|
|
|
|
Click to visit the
Official Town Site
|
|
|
|
|
|
General News: Native American Leader Keeps His Faith
|
| Chief Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation. |
|
| Lyon's necklace represents his family in the animal kingdom. The buffalo horn was worn by a 19th-century Lakota chief. |
November 13, 2008
By Nancy Peckenham
A Native American Onondaga leader, Oren Lyons, came to Cornwall-on-Hudson on Wednesday to share his wisdom with the students at Storm King School.
Lyons, at age 78, is a retired history professor, a Hall of Fame lacrosse player, and a faithkeeper of his culture. He told the students who filled the theater about his people’s relationship with the natural world and of how the emphasis on respect and responsibility for every person shapes their community.
In the hour-long presentation that touched on many issues affecting Native Americans today, he spoke of the native people who lived in villages along the Hudson River when the Dutch sailed up it 400 years ago. While many native people were forced from their settlements, members of the Iroquois Nation, which includes the Onondaga, forged a treaty with the Dutch in 1613. The terms of the treaty, Lyons explained, were expressed in a wampum belt that showed the two groups as brothers, traveling in peaceful co-existence.
Today, the Onondaga Nation refers back to that treaty, Lyons said, in its claim to 3.5 million acres of land from the St. Lawrence River to the Pennsylvania border.
The Onondaga Nation is a sovereign nation within New York state and the women hold the power of governance by reserving the right to appoint the leaders. As a nation, the leaders are concerned about global warming and drug use by tribal members. Lyons also said certain native tribes that have used their sovereignty to make deals with the gaming industry, like the Pequots who built the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, have lost their culture and identity.
Lyons said that the Onondaga leaders recently received a letter from president-elect Barack Obama in which he asked for a meeting. Their response, he said, will be carried directly to Obama by runners dressed in feathers and traditional clothes.
These traditional clothes are part of the customs kept alive on the Onondaga nation by members of his community. Lyons said that on Wednesday, while he was speaking, his people were celebrating the Creator’s Day, a time of thanksgiving when bread is baked in rings and people share it with buckets of soup.
“You wear your best dress, your best feathers, and you dance your hardest and give thanks,” Lyons told the students. “You give thanks for the earth, your grandfathers, the four winds, the thundering voices, the fishes, animals, trees, people, the sun, the moon, and the stars.”
Giving thanks was a theme throughout Lyon’s presentation, along with a respect for all living things. “We see plants as our relation, not our resources,” he said, calling a tree his grandfather.
Lyons pointed to the necklace he wore and described the buffalo horn that came from the necklace of Red Cloud, a 19th-century Lakota warrior, bones from a great white bear, talons of an eagle and coral from the ocean. “All my relatives are with me,” he said, touching his necklace. “I think about them all the time, pray for them.”
Comments:
|
Sounds like we could all learn a lot from this man.
posted by Gary Regan on 11/14/08 at 6:40 AM
|
Add a Comment:
Please signup or login to add a comment.
|
 |
|
|
|
