To the Editor:

The Bill of Rights, legally encoded in our Constitution, is also an aspiration, a prayer for attaining what is best in the human spirit.

We have a long way to go, though, and even the principles of law currently under threat, so well described in the Altamont Enterprise editorial, “Don’t Reverse the Bill of Rights,” do not address rights of American Indians. First Nations are under trusteeship to the federal government, which often functions more like a guardian for minors or incompetents than as a partner of equal standing. In matters of conflicts of interest, “under the current administrative structure, Indian interests often suffer,” according to a federal policy paper.

The very model for our form of government has basis in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. A 1987 article in The New York Times, “Iroquois Constitution: A Forerunner to Colonists’ Democratic Principles” reported, “One forum to share ideas between the colonists and the Iroquois ... was the Albany Congress [in] 1754. At the meeting, representatives of the six Indian nations and seven colonies heard Benjamin Franklin champion the Iroquois example as he presented his Plan of Union.”

Haudenosaunee women, long before Columbus, had “the right to choose all political representatives, and to remove from office anyone who didn’t address the wishes and needs of the people. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, the two major theoreticians of the early women’s rights movement, had direct knowledge of the Haudenosaunee, writing about the superior social, political, religious, and economic status of women in the Iroquois nations. Their work for women’s rights was inspired by the vision they received from the Haudenosaunee of gender balance and harmony,” according to a Sally Roesch Wagner lecture summarized by the National Endowment for the Humanities website.

By contrast, American women were still considered “property” and didn’t have the right to vote until 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.

Mohican people lived in this area when Europeans arrived. Their ancestral lands ranged along much of what is now called the Hudson River Valley. The people named this river Mahicannituck and called themselves the Muheeconeok, the People of the Waters That are Never Still. The Mohican place names that surround us, such as Schodack (“Place of the Fire”), Papscanee, Taconic, Schaghticoke, and Housatonic, bear witness to their existence and survival, although most were “removed” to what is now called Stockbridge, Massachusetts and “removed” again, by way of Oneida, New York, to Wisconsin.

Some of our local history will point to land deeds codified by the Dutch and English “settlers” as proof of fair dealing with indigenous people. There is the famous “selling” of Manhattan Island for $24. In fact, the very concept of “selling” land was alien to native people. Chief Seattle said, “The Earth does not belong to Man; Man belongs to the Earth.”

When Columbus “discovered America” there were already people here. But Columbus was an agent of Spain’s Queen Isabella (who is also known for re-energizing the Spanish Inquisition, ordering conversion or exile of her Muslim and Jewish subjects, many of whom were killed). In 1493, Pope Alexander VI collaborated with European Catholic Monarchs, issuing a formal decree that “played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year,” according to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

The Doctrine of Christian Discovery was developed to legitimize the colonization of lands outside of Europe, which allowed European entities to seize lands inhabited by indigenous peoples under the guise of discovery. That Doctrine is still on the books in the United States. It has been primarily used to support decisions invalidating or ignoring aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.

Yes, immigrants can be dangerous. The genocide of the indigenous people of North America is proof of that. Many of the survivors were sent as children to “residential” or “boarding” schools, to have the Indian taken out of them, and were often physically and sexually abused. The United States government and few of our people have acknowledged verbally or viscerally these and many other well-known or obscure atrocities. Many non-Indians know virtually nothing about it.

Failing to be accountable for our own actions and our government’s actions is akin to looking the other way when a child is abused, or a spouse beaten, or an elder exploited, which is exactly what many people do. They're “loyal” to their family members, clergy, town, country, etc., and so give consent to perpetuate misery, injustice, and abuse of power. Bigotry, excuse-making, denial, and silence are destroying our humanity.

Greed is deadlier than any ideology. Greed radicalizes people: greed for money, power, for what belongs to someone else, or for what we all need in common. It can get hold of us in subtle and profound ways, so much so that we celebrate it, pat each other on the back for it, glorify it. The imbalance of those who have and those who don’t has reached a tipping point. Desperation and anger is epidemic, and those who have the most could care less.

Yes, we have The Rule of Law, the Constitution, its Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments of 1865 to 1870 that abolished slavery, addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for all persons (except Indians), and prohibited discrimination in voting rights. Unfortunately, lawyers abound who are willing to provide counsel to politicians to tear government apart at every level and find sneaky ways to get around “liberty and justice for all.”

If American is ever to realize the hope people all over the world want for their own lives, those values need to be cultivated and reinforced in each of us, become real and practiced in everyday life.

Onondaga Chief, Professor Oren Lyons, is quoted as saying, “Before Europeans settled upstate in the 1600s, the Five Nations of the Iroquois lived under a constitution that had three main principles: peace, equity or justice and ‘'the power of the good minds,'’ that of the elders over the young.”

Where are the wisdom keepers today? The ones who care about “The Seventh Generation?” They're around, but who is listening?

Dianne Sefcik

Westerlo