes and cooking pots from their winter storage and begin tapping trees using elderberry stems to drain off the Maple sap. The men hurry off to fish through the ice. Small children play nearby and are watched over by the entire village. Babies in cradleboards4 ride on their mother's backs or are set nearby protected by their elaborately beaded cradleboard to dream and watch as the village works beside them.

Here there is, you will have noticed, a strict division of labour ? Everyone has their own "job" to do. The food cache near our sugar camp holds food put by in fall ? cedar bark bags of wild rice, cranberries sewed in birch bark makuks5 and long strings of dried apples and potatoes. In these makuks or pots, we cook our food, as well as boil sap to make syrup, by dropping hot rocks into the liquid to heat it to the boil. About 2000 trees are tapped by the six or so families. Each tree fills its pail in an hour. Everyone is kept busy running pails of sap to the boiler. Now, during the making of "sugar", everyone is involved; no one pays strict attention to what each other does and does not do ? they just act in harmony toward a common goal.

During Sugar Moon you can quench your thirst by tapping a birch tree near a marshy area. Ahhhh the drink tastes like cool, fresh water, tinged with sweetness and a hint of wintergreen. On the other hand, you can make a tea from fresh spring twigs of the birch. With all the bustle, should a headache come upon you, you scrape the inner bark of the willow yellow with its own sap ? the predecessor of salicylic acid or as your future grandchildren will call it, aspirin.

There is much to teach our children. So many skills and knowledge are needed to live from and in collusion with the land ? the land ? our Mother.

The education "system" we employ is a truly integrated system, requires long apprenticeships and patient nurturing of our children. Babysitters will always be a foreign concept to us, because our children are not "in the way", but a vital and vibrant part of our community. Not only skills must be imparted, but history and values.

Yes, we learn from each other, but the wild was also our teacher.

In those not so long ago days, the educational system of the original people who called themselves "Human Beings" consisted not just of survival skills but history, arts, music, language, moral and religious instruction. The campus was the earth, the faculty ? the whole community who loved us, nurtured us, fed us, clothed us, sheltered us, warmed us, and guided us from infancy till we joined the ancestors.

In Turtle Island, Gary Snyder claims that the 'root of the environmental crisis is?very ancient?(that it has been) building up for a millennium" There is much truth in the idea that we are a culture that has "alienated ourselves from the very ground of its own being."

The "frogs' song" in the Walking Story I told the children was not anthropomorphizing frogs; it was a way of demonstrating that frogs are our teachers; that frogs have something to say that is worth listening to. Now, more than ever they have a warning. The Frog Watch that is carried out (UGuelph is one of the major partners) in Ontario and across North America asks us to stop and listen to the frogs.

Some have called them the "canaries" of the wild ? the wetlands. Remember when miners carried canaries down the dark shafts of the coalmines to warn them when the air was becoming toxic. These canaries gave their lives to assist the miners. I would hazard a bet (and I'm not much of a gambler) that these miners were very grateful to these wee yellow birds. Those birds also brought a glint of colour into those miners' lives. They knew that they depended on each other ? their very lives hinged on each other's attention.

You cannot communicate with the wild, with the creatures - our neighbours with whom we share our habitats, with the forces of nature ? in the laboratory. You must be there in the now, together. The real sugar is found in the real world ? the wild, nature. And it takes work on our part. And our attention.

Those humorous stories we tell, our myths, if you will. Are not "fairytales" they are not for our or your amusement, sultry evenings around the campfire. They are part of an educational system that was truly wholistic, integrated and useful. They demonstrate that utility is also beautiful. Beauty is useful. We all use each other. So long as we do it with gratitude and restraint, in a consensus building democracy, balance will find its way.

What we need to do here and now is to create a process that acknowledges other ways of learning and to credit all the "people" not only the human beings, with those skills, that knowledge ? to merge our cultures, but not submerge either ? because when we do we will find that thick sap called "the last run" (ishwaga zinzibakwud) which is dropped in the snow to solidify, packed tightly into shells or birch bark cones to be licked like candy.

That REAL SUGAR sweetness is the sweetest taste of all. It is sweetest because it comes from shared work of a community of equals. Equals who value each other for their uniqueness. Sharing knowledge, sharing burdens, as each is able, and sharing a common goal for a good quality of life for everyone in Creation.

Without the trees, without the frogs, without the rain, without the community there is no time of sugar moon ? there is no sugar at all.

In this time of 'post-civilization' instead of competing, let us blend our cultures and respect what each brings to the sweet syrup that results. For it takes a community working together - no stars, no hidden agendas, no scorekeeping ? a community of different but equal individuals working together to make "real" sugar.

My wish and prayer for all of us is that we each hunger for grassroots fairness and egalitarian social justice as gifts we share this spring with the whole of Creation ? that the sweetness of real sugar may be ours. So that the Maple Leaf and all it represented to the original people of this land will continue to fly forever.

The Haudenosaunee were judged to be wonderful orators by the French. While a speaker talked there was rapt and respectful attention and SILENCE. Not until the speaker had uttered the Hiro Kone ? sometimes translated as Amen, but actually meaning "I have spoken" ? did anyone speak or leave. According to Barbara Mann, the French couldn't quite wrap their Gallic tongues around the Hiro Kone which they believed was the Haudenosaunee word for themselves; instead they altered it to "Iroquois" and to this day many will call us by that name. It is, or it was, a pejorative term, but if there is respect in your heart and your tongue cannot wrap around Haudenosaunee The People will know and you will not be condemned for calling us by a French name.

I say Hiro Kone now for I have spoken, and I invite you to join me after the service is concluded and we have partaken of the delicious soup awaiting us when it will be your turn to question, to challenge and/or to add to what I have just shared. Hiro Kone.

N'yaweh

Mitakuye Oyasin