Lady Freedom watches o'er the country from atop the Capitol Building in Washington. She heralds in Constitution Week: September 17-23, 2023!  What's quite amazing is  that this week, dedicated to the signing of the Constitution for the United States, also includes International Day of Peace on the 21st, Native American Day on the 22nd and the Autumn Equinox on the 23rd!

International Day of Peace was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981 and is observed throughout the world. The intention has always been to support non-violence and to build a culture around peace. 

Native American Day is celebrated by several states in September while others recognize the First Nation People on other days throughout the year. To honor Indigenous People of the North American Continent during Constitution Week seems right and good. Their history is important to America's history. The Iroquois/Haudenosaunee Confederacy in particular were instrumental in inspiring the Founding Fathers in the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. 

The last day, Autumn Equinox is a powerful time when the solar light and darkness is in balance. The time has been noted and celebrated by many people and the ancient ones around the world for millennia. There are no coincidences. It is a good week to celebrate what some have called the greatest human document ever written: The United States Constitution.


Author
Kris Farquhar
​Lady Freedom Council

Photograph 
Public Domain
Creative Graphics 

Lady Freedom website: 
www.katyamiller.com

 

I find the title unsettling, let alone the subject especially after reading the opening paragraph on the United Nation’s website: Enforced disappearances has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the society. It's as if the words alone, "Enforced disappearances" were used to create even more terror. 


International Day for the Victims of Non-Consensual Disappearances might be a better name for the day and it honors them with our attention. We need no more terror within our societies and our words are important.  What we want and need are solutions. 


Who are the victims? The people who have been taken, abducted “without their consent” and this includes the high numbers of those trafficked for non-consensual sex and labor.


Victims are also the families and friends of the person who has disappeared. Entire communities can be affected from the loss of loved ones.


Eagle eyes are needed in every community. We do well to be awake and aware of how profuse this problem is, and we need to be able to act quickly. Know who in your neighborhood you can trust. Be vigilant. This crime against humanity is insidious how it hides in plain sight.


Our Sheriffs have taken oaths to serve the people as Peace Officers. Click that hyperlink and know who they are, and when a person is found, let us envision a series of wellness steps in place for the individual and their family’s support, recovery and bright health. 


In 2021, the United States was recorded to have the largest number of missing persons in the world according to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). In 2022, they published a list that shows the 10 states with the highest number of missing persons.

1.  2,133 California
2.  1,252 Florida
3.  1,246 Texan
4. 915 Arizona
5.  643 Washington
6.  606 New York
7.  556 Michigan
8. 432 Oregon
9. 401 Pennsylvania
10. 361 Tennessee

May a new awareness of this day arise and ultimately assist to eradicate the problem and put solutions into the hands of the people. Things must and will change.


World population: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/missing-persons-statistics-by-country


​The List: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/missing-persons-by-state


Author: Kris Farquhar
Lady Freedom Council

Photographer: rawpixel

Partner Website:
Lady Freedom: www.katyamiller.com

​

The fact that child trafficking and slavery exists today at such a prolific rate in our communities, country and our world is a difficult and uncomfortable truth to accept. But we must see it for what it is, or it will continue to devour us and all of humanity.


Human trafficking, or what is also called, trafficking in persons, is the fastest growing and most prolific business in the world. There are three different kinds of trafficking according to Tim Ballard, former CIA member and undercover operator for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): 1) slave labor 2) organ harvesting  3) sex trafficking. 


The statistics are staggering at 30 million world-wide with men, women and children being used against their will under horrific and inhuman conditions. Women are number one at being trafficked, and children closely follow. Ballard also states that it’s even worse when one considers the number of  children outside the commercial sex trade which involves abuse.  


Two million children were reported to be in the commercial sex trade by the state department in 2008. The numbers are thought to be much worse now due to the present state of the border between the United States and Mexico.


The Washington Examiner reported in March of 2021 that traffickers at the border make up to 14 million dollars a day moving adults and children. Ballard tells us there are 85,000 unaccompanied minors coming across the border and thousands of them are “5 years old and younger.” It must stop.


Studies show the United States to be the number one consumer of child exploitation and we are consistently in the top three for destination countries for human trafficking.


An ugly and incomprehensible truth that can never be hidden again. In the past three years, leaders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Six Nations, faced Justin Trudeau Prime Minister of Canada, their Parliament, and the Pope demanding accountability and restitution regarding the horrific mass graves of their children and babies found at Canada’s Residential Schools.  


We must bring the light of truth into this dark subject and be silent no more. Let us rally as one humanity. There is hope and great strength in the union of our good hearts and minds. The Lady of Freedom atop the Capitol dome in Washington is a Heart Center for World Peace, Freedom and Mother Law, which is Universal Law. 


If you suspect someone in danger, or you, yourself needs help, there is a toll free number to call. Also check your own states’ status in regards to a Human Trafficking Task Force. Begin there. The suffering must end, especially with the children.


National Human Trafficking Hotline 1-888-373-7888. Call from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.


Author: Kris Farquhar
Lady Freedom Circle

Photographer: Unknown

Partner Website:
Lady Freedom: www.katyamiller.com

July 28, 2022 - Quebec, Canada

As Onkwehoweh, we continue to suffer historic injustices that will no longer be tolerated. The Papal State visit a week ago with Rarihwawakon (Pope), the Governor General and Prime Minister of Canada were superimposed upon by the Vatican Agenda that was set to silence us. 

As a small delegation of Haudenosaunee who were invited to speak at three events to Rarihwawakon (the pope), we were denied our right to speak in the final minutes of the first event. However, in a dinner with the Bishops of Canada, we created a stir, and in the survivor’s session on the last day of his Pilgrimage of Penance, a young Wolf Clan Mohawk Mother, Kaianahawis, broke through the colonial papal wall and took the necessary time to express our deep grievances with the so-called apology and the complete lack of respect and action. 

Our mission is political as our focus is to revoke the Doctrine of Discovery. The fact remains that this law, imported by settlers of the old world, was forced upon Indigenous peoples and is still firmly entrenched in our reality past and present. We deny its restrictions and inhumanity. 

The Doctrine of Discovery is the law that dispossesses our lands through mere discovery and false conquest. It continues to prevent our rightful and human existence. 

The Doctrine is the basis for in- coming wealth acquired by the countries that straddle our territories and is also the decree that ordered our genocide through Government legislated policy. The police and the church were paid to carry out the executions of our children. 

The cradle boards that represented our Cradle Board Mandate brought before Canada’s Parliament in July of 2021, accompanied us. They were NOT gifts to be presented to the pope during the Vatican visit back in March nor were they gifts this time in Quebec City.

The cradleboards kept our focus and they came home with us, the mothers. They are a symbol of the babies taken and who are still not home. Personally, I never wanted to meet Rarihwawakon. As Iakoiane (clanmother), I needed to go on behalf of our precious babies that never had a chance to be loved. 

We want the seventh generation to know that despite the military might of the colonial papal-powers and their harsh, dark criticisms — we had to show up. 

To the seventh generation, you must know, we love you enough to rattle these historical moments the same way our ancestors did for us seven generations ago. We were not silent and fought like hell to make your unborn voices heard. 

RESCIND THE DOCTRINE! 

Author: Wakerakats:te, Iakoiane of Roiane Tehanakari:ne
Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council 
Louise Bear Herne

Photograph: Katsitsionni Fox
Haudenosaunee Bear Clan
Artist & Filmmaker

​The Mothers of Nation’s Gathering that took place in early May this year was a powerful time of growth and introspection for all who were present. We gathered on Akwesasne Mohawk Territory in upper-state New York. Thank you to all who made our journey possible.


It was an honor and a privilege to be on that land - land where the Great Law of Peace was first spoken — and to be under the “wings” of the Mohawk Bear Clan Mother.


So many have strayed from our natural earth roots and cycles. However, mature women are reminded every month as their bodies respond to the call to carry life, or not. The gathering reminded me of what it means to be a mother of not only one child, but of a community, and the responsibility that comes along with that role, especially in these times of great change.


Lady Freedom Council is very grateful to have been invited.  Many others across the Americas and the Old World were also invited, for each carries a nation, (a community) unto themselves. But we all gathered as one heart in one purpose for the one Earth to convene and commemorate Mother Law and what that means to bring back into our nation and our world.  


Louise Bear Herne, Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council says it best in the words that follow…. 


MOTHERS OF NATIONS in Unity ushers in Mother Law and upholds an Ancestral Agreement that many people in the World have forgotten.

We are each Mothers of a Nation.

We come from an intricate woven Web of Women's Wisdom. 

We are the matriline of every life-giving ancestor and a descendant of Mothers.

We hold the great wisdom of the cosmos and carry the seeds of creation within us.

We are our Mother, the Earth, and she is us.

We are Creation, we are Life.

Restore the Heart of the Mother.

When you live in a feminine world, there is LOVE, there is EQUALITY, there is BALANCE... NO MAN GOES HUNGRY.

Protect her and she will provide.


Author: Wakerakats:te, Iakoiane of Roiane Tehanakari:ne
Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council 
Louise Bear Herne

Author: Kris Farquhar 
Lady Freedom Council

Photograph: Katsitsionni Fox
Haudenosaunee Bear Clan
Artist & Filmmaker

Partner Website: www.katyamiller.com

 

​The Pennsylvania State House, later to be renamed as Independence Hall, is considered to be the birthplace of America. The Declaration of Independence was signed August 2, 1776 and the U.S. Constitution was signed eleven years later on September 17, 1787. 


Both heroic documents were highly debated and signed within this building. What is not spoken about enough, however is the fact Indigenous Elders of the Haudenosaunee First Nation People — Five Nation Confederacy, now Six — were also present and they had everything to do with our American adoption and adaptation of democracy.  They are, unto this day, The Keepers of the Great Law of Peace. 


Their eclipsed story is great and our American History Books do well to include them as a valuable part of our history as Americans and as human beings. 


Going back, there was not always peace amongst the many first nations before Europeans and Vikings came to what Indigenous ones call, Turtle Island. 


It took the Peacemaker, a man from the Huron valley in southeastern Canada, and the Mother of Nations, a woman located in the Haudenosaunee territory, to create what many believe was the first democratic system in the world. Their union of heart and mind and spirit is the perfect example of gender equality, and that which was necessary for the Great Law of Peace to be seeded and created without which, there would have been no constitution and no America as we know it.


The photograph shown is magnificently historic. Many of those seated at that table inside Independence Hall May 12, 2022, have ancestors who would have been present with America’s founding fathers on that summer day in 1776. Their story deserves recognition.


Author: Kris Farquhar
Lady Freedom Council
Photograph: Katisionni Fox
Website: www.somaticsoundtherapeutics.com
​

​The Haudenosaunee have land in the city of Philadelphia called Wampum Lot. In 1865 - 1867 city developers wanted to procure land to build the Commercial Exchange Building and they found this plot of land not covered by deeds but that it belonged to the Six Nations.  The city soon forgot about Wampum Lot. 


In November 1922, a Haudenosaunee and Indigenous contingency and Williams Penn’s descendants held a ceremony recognizing the Native American ownership of Wampum Lot.  


Today, our small delegation of Mohawks and Oneidas met the Mayor of Philadelphia to recount the history between our nations.  


Yesterday, we met with the National Park Service in Independence Hall to discuss rekindling the relations between our nations. 


This November 2022 will mark 100 years since the last commemoration of Wampum Lot. 


The Haudenosaunee have had a continued presence and influence upon the birth of the modern democracy that the world knows as the country called, United States of America.


Author: Wakerakats:te, Iakoiane of Roiane Tehanakari:ne
Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council 
Louise Bear Herne
Website: www.somaticsoundtherapeutics.com
Partner Website: https://www.katyamiller.com/
Photograph: Katisionni Fox 5/10/2022
Bear Clan Mother Series #12

Louise Mommabear spoke, ”There certainly seems to be a feeling of erasure intended to remove any spirit that would imply that we were once there."


Six women from the Iroquois Confederacy in upstate New York traveled to Philadelphia recently to reconnect with a patch of tribal land. They came to retrace the footsteps of ancestors, to feel under their feet the earth that was deeded to them by colonial leaders centuries ago.


Instead, they found themselves walking amid cracked marble and crumbling slate near 2nd and Walnut Streets in Old City.


“I anticipated a park in a natural pristine state. Like any other park, it would have trees, grass, water,” said Louise McDonald (Native name Wa’kerakátste), a Mohawk Bear Clan Mother from Akwesasne, N.Y. “I was frozen for a minute because I felt it had been choked and that it wasn’t a true representation of the original intentions of the space. It just seemed to be purposely buried with a cover-up narrative. There certainly seems to be a feeling of erasure intended to remove any spirit that would imply that we were once there.”


Instead of the bucolic setting the women envisioned, they stood in an urban canyon enclosed on three sides by apartment buildings, the historic Thomas Bond House, and a multilevel parking garage. The space, called Welcome Park, was created as an open-air attraction in 1982 by the Friends of the National Park Service to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Pennsylvania by William Penn. But the women found nothing welcoming about it. For while the park walls listed Penn’s accomplishments, there was no mention of Native Americans and their ties to the land.


The plot had been given to the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations from the Iroquois Confederacy) in January 1755 by John Penn, William Penn’s grandson. In the 1700s, Native American groups often visited Philadelphia for diplomatic and trade meetings. They sometimes numbered in the hundreds and visited so frequently that John Penn asked the Provincial Council of Philadelphia to consider setting aside a piece of land for these gatherings. The delegations often refused to negotiate treaties until they could stand on their own ground and build a council fire.


Philadelphia’s Department of Records researched the site, at the request of The Inquirer, and found that if the land "was located somewhere between Walnut Street, South 2nd Street, Sansom Street, and South Hancock Street, then it’s safe to say that no part of it currently belongs to the Iroquois Confederacy.”


In an email, the records department said that “every inch of ground between those streets is now owned by either the United States of America or by the condominium owners at the Moravian Condos.”


History tells a different story of the Native Americans’ long association with the tract.


The Haudenosaunee were given a strip of land behind the Slate Roof House, a home William Penn once rented. The property, deeded with a wampum belt and presented to 12 visiting chiefs “in perpetuity for the conduct of Native diplomacy,” was referred to as the “Wampum Lot.” Its size is in question. According to The Quaker in the Forum by Amelia Mott Gummere (published in 1910) and Haudenosaunee tradition, it was roughly one square city block. Other sources describe the lot as 15 by 47 feet. Today, it appears to sit under a portion of the Moravian condominiums and the southeast corner of Welcome Park and behind what had been the famous Bookbinder’s Restaurant.


Haudenosaunee ownership of the tract was acknowledged by the city well into the 20th century.


After the demolition of the Slate Roof House in 1867, the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce tried but failed to negotiate a deal with the Iroquois to purchase the land to expand the Commercial Exchange Building constructed in its place. In November 1922, the Wampum Lot was rededicated by five visiting chiefs, along with William Penn descendant William Penn-Gaskell Hall, Philadelphia Mayor J. Hampton Moore, and Pennsylvania officials. A pipe of peace was smoked on the spot where they believed John Penn originally deeded the land.


In the late 1970s, the Commercial Exchange, which had become the Keystone Telephone Building, was demolished. Welcome Park would arrive a few years later.


It’s unclear how ownership of the land was viewed by the city when it made a portion of the property available to build the park. The city records department, citing the demands brought on the coronavirus, said it was not able to further research decades of property records.


In 2015, a group of Native leaders, including Chief Sid Hill, Tadodaho of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, gathered with members of the Society of Friends and local residents in the Wampum Lot.


For the six women, their day in Philadelphia last month, which included a private tour of Independence Hall, was bittersweet. It was a reminder of how powerful their confederacy was during colonial times, and how it inspired the United States form of government. The U.S. Senate acknowledged the confederacy’s contributions in a 1987 resolution honoring the bicentennial of the Constitution.


“We almost became the 14th colony,” said McDonald.


“We gave our government structure to the United States,” said Michelle Schenandoah (Native name Kaluhyanu:wes) of Syracuse, the lone Oneida in the group. “We were a very highly evolved people with a highly sophisticated form of government. We know about democracy. … This form of government and this form of democracy is over 1,000 years old and is based on principles of peace, and it still exists to this day.”


The important thing, and the thing I walked away from it with, is that there is a deliberate erasure of our history,” said Schenandoah. “Why is this history not known to the public? Yet within our oral history we still have these pieces of information, living history. We still keep those stories very much alive."
“The minimalization of true history — it just seems to capture one point of view’” McDonald agreed. “It misses the richness of other people present. There has to be some sort of concerted effort to bring it back.”


Before the group left Welcome Park, they burned sage to cleanse themselves and the area. They gathered in a circle, said an ancestral prayer, and shouted a few cheers as a reminder their people were alive and had returned.


“We will be back, and we won’t be alone. We are going to bring many people with us,” McDonald said later. “We are shaping up a letter to the Mayor of Philadelphia,” seeking an explanation of what has occurred on their land and recognition of its historical significance. They hope to hand-deliver it in June.


"This was a sacred site, a place of convergence,” said McDonald. “We would like to see it returned to its earthly state, a place to have a fire, to have a historical marker to explain the history, and a place for us to return to so we can carry forward the memory in our children and grandchildren.”


In the Haudenosaunee tradition, women have the final say in tribal land sales. “When the women show up, it gets serious," she said. “We are here to recall the memory. We are here to reassert and to authorize. We don’t like to call ourselves feminists. We like to call ourselves ‘Ladies of the Law.' ”


Six Haudenosaunee women from upstate New York came to Philadelphia to investigate a piece of land given to the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations from the Iroquois Confederacy) in 1755 by John Penn, William Penn’s grandson. The land was granted to the Haudenosaunee as a place to meet, to camp and discuss treaties. That piece of land is now part of Welcome Park and under a portion of the Moravian condominium building (in background). L-R: (seated) Fallan Jacobs (Teiohontathe), Louise McDonald (Wa'kerakátste), Alexandra David (Karakwiiostha); (standing) Michelle Schenandoah (Kaluhyanu:wes), Tsiotenhari:io Herne, and Chelsea Sunday (Tiawentón:ti).
.
 
B Charles Fox 
Updated March 25, 2020
Full Credit-Attribution for Educational Purposes: Philadelphia Inquirer 
Author: CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

​Bear Clan Mother Series #11

​What we don't know?  Why they don't want us to know? The truth would unravel this country. What created the wealth of prestigious universities in the United States?  The Morrill Act! 


To extinguish Indigenous title to land siphoned through the Morrill Act, the United States paid less than $400,000. But in truth, it often paid nothing at all. Not a single dollar was paid for more than a quarter of the parcels that supplied the grants — land confiscated through outright seizure or by treaties that were never ratified by the federal government. 


Cornell University is number one benefactor of this corrupt act  and Penn State is a close second. The grants of land raised endowments made 52 institutions  across the United States very, very rich.  Our day at Penn State was to remind them of their history and that a land acknowledgement is not enough.  It needs to tell the true history and to make restitution to the future of Indigenous youth.  


Penn State is a hop, skip and a jump from the famous Carlisle Residential School where many Haudenosaunee children were forcibly taken.  The way history gets told by Penn State changed today as we met with Deans and Department Leaders.  Proud of our delegation for changing the narrative.  Nia:wen to Dr Hollie Kulago for inviting us.


Author: Wakerakats:te, Iakoiane of Roiane Tehanakari:ne
Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council, 
Louise Bear Herne

Link to radio interview with Louise Herne, Michelle Shenandoah and Katsitsionni Fox :
Women Rising Radio: https://www.womenrisingradio.com/2022/12/26/women-rising-radio-44-indigenous-women-envision-rematriation/

Website: www.somaticsoundtherapeutics.com
Partner Website:https://www.katyamiller.com/
Photograph: Katisionni Fox 5/10/2022
Bear Clan Mother Series #10

The cradleboard, a representative symbol of Indigenous mothers and their babies all touched by the impacts of residential schools, journeyed across the salt waters to invoke reflection by the Catholic Church.


In this long overdue historic event, the empty cradleboard presented an opportunity for Pope Francis to feel the injustices inflicted upon our children, families and ancestors.

The cradleboard was retrieved and returned home safely to our elder midwife Katsi Cook, and women leaders. A sigh of relief for Kaluhyanu:wes and Katsitsionni after their week-long trip to the Vatican. 

​Filled with mix emotions, recounting their experiences in detail, both ladies were unbundled from their mission with loving words, gifts and song from our leadership, elders, women and youth.
~ Mommabear


A good example of Rematriation;  that which brings the Sacred home to the Mother.


Author: Wakerakats:te, Iakoiane of Roiane Tehanakari:ne
Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council, 
Louise Bear Herne


Video: https://www.facebook.com/100001555636480/videos/pcb.5067336209994850/509873737185888

Link to radio interview with Louise Herne, Michelle Shenandoah and Katsitsionni Fox :
Women Rising Radio: https://www.womenrisingradio.com/2022/12/26/women-rising-radio-44-indigenous-women-envision-rematriation/

Website: www.somaticsoundtherapeutics.com
Partner Website:https://www.katyamiller.com/
Photograph: Katisionni Fox
Bear Clan Mother Series #9
​