Join us Wednesday for American Indigenous Democracy book club
Our first session on American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence opened with condolence and a round of introductions naming how we’re already practicing interdependence: cross-country road trips leaning on friends, aging without savings, susus, land rematriation projects, and learning to receive.
We shared a full, collective reading of the Michelle Schenandoah's Thanksgiving Address, passed voice to voice from waters to winds to the cosmos—a practice of bringing all minds together as one before any business is conducted. From there, discussion turned to Chief Oren Lyons' 1977 question at the UN—"where is the eagle's seat?"—and what it might mean to build governance structures that represent the more-than-human world.
We closed on the role of clan mothers and the "mothering energy" at the center of Haudenosaunee governance: care, advocacy, and collective decision-making as an alternative to the sage-on-the-stage model of leadership. Questions remain: how do we empower women and non-binary people into these roles today, and what does it take to decenter the "lone decision-maker" model entirely?
Session 2: Wednesday August 12 7–9 PM ET
Next up, we’ll focus discussion on the following themes:
- Peace as the people's preferred way of life and the highest calling of government.
- Long-term thinking: every decision considered seven generations ahead.
READ: We’ve found this volume of essays can be savored in any order. So we invite you to skim the table of contents, read the chapter titles, and explore what calls to your heart.
OUT LOUD: If you have time between now and Wednesday, we ask you to read one of the chapters aloud. You can read it out to yourself, at the dinner table, to a friend, or send it as a voice memo to someone you think would appreciate hearing from you. As you’ll come to learn and may appreciate already, the oral tradition connects us to our heart in a different way and, like poetry, we’ve experienced that these words spoken land powerfully.
WATCH: We also invite you to explore the video series featuring many of the contributors to the book, Rematriated Voices. The Hidden Roots of Democracy episode is a good companion to our discussion focus for this session.
INVITE: Please spread the word and invite folks you think would benefit from this book, either to this book club, or host your own in your local communities.
In interdependence,
The god(m)others
