This is not breaking news, or is it? Francis Jennings wrote three great volumes about first contact between the European and the Indian. The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire 1984 was the third. It is the history that we are reliving today.
The Covenant Chain was conceived by the Iroquois Confederation. It was the devise used by our Indian predecessors’ to deal with the question, (how do we live with others who are so different from ourselves and how can we peacefully all get what we might want from the experience?) The chain was used as a means to facilitate the interaction between people of very different cultural backgrounds: the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian and others. It was a governmental policy–infrastructure precursor.
The Iroquois Confederation was the brilliant idea of the native American Indian people of the Eastern Canadian and American continent. In many ways the Chain was integral in the growth and shaping of modern American society as a whole. One of the aspects of the Chain was the use of accommodation and cooperation between peoples of different ethnicity, different cultures and different social and political structures.
It is very difficult to chronicle the history of European-Indian involvement together. It is hard to write fairly and objectively because of the categories that govern our thinking. Not to mention the fact that the Indians did not use the tool of writing to chronicle their history, govern themselves or their interactions with others. So we have no written history from the natives, just the historical narrative written by non-related others with a definite agenda of their own.
Thanks to Jennings It is fairly clear to see the bias within our widely accepted historical narrative. In American schools we are taught this one-sided biased narrative instead of showing us how our bias has shaped our attitudes toward others. If we learn to know our biases we can see more clearly the other side of an issue. We all have this bias it is what makes us who we are.
Divide and conquer.
Today most powerful and wealthy entities are promoting the assumption of sidedness, as they did in our past,. This further divides us and brings us closer to conflict among our selves. As we follow along with this daily conditioning issues, at first glance, are seen as matters of Our Side & Their Side. At present( Christian vs. Muslim) is a good example of this. Fearful assumptions of sidedness develop into artificial, polarized categories of definition: savagery vs. civilization, heathen vs. Christian, upper class vs. lower class, red, black or brown vs. white and so on. Opposition and conflict establish them selves in the artificial categories. Attitudes are generated that become familiar and comfortable in an otherwise uncomfortable situation. The attitudes reflect opposition and conflict follows.
With the comfortable fighting and bickering and Side Building horse race, accommodation gets bad press and is equated with capitulation or betrayal. Honor and glory are given to the heroes who stand and fight hard for Our Side, what ever it happens to be. Compromises become contemptible. With our eyes fixed on conflict between two sides and our sympathies with one of them we glory in triumphs and fail to see the benefits to be realized through cooperation or at least accommodation between those sides.
We can not hope to have a strong government by smudging facts. Conflicts of interest and ideas must be portrayed faithfully and truthfully or necessary adjustments can not be made as we move through seasons of change.
Means and devices to avoid conflicts or to resolve them with minimal damage must be given their due. The need is to reject the assumptions of inevitability. This need never ceases to be relevant. As we creatively push back against the perceived inevitability of issues related to the rule of law and self governance sometimes we get free of it.
The Iroquois Confederation Covenant Chain is an historic example of creative willfulness and the American Indian resourcefulness that, for a time, held shoulder to shoulder, by accommodation and compromise, with the most powerful governments in the world. The issues we face today are the same on many levels but much quicker with the internet and more dangerous with nuclear weaponry.