It is now well established that the model of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, was an inspiration for the federalists who founded the United States of America (Johansen 1999). But this model of inter-communal relations is not only of historical interest; it survives to this day and guides the political life of some of the most radical and self-reliant indigenous communities of North America. Its basic principle is given in what is known as the Two Row Wampum model, which is described in the following passage:
When the Haudenosaunee first came into contact with the European nations, treaties
of peace and friendship were made. Each was symbolized by the Gus-Wen-Teh or
Two Row Wampum. There is a bed of white wampum which symbolizes the purity of
the agreement. There are two rows of purple, and those two rows have the spirits
of your ancestors and mine. There are three beads of wampum separating the two
rows and they symbolize peace, friendship, and respect. These two rows will
symbolize two paths or two vessels, traveling down the same rivers together.
One, a birch bark canoe, will be for the Indian people, their laws, their customs
and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and their laws,
their customs and their ways. We shall each travel the river together, side
by side, but in our own boat. Neither of us will try to steer the other’s
vessel (Mitchell 1999: 109-110).
On this model, while there is a distinction between the 'Indian people' and
the 'white people, this distinction is not cast in terms of an absolute dichotomy.
In traveling the same rivers together, indigenous and non-indigenous peoples
must be aware of their shared reliance upon the land and upon each other. But,
in refraining from attempts to steer the other’s vessel, each acknowledges
the other’s right to maintain its particularity and difference.
Recent texts in the field of Native American political theory have used this
model as the basis for a critique of the integration of indigenous peoples within
the neoliberal system of nation-states. As in western political theory, these
critiques focus on issues of race, class, gender, and rational-bureaucratic
domination of human beings and the land (Alfred 1999; Monture-Angus 1999; Maracle
1996; Marule 1984). Unlike most of their western counterparts, however, Native
American political theorists also link these relations of subordination to the
concept of sovereignty that serves as the horizon of the system of states itself.
According to Taiaiake Alfred, sovereignty,
as an exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion
of power,' is itself deeply problematic (Alfred 1999: 59). Taking up a position
that is consonant with the Weberian critique of rationalization, Marie Smallface
Marule and Lee Maracle argue that the structures and processes of bureaucracy
that are necessary to postmodern sovereignty are oppressive as such, regardless
of whether they are 'imposed' from 'outside, or 'chosen' from 'inside' a community
(Maracle 1996: 52; Marule 1984: 40). Taken to its limit, this critique approaches
that of the anarchist and anarchist-influenced groups described above, in positing
modes of social organization in which there is 'no absolute authority, no coercive
enforcement of decisions, no hierarchy, and no separate ruling entity' (Alfred
1999: 56). The Haudenosaunee know what they want, because they've had it before;
yet their struggle to walk their own path has been met with intense repression
by all levels of the Canadian government, for which no tactic is too underhanded
to ward off what it fears most -- the successful construction of a form of indigenous
governance that eludes its control, that does not rely in any way upon a devolution
of 'authority' from the system of states. From the Oka Crisis of 1990 up to
the present day, communities like Kahnesatake have been split internally and
subject to constant external interference as they strive to find ways to maintain
and reinvigorate their traditional forms of organization in the context of the
postmodern condition.
Similar struggles have been faced by the Zapatistas,
whose uprising against the Mexican state and the global neoliberal order has
been accompanied by the emergence of an extremely interesting alternate system
of social, political, and economic organization. Although the army wing is organized
hierarchically and is driven by authoritarian discipline, it is controlled by
the General Council of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committees,
whose members are appointed by the local communities. These communities also
may decide to become part of one of the thirty-two autonomous municipalities,
which exist alongside and in struggle with the municipalities recognized by
the Mexican state. This system, which encompasses a diversity of regions and
ethnicities, arose as a direct action response to the perceived failures of
the politics of demand:
Before we would ask the government to give us everything, and they would give
us handouts - some housing material, a little bit of money, a few sacks of corn.
But now we realize that we can solve our necessities ourselves. That is why
we decided to resist, to give birth to our own ideas. The communities created
the autonomous municipalities so we could be free to create what our thoughts
tell us, to create what we want according to our needs and our history. We are
not asking the government to hand us clothes, but rather the right to live with
dignity (Javier Ruiz in Chiapaslink 2000)
Within the communities decisions are made collectively on a consensus model,
in local assemblies where all men and women over the age of twelve have a voice.
Although they suffer from constant persecution and have very little in the way
of resources, the communities and autonomous municipalities have managed to
make progress in areas ranging from health to education to economic sustainability.
Each community makes decisions for itself, pursues the projects it wants to
pursue, as does each municipality; as in classical anarchist federalism, association
does not mean giving up local control. This is not to say, however, that the
system of autonomous municipalities is explicitly based on the ideas of Godwin
and Proudhon. Rather, like the nations
of the Haudenosaunee, the Zapatistas have carried out a creative application
of traditional indigenous structures in response to current exigencies. One
example is the way in which delegated authority is regulated so as to ensure
that those who are placed in positions of representation serve their community
rather than vice versa. 'When the authority goes amiss, becomes corrupt or,
to use a local term, "is a shirker", he is removed from his position,
and a new authority replaces him' (Marcos 2003).
This system of recall is similar to that of the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois
Confederacy, except that in these communities it is the women who select --
and may depose -- the men who will take up positions of leadership (Arihwakehte
2004). In the indigenous communities which gave birth to the Zapatista movement,
it would appear that women were not so empowered; patriarchal social structures
dictated that they were excluded from the decision-making process. An important
part of the Zapatista struggle has been to address this disempowerment, through
the inclusion of women fighters in the EZLN and by challenging traditional structures
through the Revolutionary Law for Women. As a result of their own autonomous
struggles within the larger movement, women now participate in the deliberations
of the local communities and may be sent as delegates to the CCRI and municipal
councils (Apreza 2003; Millàn 1998: 67). Although some progress has been
made, there is also further work that needs to be done regarding the division
of domestic/community labour, the valuation of women's work, and the subordination
of women in domestic settings (Millàn 1998: 74; Stephen 1995: 91). Just
as in the system of states, undoing patriarchy is a long and arduous task; what
the Zapatista experiments show is that this kind of work can be done without
a politics of recognition, that is, without an abstract political process through
which women are 'given rights' by men as a favour or gift, under the coercive
tutelage of a state apparatus.
References:
Alfred, Taiaiake. (1999) Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto.
(Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press)
Apreza, Inés Castro (2003) 'Contemporary Women's Movements in Chiapas' in C. Eber and C. Kovic (eds) Women of Chiapas (London: Routledge)
Ariwahkehte, Clifton (2004) 'Anarchism and Traditional Iroquois Culture' Paper given at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, May 16 2004.
Chiapaslink (2000) The Zapatistas: A Rough Guide (Bristol: Chiapaslink)
Johansen, B. (1999). Native America and the evolution of democracy. (London: Greenwood Press).
Mitchell, Grand Chief Michael (1989) “Akwesasne: An Unbroken Assertion of Sovereignty,” in Boyce Richardson (ed.), Drum Beat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, (Toronto: Summerhill Press), pp. 109-110
Maracle, Lee (1996) I am woman: A native perspective on sociology and feminism. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers.
Marcos , Subcomandante Insurgente (2003) 'I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards
of this planet' Available from: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/marcos/etaJAN.html
[Accessed 3 November 2003]
Marule, Marie Smallface. 1984. Traditional Indian Government: Of the People,
by the People, for the People, in Little Bear et al. (eds.) Pathways to Self-Determination:
Canadian Indians and the Canadian State. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
Millàn, Márrgara (1998) 'Zapatista Indigenous Women' in J. Holloway and E. Peláez (eds) Zapatista: Reinventing Revolution in Mexico (London: Pluto Press)
Monture-Angus, Patricia. (1999). Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations’ Independence. (Halifax: Fernwood).
Stephen, Lynn (1995) 'The
Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Democratic Convention'
Latin American Perspectives 22(4): pp. 88-99