Independence Hall Philadelphia Revisited - Haudenosaunee: People of the Long House

Independence Hall, May 12, 2022
​#13 in the Bear Clan Mother Series

 
The Pennsylvania State House, later to be renamed Independence Hall, is considered to be the birthplace of America. The Declaration of Independence was adopted and first celebrated July 4, 1776, but it was actually signed on August 2, 1776. The U.S. Constitution was also signed in this historic building eleven years later on September 17, 1787. 


Both extraordinary documents were highly debated; however, what is not spoken about enough is the fact Indigenous Elders of the Haudenosaunee First Nation People - the Iroquois Confederacy -  were also present, and they had much to do with our American adoption and adaptation of what is called democracy.  They are, unto this day, the Original Keepers of Peace and Power and The Good Mind; that which inspired our U.S. Constitution and our Declaration of Independence through their Great Law of Peace.


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


Going back in time, 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 (now known as Canada), and the Mother of Nations, Jegonseseh, a woman in the Haudenosaunee territory, to stop the wars. 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 created without which, there would not have been a constitution nor an America as we know it.


The photograph shown is magnificently historic. Many of those seated at that table inside Independence Hall have ancestors who were present with America’s founding fathers on that summer day in 1776. Their story needs to be told in its entierty.


Author: Kris Farquhar
​4/17/2023
Update: 7/3/2024

Photograph: May 12, 2022
Katsitsionni Fox

Website: www.somaticsoundtherapeutics.com
​