Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through a point in our yearly orbit that's called July 4th. Back in 1744, when we orbited through July 4th, the Onandaga Indian chief Canassatego reached out and extended a helpful hand - a life-line - to you and me. Canassatego was the speaker for the Iroquois Confederacy, an alliance of tribes that networked so effectively they were stronger and more prosperous than any individual tribe would have been on its own. At a meeting on July 4, 1744 Canassatego gave struggling white colonists radical advice: If you want to be effective in your struggle with the injustices being inflicted upon you by the King of England, then do as we have done and unite yourselves into one nation.

Native ideas lit fires in colonists' hearts and minds. A young man named Ben Franklin had been listening at meetings with natives and publishing popular booklets about them called broadsides. Indigenous government was radically different from Europe's kingdoms because it was nature-based. Indigenous people knew that you and I survive because of plants; they feed us and they feed all the animals we eat. Plants do not grow from the top down; plants grow from the roots up. If the roots are shallow the plant is weak, unstable and sickly. So, in nature-based governments leaders are not the masters of the people, but are their servants - and there are laws for impeaching those who fail to serve their people well.

The seeds of America's grass-roots democracy were planted in colonists' minds by natives like Canassatego. These seeds rooted, sprouted, grew strong and bore fruit 32 years later (on July 4, 1776) when colonists united into a radical new kind of government called the U.S.A. and declared their independence of England. Since 1776 indigenous seeds have continued bearing fruit; in 1964 the Supreme Court made it virtually impossible for public officials to successfully sue for libel.

Other native seeds remain in the ground - and they are radical. One of them is the indigenous Council of Grandmothers, where older women make the decision whether to go to war.

Our word, radical, comes from "radix," meaning root. Being radical means you are so deeply rooted in our mother earth that the ideas you put forth are viable and strong.

Each time we orbit through July 4th we shed some more of our European ancestors' arrogance toward our indigenous ancestors. We develop the humility to recognize - and to celebrate - the Native American roots of our U.S. Government. The American Revolution is becoming the American Evolution. Radical developments in the 1700's were just the first phase of the American Evolution. It is recognizing that if we want to survive we must, like natives, be deeply and firmly rooted in our mother earth.

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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