Faithkeeper Oren Lyons

There can be no peace as long as you make war on Mother Earth

Faithkeeper Oren Lyons

There is a higher authority and we are subject to its laws. There are no appeals courts for these laws. There is only the law and we will suffer in direct proportion to our transgressions against it.

Good people … we now talk about the ultimate authority, that law that governs all life on this planet. "This lonely blue dot on the fringes of a great galaxy" as my good friend Carl Sagan put it.

A thousand years ago or more we the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois, were given the rules and processes of democracy. The principles of this democracy are: Peace in mind and community, Equity, which is justice for the people, and the power of the good minds, which embodies good health and reason.

This democracy established power in the people who joined of their own free will. It established the process of informed consent. It balanced the duties of governance between men and women. It gave women the duty of choosing leadership, that was then ratified by consensus of the people. It also gave women the power of recall. It provided the principle of representation of people in government, as well as accountability by leadership.

It established respect as a law. It established access to all leaders and an open forum on all issues, and it did not discriminate on the basis of gender or age. It promoted freedom as a responsibility and above all it was based upon the spiritual laws of nature.

This was a seamless government that inspired Benjamin Franklin to say "...this is a government that seems indissoluble." It inspired the roots of western democracy that we know today. All this from indigenous peoples.

This Democracy is all inclusive. Democracy is direct access to leadership. Democracy is equal protection under law. True democracy does not abide privilege, nor centralized control of power. Leadership is privileged only to serve. And the leaders needs come last after the people.

The democratic laws of most indigenous peoples arise from their understanding of the natural law and the regenerative powers that sustain life.

Therefore, "sustainable" in our terms means working with these laws that could be termed spiritual.

We were instructed to make all of our laws in concert with these principles thus insuring life in endless cycles. To challenge these cycles and the interdependent processes of life that sustain us will insure our defeat and demise on this Earth. We human beings can be productive and supportive to this network or we can be parasites. Right now we are parasites.

And we are, by sheer numbers and behavior, extinguishing other life forms. The natural laws says that no one entity can grow unchecked. There are forces that will check this unbridled growth, such as disease and lack of food and water. Privilege will not prevail.

Evolution unfolds and has no interest in past or future states. There is just one Nature and the reality is now.

If quality of life is going to be considered on the basis of creature comforts, material accumulations, and the "free market", then the values of family, service, sharing, and responsibility to society become secondary and subordinate to personal gain, personal wealth, and the consolidation of power.

So we again pose the question: From whence do you derive your authority? What are the principles of your governance? Are the ethics of your governance based upon laws of man or laws of nature? Is there a relevance between the two? We ask you.

Extract from an Oren Lyons address

World Bank, October 3, 1995, Ethics and Spiritual Values and the Promotion of Environmentally Sustainable Development "50 Years of the World Bank, Over 50 Tribes Devastated"

See full text here.