(upbeat music) (graphic whooshing) - Hey, you all.

I'm low-key upset.

Why?

You all know my name is Cory.

But last week, a teacher at school started to call me Dequominic, out of nowhere, and now everybody at school is calling me Dequominic.

A book was written about me entitled The Life of Dequominic, and the other day at my family reunion, my grandma said, "Come here, Dequominic."

No, Grandma, my name is Cory.

See why I'm mad?

How would you feel if someone called you a random name like Dequominic, or Bedelia Shmiglioni?

Or, actually, now that I think about it, this kind of has a lot to do with what we're going to talk about today.

You've heard of the Iroquois, right?

They are a group of indigenous nations that formed a powerful union in the land we now call New York.

But that's not their name.

That's just what the French called them when they met.

Kind of like Dequominic, but worse.

That name stuck around for hundreds of years.

Their true name is Haudenosaunee.

And over a thousand years ago, the Haudenosaunee created a constitution of their own called The Great Law of Peace.

Not only did the great Law of Peace unite the Haudenosaunee under a powerful democracy, it inspired America's founding fathers when it was their turn to draft our constitution.

That's right.

The US government, made by the people for the people, wasn't just built on ideas of enlightenment thinkers or ancient Greek philosophy.

It was influenced by the example of the Haudenosaunee people living all around us.

Let's turn the clock back.

(clock ticking) Mm, back some more.

Way back.

(graphic whooshing) What did New York look like a thousand years ago?

Geographically, about the same.

They were the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, the Niagara River.

And just like other early civilizations, the Haudenosaunee found that these bodies of water made this region the perfect soil for five nations to form.

The Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk.

There were plenty of fish to catch and animals to hunt and land to farm, and they knew how to work it.

They built canoes for crossing the water, and invented genius farming techniques, planting corn, beans, and squash on the same field, which kept their soil healthy for generations.

In my opinion, the most impressive thing about the Haudenosaunee is how they live close together in community.

Matter of fact, we don't got to time travel to see it.

(upbeat music) (graphic whooshing) Longhouses like this one at Ganondagan State Historic Site could house anywhere from four to 100 families.

And you all know how it is when you got a house full of people, you got to figure out who's going to cook, who's going to clean, and someone's got to do the hunting.

They would divide the work up among the families and even put together contracts so everyone knew their role.

But hold up.

Somebody told you indigenous people had no written language.

Well, how did they come up with the contracts then?

Check this out.

Not all writing looks like our alphabet.

Some is more symbolic, like Egyptian hieroglyphics, or this image that kind of looks like a tree, but it's actually the Japanese word for book.

Hmm.

Did you feel that?

That was, that was, that was a good explanation.

I'm killing it.

(upbeat music) The Haudenosaunee form of writing is called wampum.

By stringing together different colored beads, messages are formed that a wampum reader can understand.

It's a visual memory keeper, a way to communicate and record ideas from, "My love, will you marry me?"

to, "Let's make a deal."

And of all the deals written in wampum, the most important is the Great Law of Peace.

- [Allie] What's up, Dequominic?

- Excuse me.

My name is Cory.

- Hey, trust me, I get it.

We've been called Iroquois for over 600 years now, and that's not actually our name, but we still remember who we are.

- Wow, that's a really great perspective.

So, I was just about to explain to my friends here all about The Great Law of Peace.

Do you want to help us out?

- Absolutely.

My name is Allie.

I come from the Oneida Nation, and I'm a Haudenosaunee historian and scholar.

So, a long time ago, the Five Nations were all separate.

There were wars going on over land and hunting rights and fishing rights.

- A similar thing was happening in Europe during the Middle Ages, right?

England and France, they just kept fighting.

- Kind of, only medieval wars were a little bit bloodier than ours.

Still, it was a really tough time in this part of the world.

That's when a man who we come to know as the Peacemaker, he was given a message from the creator and he sailed over on his white stone canoe to bring this message of peace to us.

- I've heard of the Peacemaker, him and someone else, the name starts with a J?

- Jigonhsasee.

So Jigonhsasee, she was the first person to accept the Peacemaker's message.

Jigonhsasee ran like a rest stop.

And so warriors on the war path would come, they'd take a rest and share a meal, and they would also gossip together.

- So, Jigonhsasee was kind of like that chick, right?

She was the who's who.

Okay, so what did the Peacemaker do?

Like, tell her to stop hyping up all the warriors?

- So he did that, but also a lot more.

So, he encouraged her and asked her to really think about what she's doing and actually accept this message of peace and justice.

- Wow, and I heard the Peacemaker had trouble speaking.

So, how was he able to convince everyone of these big ideas?

- So, the Peacemaker had help from a really eloquent speaker known as Hiawatha.

But at this time, Hiawatha was going through a really troubled part of his life.

His entire family had been murdered by a wicked chief named Tadodaho.

So the Peacemaker, he came to him and helped to lay his family to rest, as well as they shared a really, really important conversation, the Peacemaker convinced Hiawatha not to take revenge on Tadodaho.

Instead, they took the time and they helped to comb out all of the bad ideas from his mind, and helped to end that cycle of violence.

- Wow, so, there's like a real big underlying theme of forgiveness.

Make sure you all pay attention to this.

- They gather everybody in these five nations together to relay this message.

But, you know, they're just not really, you know, picking up what he's saying.

So instead, he used a little bit of symbolism.

He took a bundle of five arrows.

He picked these up and he tried to break these, but he couldn't, 'cause they were too strong.

- Can I see?

Five arrows, we'll see about that.

(grunts) (Cory grunts and chuckles) - Not easy, right?

- (chuckling) No.

So, this really shows that together we are unbreakable.

But when a nation is on its own, it's weaker, just like one arrow on its own.

It's much easier to break.

(arrow snaps) - (laughs) That is clever.

- They were trying to figure out, you know, what form of government is going to be best for this new union?

And so that's when they all turned to Jigonhsasee, because she was the first person to accept this message of peace, and Jigonhsasee, she knew that the women didn't have enough of a role in our government, and so she decided that they need to be the first Democratic representatives that we have.

And so she implemented our clan mothers.

And our clan mothers, they're the ones who actually choose who the chiefs are going to be.

As well as if a chief isn't doing what he should do, they can impeach him or take him out of power.

- That is mind blowing.

Our Constitution didn't extend the voting rights to all women until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

- Exactly, women play a really important role in our government.

- So we have our representatives that are elected and they represent for the people.

This is kind of like Congress.

You're telling me they established all of this a thousand years ago.

Can you please tell my friends here, how do you guys remember all of this?

- Absolutely.

So, we recorded this in one of our wampum belts, in our Hiawatha belt.

The entire background is purple, and that represents the conflict and war going on at this time.

And each of the symbols that are joined together in white represent one of the original five nations, and they have this long white line that goes through it.

And this represents our peaceful unity connecting all of us.

- Wow, what about the big tree here in the middle?

- This tree in the middle, this represents the Great Tree of Peace.

This is where all of our chiefs gather together to form this new government, as well as we dug a big hole underneath it, all of the warriors cast their weapons in this hole.

It's another way to symbolize that we're not going to fight against each other.

- Wow, Allie, I want to say thank you for meeting us here in this amazing and beautiful longhouse, which, by the way, the longhouse represents more than just the dwelling place for people.

Isn't that right?

- [Allie] The longhouse is a good representation of our government as well.

Just like we can extend our longhouses to make it longer and fit in a new family, we can extend our Haudenosaunee Confederacy to fit in a new nation, as well as we can repair our longhouse, and we can also amend our Great Law of Peace to reflect the needs of the people today.

(upbeat music) (graphic whooshing) - Did those ideas ring any bells?

Forming a more perfect union of separate states, I mean, nations.

Before the US Constitution, the Great Law of Peace was the blueprint for democracy here.

It enabled the Haudenosaunee to embrace a sixth nation, the Tuscarora, and at the height of their power, the Great Law spread as far as what we now called the Tennessee River to the south, Lake Superior to the West, and into New England and Canada.

They survived French, English, and American occupation, and they're still here today.

That makes the Haudenosaunee League the oldest surviving democracy in the world.

You are looking at me like you don't believe me.

I get it.

I don't know if people talk about this.

So, how do we know for sure that our constitution was influenced by the Great Law of Peace?

Well, first of all, some of the founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, you all know, the big dogs, wrote letters about the example of the Haudenosaunee.

They basically said if the Haudenosaunee did it, so can we.

Matter of fact, they invited 21 Haudenosaunee chiefs to meet with them before writing the Constitution.

Second of all, look at the Great Seal of the United States.

See those 13 arrows held together by the eagle?

Yep, that's straight from the Peacemaker.

And third of all, Congress passed a resolution in 1988 acknowledging the influence of the Iroquois, which you all know now means, say it with me, Haudenosaunee, yes, on the Constitution.

(graphic whooshing) Still don't believe me?

Why don't you see for yourself?

Take some time and get to know your indigenous neighbors.

Now, despite efforts to try and erase the Haudenosaunee people, and their history, they are still here today.

They have their own land, laws, and passports, and are among over 500 recognized Indigenous nations across America.

Each with their own unique languages, cultures, and forms of government.

Not only do we owe them for the land we live on, they were the first to establish peace, justice, and democracy here.

For that, we got to be grateful.

(upbeat music) Now remember, history surrounds you, and includes you.

So go ahead and make history, and maybe someday I'll be telling your story right here on Compact History.

(upbeat music)