49/50: Natural Laws Must be Obeyed
Name: Aesop #482 @9702
Date: Sat Apr 17 21:37:10 1993
From: Someplace Else (Alaska) [907-338-1612]

>From: jdmann@cdp.UUCP
Subject: Natural Laws Must Be Obeyed

/* Written 1am 1/15/89 by David Yarrow(jdmann) in gen.nativeam */ 
/* ---------- NATURAL LAWS MUST BE OBEYED ----------------- */ 
Source: Saturday, Jan. 13 by Associated Press, George Cornell
        (printed on the Religion page of the Syracuse Herald)
          NATURAL LAWS MUST BE OBEYED, ONONDAGA LEADER LYONS WARNS
  When a city dumps sewage into an adjacent river, pollution not only 
affects it, but increasingly other cities down river.  Each adds to the 
blight.  It mounts continually as the river crawls toward cities ahead. 
   "The people downstream are going to suffer more and more," says Chief 
Oren Lyons, one of the Onondaga chiefs and an American Indian spiritual 
leader, sketching the image of the cumulative effects of despoiling nature. 
   "We'll pay a penalty," he added in an interview.  "Only when nations 
cease building on rivers to use them for sewers will there be some prospect 
for cleaner life in the future."  He said similar contamination impairs 
other environmental processes, dirtying air currents, leaching the soil, 
distorting human ways, and harming the stratosphere, compounding problems. 
   "All these currents in the world, the air, the water, the currents of 
life on land, the wind, even the Earth we travel on, are moving and they 
don't recognize any borders," he said.  "They're a different jurisdiction.  
It involves everybody." 
   Lyons is one of a score of indigenous spiritual leaders from many lands 
participating in an international conference next week in Moscow on 
protecting the environment.  He added, "There are natural laws that govern 
the air, govern the land and govern the water, and it behooves us to know 
what those laws are it we're going to survive...  You can't argue with 
natural laws... If we keep violating them, we won't survive." 
   Lyons already attended a planning session in Moscow, where he met other 
members of a Global Forum of spiritual and parliamentary leaders concerned 
with global survival.  The conference, sponsored by the Supreme Soviet, 
Global Forum and National Academy of Science, is being held until Jan. 21. 
   "One major thing we will be discussing is how to somehow transfer money 
being used for arms and weapons to education, health and things that can 
use it right now," Lyons said.  He and other environmentalists are also 
trying to organize a world council of indigenous people.  It would include 
American Indians, aborigines and African traditional tribes. 
   Lyons, 59, a clan chief on the Onondaga branch of the Iroquois and 
director of a Native American studies program at the State University of 
New York at Buffalo, said Indians are especially attuned to life's basis in 
nature.  He said, "Indians and other indigenous people have lived in 
nature, closer to the Earth, and understand its wisdom and laws.  That 
wellspring philosophy needs to be brough to the world." 
   Several US Congress members and scientists are among the conference's 
approximately 200 registered participants, about 100 representing 
Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  Approximately a 
fifth of the religious contingent are indigenous spiritual leaders of the 
Americas, Africa, Australia, and Pacific Islands, their relatively large 
representation indicating their special kinship to the subject. 
   "It's the first time we've been able to get ourselves together for this 
broad a representation," said Lyons, a member of the conference steering 
committee.  "Indigenous people have a long-term moral perspective on Earth 
and its life.  We have no complex answers, but only the simple principle of 
respect for all life, for the trees, the rivers, the fish, the animals. 
   "The world is very complex today, but values still remain simple, the 
principles of life remain simple.  If we break those rules of life and 
procreation, we break the cycle of life and life will disappear.
   "The Earth will not disappear, but people will.  We're not going to 
destroy the world.  The world has its own time cycle.  But we are still 
only a biological experiment.  At one time the Earth had great dinosaurs, 
but they are not here anymore.  It could be that one time people will not 
be here anymore.  That's up to us, and the directions we take."
       =============================================================
   COMMENTARY: The Moscow conference will be opened by Onondaga Nation 
clanmother Audrey Shenandoah, representing a matrilineal culture which is 
among the oldest religions on Earth.  How fitting to convene a global 
meeting to discuss the crisis of survival on Earth. 
   And how sad the writer fails to highlight the Mother Earth imagery of 
Onondaga religion, culture and government.  When will the media discover 
this archetype in this scenario?

   Onondaga Nation is an oddity among nations.  For one, is is among the 
smallest: 11 square miles.  So the USSR, the largest nation, joins 
Onondaga, the smallest, to discuss our global ecocrisis.
   But Onondaga Nation is also capitol of North America's oldest surviving 
sovereign democracy: The Six Nations Confederacy.  This government was 
founded on the shore of Onondaga Lake by a legendary figure called The 
Peacemaker.  Hiawatha was an Onondaga who was The Peacemaker's spokesman.  
   In this commentator's view, this "virgin born messenger from the 
Creator" was the Christ Spirit's appearance in the New World.  Better study 
the evidence before passing your own judgement.  Then spend several long 
minutes reflecting on the profound ironies of this truth.  Even if this is 
no truth, it is still no fiction, either.
   How sad the writer provides not a single glimpse of these deep spiritual 
roots of Onondaga government.  In a supreme irony, the Legend of the 
Peacemaker is better known in Moscow than in Onondaga County, New York. 

   It's odd to note Lyons is both political and spiritual ambassador of the 
Six Nations.  Few nations have a unified government and religion which is 
not oppressive.  This is because the Confederacy was founded by a spiritual 
messenger: government is spiritual.  
   Though lost to modern culture, this is still embedded in the ancient 
roots of European law as the very principle of sovereignty itself, which 
derives from higher power.  Today the Sovereign--the "rightful and 
righteous heir"-- is supplanted by popular democracy modeled, oddly enough, 
on The Peacemaker's Confederacy. 
   And how odd that atheistic Supreme Soviet invites the world's religious 
leaders to join politicos for this discussion of global eco-crisis. 

   How astonishing for the smallest nation on Earth to call for money to be 
diverted from weapons to human needs.  This tops David and Goliath.  Yet I 
don't think Chief Lyons will be firing any stones at the Supreme Soviet--
so, who cast as Goliath in the screenplay of this version?  
   Not only the smallest, but perhaps the poorest, too.  Onondaga Nation 
doesn't have an army, or even a Warrior Society.  "We're peacemakers," says 
Onondaga chief Leon Shenandoah.  Who but the least powerful could make such 
a statement?  Could these be the ones Jesus Christ referred to in his 
Sermon on the Mount? 
   I've been there, and I hold my judgement on that question. 
  -+-  prepared by David Yarrow, the turtle, for SOLSTICE magazine 
 ***** SOLSTICE: Journal of Personal & Planetary Health, is published 
       at 310 E. Main St, Charlottesville, VA 22901 804-979-4427 

