Eve Meets Sky Woman

♪ MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: We are living in a time of great change, and it's critical for us to come together as one human family, so that all of our grandchildren, many greats into the future, will be able to enjoy life here on Mother Earth. ♪ May Rematriated Voices create space within your heart and mind to join with Indigenous thought leaders and allies. We've been brought here together for a reason, and it's up to all of us to figure out why. ♪ Welcome to "Rematriated Voices". I'm your host Michelle Schenandoah, Wolf Clan member of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Walking among the Haudenosaunee, the early suffragists saw a world where indigenous women were in full authority and held absolute autonomy over their bodies, their minds, their children, their homes, and the land. On this episode of Rematriated Voices, I'm joined by Mohawk Bear Clan mother Mommabear, Louise McDonald-Hearne and historian and author Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner. ♪ MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Welcome to Rematriated Voices. Mommabear and Sally, would you talk about the ways women were historically treated and the worldviews represented by Sky Woman and the worldviews represented by Eve? MOMMABEAR: I'll go first. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Good. MOMMABEAR: In the genesis of the Haudenosaunee and other matrilineal nations, we believe that the world began with a woman, and that woman fell from a celestial opening in the Sky World, and she descended to here on Earth. And she was a child of destiny. And she was also the carrier of seeds and consciousness. I believe that she brought our consciousness here, and she was also a geneticist. And she's the one that seeded the world in the beginning when it was just water and when it was a big flood and the world had been flooded out, and you had to repopulate the Earth, and you had to regenerate the Earth, it began with a woman. It could only begin with a woman. So to me, any other story is made up because biologically, naturally, it has to be a woman to be able to be the vessel, to be able to carry that kind of, colossal understanding and transport it here to the earth. So the view, Haudenosaunee worldview is the mother is at the center and so the matri-lineage of who we come from is understood to be who is your mother, not who is your father. And that everything that was sacred or that was life promoting came from the mother, from nourishment to nurturing, from calling for war, for calling for peace to choosing male leadership. Right of nomination, right of recall. She's the one that set the set the rules. So to me, Haudenosaunee worldview is in alignment with the natural order of the universe. She's the law. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: And so how have Haudenosaunee women been treated under this worldview? How are - MOMMABEAR: They've been elevated to a high status. You know, there's certain epochs in time, since that creation where there's always been unrest and then there's always been a messenger. But when the messenger comes, it's not without the presence of a woman. And even in our processes, you know, when we call our Creator, he's not the end all. He's still responsible and accountable to the mother that put him here. So in a lot of worldviews and a lot of ancient civilizations, it was the woman who was really the progenitor of, you know, the continuation of life and everything reverts back to that. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: You know, Eve is like your story upside down. It's like the the antithesis of what is natural and comes from what's reasonable. Where do we begin? The Bible. And in Genesis, the first book in the Bible, there are two creation stories. In the first one, God creates man and woman together. And together they're supposed to procreate and control every other living thing. But then, you know, maybe God got mixed up or forgot or something happened in terms of the writing of the Bible. But the second version, there is no woman. God creates all the living things and then he creates man and then it's like, oops. Man needs a helpmate. So instead of creating everything else from the earth, he creates woman by putting Adam to sleep, cutting him open, taking out a rib and and sewing him back up. I mean, the surgical process is not carefully explained in the Bible, but that's apparently what happens. So that's the first story in which she's de-elevated, you know, in which she's a second thought. So then we come to the story of Eve and thats still in Genesis, further on and he puts him in the Garden of Eden, which is this absolutely, you know, it's the perfect place. They have everything they need to eat. They have everything that - but he only has one rule. There's a tree of wisdom that they are not supposed to eat from. Well, a snake comes along and says to Eve, wait a minute, you know, what do you see? Doesn't that look good to eat? And so Eve, who is an afterthought, becomes an agent, and Eve takes the apple, and then she encourages her husband to also have a bite. So God comes back and realizes that, wait a minute, you got clothes on, what's going on? And he said, did you...? And they go, yeah, but Adam throws Eve under the bus and says, no, she made me do it. And then Eve throws the snake under the bus and says, oh, the snake made me do it. So you have fault finding and blame immediately you know, occurred, and he's mad. God is really mad. And so he says, Eve, you are going to suffer pain and sorrow. You will give birth in pain and sorrow, and you will be under the authority of your husband, and he will rule over you. And this is not just going to happen to Eve, this is going to happen to every Eve that comes along on the planet afterwards. This is an indeterminate sentence on mankind. Adam, for his part, has to go to war against Mother Earth. He's said, you know, you're going to have to pull the livelihood out of the soil, which is going to be your enemy. And so you have the oppression of women and the ongoing Christian battle with Mother Earth in the first chapter of the Bible. It's all there. And everything follows from that. Canon law, the law that the two shall become one, and the one is the man, because woman comes out of man and is secondary and is to be under the rule of man. And I should add that that idea that woman is to be under the authority of man is not just in Genesis. It is all the way through the Bible through to the end of the New Testament in one form or another. It's woman is to be under the authority of man. This becomes canon law or church law, and canon law becomes common law, the model for common law. So guess what you have - US is formed, the US Constitution, and Abigail Adams says to John, one of the Founding fathers, you guys, you better pay attention to women, and - or we're determined to fom a rebellion. And the warning she's given him is that England has just adopted a really rigid code, a more rigid code even than before. And it's the Blackstone code. And it says that a woman, when she marries, is dead in the law. She ceases to exist legally. So what does that mean? She has no right to her body. She has - a husband, has the legal right to rape his wife, and to beat his wife as long as he doesn't inflict permanent injury, the courts decide. She has no right to her children. A husband can will away an unborn child in the state of New York and other states. And that child is born, child is ripped out of the mother's arms and given to his rightful owner. She has no legal recourse. She - have any political rights? Are you kidding me? She's a non-entity. How can you vote if you don't exist legally? So you can't own everything that you own or receive or earn when you're married becomes the property of your husband. He can do anything he wants with it. You can't sit on a jury, of course, so, you know, it's never a jury of your peers. It's a jury of men. Name it. You can't do it. You have to live where your husband says you should live. You have to think like he thinks. I mean, literally, a wife can't challenge the reasoning of her husband or the wishes of her husband, or she's going to get beaten, and that's within his responsibility. And here's the kicker for me. It's not just his right to beat her. It is his religious responsibility. MOMMABEAR: Well, you know, not to diminish the world that you're from, but I say hogwash, Sally. You know, that's a ridiculous genesis story, and I can't believe people fell for it. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: Because it has no basis of sensibility to it at all, I mean, how many men are to give up a rib to make a woman? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: How many gods are going to cut her open to do it? You know, none of this makes sense. It just doesn't. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: It doesn't occur in the natural world. It doesn't come from reason, it doesn't come from - and so if you - It's a means of power and control. If you buy this system, you are under the control of whoever has fed you this. MOMMABEAR: Which explains the trajectory that the whole world is on right now. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: Because if man is, you know, right from the get go in your genesis is intended to fight the earth, well look at where we are now. And, it's unfortunate and, you know, I really hope that your women find their essence. And I think later on they did through the centuries. But the more that we continue to become possessions of men, taking your father's last name, or your husband's last name, we continue to strengthen that disbelief the ridiculousness of it all, and we continue to be their possession. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So how do you see the daughters of Sky Woman today? MOMMABEAR: Kicking ass. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: All right. MOMMABEAR: I think the more that we sit back and and watch this power over, or this oppression and not allow our rematriated voices to be heard, you know, the more that we become less in the eyes of each other. And I think that we owe it to our daughters and our granddaughters to show them something different. And I refuse to be berated or belittled and told I need to be silent, or that I have to, you know, I always tell my granddaughter, you know, my daughters, you don't have to stand in the shadow of a man in order to shine, because you certainly can shine on your own. And I believe that, you know, unless we empower their voices and make them strong and show them what examples of strong women are, it's really good. And it's not the concentration just on the daughters, but on the sons, too. And, you know, I raised two sons and I got grandsons. And, you know, it's understanding the balance and knowing our place in it. And, you know, Haudenosaunee, when when a woman stands up a male leader to become that voice for the clan or for our nation, you know, she reminds him that he's the jawbone, but she certainly is the backbone to her society. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So could you explain a little bit more what you mean by that, in regard to the context of Haudenosaunee leadership and women's nomination of our male leaders? MOMMABEAR: A man's voice is louder than a woman's voice. And his - the projection of his voice can amplify further than a woman's voice. So it was just a simple biology. You know, like - So he had to do the talking so that everybody could hear him as we didn't have megaphones or microphones. So he had to use his vocal cords in order to speak to masses of people and make sure that, you know, he was well heard and well listened to. But, the women were the ones that gave instructions on what he was going to say. So to me, when I say women are the backbone, they're the foundation to the house because Haudenosaunee, our dwellings were longhouses from our creation story with Sky Woman, [speaking Mohawk], to the creation of first man and first woman to, the coming of the four sacred ceremonies to the clanship. Now, this is really important because it begins to organize itself in the chaos of creation, a system. And, it had to do with death, and it had to do with condolence and being able to when once, you know - it was a separation of power, to create this system of helping each other. So, it was because of death that we created a separation of power and then that, by building that system of clanship vested in the women in the older women of each clan within that community. It was said from the great thinker of the time that now from this day forward, the children will follow the clan of the mother. The mother has the ability to transfer her genetics not just to her daughter, but to her son, too. So all of us come from that original seed, and it's a continuation of a biological standard and the law. So when I say that the women are the backbone, they're the ones holding everything up. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Do you want to comment on the - what you see in the worldview of Eve today? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Yeah. You know, I think there's two things going on. One is that the continuation of that patriarchal power over is we're still fighting it. You know, women in the United States don't have the right to our bodies today. We lost it a year ago. And the - you know, when you were talking about the ceremonial vision of the difference, we still have women wearing white in weddings to prove that they are untouched, they are virgins, and going down the aisle on the arm of their father, who then transfers ownership to the husband. You know, that's the history of that whole process. It's a transference of property. And, you know, we still do it, without even knowing the backstory of it. But even if you don't know the backstory, you know, that knowledge - I think Leonard Cohen said it best. It sinks beneath your wisdom like a stone. And I think we're still functioning with that stone. You know, we're still dealing with all of it. We've never had a woman president. We have a minority of women in every single political area. Yeah. It's still we're living that legacy. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: They like to ignore the very door they came out of. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Its what? MOMMABEAR: They like to ignore the very door they came out of. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: That's a good way to put it. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. The very door that we came out of. And it's to the interest of those in power to have that knowledge suppressed. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: In the documentary Without a Whisper, which was created by Mohawk director Katsitsionni Fox, the two of you reveal the not often told, and I would say even hidden history of the Haudenosaunee womens influence on the suffragists. So the two of you were in New York City, you were on a panel having a discussion about the film with Gloria Steinem, and in this film, Mommabear, you say about Haudenosaunee women, We are not feminists. We're the law. What do you mean by that? MOMMABEAR: You know, I think feminism is a construct of patriarchy, again, to just kind of put another label on women and, you know, everything that I know, in the natural order of the universe and the biological sense of the woman's cycling and her ability to bring life and to give life and to feed life and nurture it, nourish it, nourish life. It's, it's a given, you know, because we talk about our a baby girl born into the world, already has her grandchildren within her. So the lineage of who she is comes with her at the moment she born. So to me, that's... I don't know how, I'm not eloquent like Sally is here, but I don't know how to say it, but that's the natural order. Just as the, you know, like the moon that creates the oceanic bulge during full moon, you know, all the things and the elements of Earth, the cycle around the moon and the sun, and the oceans, as mighty as the ocean is, it still bows down to the grandmother moon, you know? So for me, the element of water, moon, earth is all feminine because it's life giving. And so, you know, and I know there was a moment in the history of Haudenosaunee where women were piping up and they said, oh, our women are becoming feminists, like white women. And I remember one of the grandmas saying, you know, we're not feminists. We're the law. And I had remembered that because I heard that as a little girl. Yeah, we're the law for sure. Were ladies of the law, when women show up, it gets serious. And there's, you know, there's no more talking to be done because, you know, just women have a certain way about them. And I always talk about the power of persuasion. You know, and that's what Eve had. She had the power of persuasion, but then gave it up to the snake. You know, she should have owned it in that moment - yeah, I did tell him to eat the apple and he listened to me! SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: I love rewriting Eve! MOMMABEAR: So for me, you know, he was that gullible to believe her, to eat the apple. But anyways, you know, I just think, you know, I feel so bad for you ladies to have that kind of a story. What the hell? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Yeah. And I think the thing I feel so strongly is how the story of Sky Woman is not my story, but the story of Sky Woman empowers me. And it's the way that the suffragists were empowered. You know, it's like you see an alternative and all of a sudden a possibility opens up and that's the gift that you give with your eloquence. It's the eloquence of naturalness. You know, you have phrases that I listen to so deeply because the way in which you speak and you speak through your tongue, you speak through that knowledge and it opens for me a new way of thinking. And so it's an eloquence that is far beyond anything that is possible in my world. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: It's a very different point of view. And from a Haudenosaunee perspective when we're talking about the different types of responsibilities that women will tend to from an outside ear, looking in might tend to think that, you know, they could impose that worldview of Eve onto the Haudenosaunee. But you know Sally, in your research, right, your very early days of research when you started looking into Matilda Joslyn Gage. You came across the Haudenosaunee, and you shared with me that it really didn't quite hit, what you were reading. In fact, you almost didn't even see what you just read. And so what were your first impressions when you came across the Haudenosaunee, and when did something begin to resonate with you? What was that something? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: You know, it... To realize the depth to which your scholarship has been compromised by your own racism is a comeuppance. I mean its a really - For 17 years, I read Matilda Joslyn Gages major work, Woman, Church and State. I wrote at least one introduction to it, a reprint of it. And I knew that book, and I knew Gage I was the leading authority on Matilda Joslyn Gage. And the question that I had that really, you know, I couldn't figure it out was that she's calling for a transformed world. You know, she's at the end of her major work, Woman, Church and State, she says, you know, in the middle of a revolution, this is beyond anything that's ever happened in the world. It's women against church and state. We notice beginnings. And she says the end will result in the destruction of every existing institution. The result will be a regenerated world. And the institutions that she and Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as the two leading theoreticians of the suffrage movement, have determined, are the family, the church, the capitalist, and the state. Those are the major institutions that enforce the power of men. Gage writes about matriarchy. Her first chapter in that book is the Matriarchate. The Patriarchate is the second. I mean, she is nailing the institutions of patriarchy. While other suffragists are calling for equality within the male system. How did she get there? And I thought she's got to have seen something that says to her that it's possible, because the absolute hegemony of the world that she grew up in was that women are inferior to men physically, mentally. Science at the time said women's brains are smaller. And I went back and reread Woman, Church and State, and all of a sudden this line jumped out at me and it's in the first chapter. It's in the first few pages. Never was justice - BOTH: more perfect, never was civilization higher. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Now, a good scholar, that would have been your answer right there, out of the mouth of the woman who inspired it. Because she's talking about the Haudenosaunee. And I'm - it was like, wait a minute. I'm the leading expert. This is the big question. 17 years into this work and I haven't seen this. What's going on? I realized I carried the belief that Indian women were beasts of burden, they walked ten paces behind their husbands, and because they werent white, they had nothing to teach. They had nothing of value. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: And look at us now! SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: But the immediate reaction was, okay, you know what? You're going to get this wrong and you're going to do damage. And you have to, you have to recognize that that racism is embedded in you. I think that was the first time that I really understood the degree of white exceptionalism, of Christian exceptionalism that still was in me. And still is, you know, I mean, I will go to my grave a racist, but I will go to my grave fighting it. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: It takes time to understand these worldviews and their distinctions, right. And being able to listen, to hear each other, to ask the questions. I mean, I remember the first time that I went away to college and I'm in a class. It was a philosophy class. I really don't remember what I said, but whatever I said in the classroom, someone says, Michelle, are you a feminist? And I was like, what? What are you talking about? I said, no, I'm a Haudenosaunee. Like, what's what's your deal? Why are you asking me this question? It's because they were hearing something that they just didn't understand, you know, as I spoke from my perspective, right? Sally, you you have done so much work researching on the suffragists, this history, this time and these interactions. So what type of experiences did white women have being in Haudenosaunee communities, being among the Haudenosaunee, and how did that come to shape the women's rights movement? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Yeah. Here's an example. Women who were living on Haudenosaunee land, teachers, I found two examples of them in the newspapers at the time, and it was we have a freedom of movement here that we have never experienced in our own communities. I mean, that's a freedom that white women did not experience in their own communities. They couldn't go out at night by themselves. In fact, even during the daytime, you know, you should have a male escorting you. The birthing, birthing from the time of contact is... Here are these Haudenosaunee women that are giving birth without extreme pain. How are they doing it? And so one of the missionaries says, I think it's because they havent been exposed to the Bible yet. They don't know that they're supposed to give birth in pain and sorrow. [laughter] And then he thinks about it a little bit and he says, well, maybe it's because they have a little healthier lifestyle. You know, here are white women encased in corsets, whalebone corsets that they try to get their waists to be 18 inches. And then you have Elizabeth Cady Stanton writing, the clan mother cuts off the horns of the chief. MOMMABEAR: Cool! SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Removes the chief, and she is just absolutely stunned, almost speechless about this. She also - marriage was not considered an agreement between two people. It was a covenant with God, so it couldn't be broken. So there were - divorce laws didn't exist. She says women should leave and have the ability to leave loveless and dangerous marriages. She gave sanctuary to a battered woman when she lived in Seneca Falls. She knows what's going on. She's called a heretic for taking that position. She says, she writes, you want to know what divorce Haudenosaunee style looks like? The woman puts her husband's belongings outside of the longhouse and that's it. He's gone. So here are these white women who are seeing this world where women have political voice. They have social voice. They live in a world free of violence. They're living in a utopia. I mean, this is, that's where the vision comes from. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would like to hear, you know, some of the stories that you've heard about white women coming into Haudenosaunee territory. MOMMABEAR: Well, you know, I think I was going to get her to tell it, the story about where, I forget which one it was, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was visiting a friend. Maybe Seneca Falls and, they're having tea, and a man shows up and the Indian woman goes out and talks to him and they go in the barn and, they come out with a horse, and, the guy walks away with the horse, and and the white woman is aghast, like, you sold your husbands horse? She goes, that aint his horse, thats my horse. And I can do whatever I want with it, because she had the right to her own property, the right to her own children and whatever in the home was hers. And, you know, she wasn't a possession, but the possessions were hers, and she could do what she wanted to do with it. And then the white woman was just, her experience couldn't comprehend how she could have that freedom without asking her husband first. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So why was matrilineal culture so threatening to the colonists? SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: You know, I think in every way it was a threat. And, you know, to set the context a little bit about what I understand about what was going on at the time, it was - the Protestant Reformation had happened. And so you have the Jesuits coming in and, you know, proselytizing and introducing hell and damnation and sin and, you know, the subordination of women and and beating your children. Spare the rod and spoil the child in the Bible. So the threat is to everything that is the system of patriarchy, the religion, the government, the private property. You know, it's not just we're going to save your soul. We're going to teach you that the highest form of civilization is private property. So you have to stop your communal - your women, the Quakers in council said in 1845, your women have got to go into the home and, you know, just do what a woman is supposed to do in the home. And you men have to go into the fields, destroyed women as the agriculturalists. So it was such a threat that it was fought tooth and nail, women having control of their own bodies and their sexuality, that just drove the missionaries nuts. I don't care what denomination you were. That was like, whoa, this is the... yeah, absolute worst thing that can happen. MOMMABEAR: Yeah, and thats - you know, that's the thing about, you know, the legislation of the woman's body that just flips me out sometimes is because if women really attuned to the power of their own body, they could just, you know, not pay attention to any kind of law, government, men don't have the right to legislate it and put it - but if a woman really was in touch with her body, she could, you know, between the the poles of the earth, and the pull of the moon, if she was coming into a pregnancy that she wasnt ready for and didn't have the capacity, she could make her body, you know, ask that child to turn around and go back, and her body would react, and it would be just a gentle letting go of that pregnancy. Thered have to be no intervention. There would have to be no doctors sticking things up for her to pull that pregnancy out. It would just be a gentle shedding versus a intrusion of medical science to try and pull that baby out, or a law to tell you to keep it in, you know. So if a woman was really attuned to herself, she herself could decide whether she wanted to be a mother. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Around the time that white women were really just gearing up and setting out there to fight for their right to vote, you had quite a few, prominent indigenous women who were out speaking about matters that were very different, and it was really centered around land and our children. One of those women actually is a relative of mine, Laura Cornelius Kellogg. And during the 100th centennial celebration for women's suffrage, there was a congressional committee that had set aside some funding to gift different types of commemorations around this 100th year, and they wanted to include a Haudenosaunee woman and a monument of four lesser known stories in Seneca Falls, which Seneca Falls is considered the birthplace of women's rights. There is this monument now called Ripples of Change. And the woman, there's - the Haudenosaunee woman out of four women, there's Sojourner Truth, Martha Coffin Wright, and Harriet Tubman and Laura Cornelius Kellogg. But she's distinguished a bit because she wasn't fighting for women's rights, but rather for land. And the quote around the bottom of the statue is Laura's quote that says, “And it's a cause for astonishment to me that you white women in the 20th century are only now seeking what has always been the Indian woman's privilege as far back as history traces.” And that says it all, right? MOMMABEAR: I got goosebumps on that one. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So I highly recommend for folks to go and to visit this monument that's there. And the artist Jane DeDecker, she was the one who was commissioned to create these pieces. But for Laura's piece, she actually invited in my mother, Diane Schenandoah, to sculpt the representation of Laura. And so it's really quite beautiful. But this marker of 100 years for women to have the right to vote in the country, certainly significant. But as white women were gaining their right to vote, what was happening to indigenous women at the same time? MOMMABEAR: The table was flipping, you know, like, the more that white women found their voice and was asking to be included in their own constitution, native women were subjugated to these new laws, and this new religion, Christianity, and probably at that time, they were taking their children and putting them in residential schools and giving them this campaign of, you know, hate that youre brown, hate that, you know, this self-hate campaign. So, women were going through a real upheaval in their own identity, the taking of their children, their language, their land, their autonomous knowing their history. So, it was a reversal of, you know, white women coming up, and then Indian women be relegated to, you know, flora and fauna. And, I have a strong feeling that I feel the... From the residential school and the idea that Indian women were disposable and that missing and murdered indigenous women became a thing that, you know, people turned their heads away from. And then, you know, women - Indian women started dying. And there was a sterilization of Indian women. Laws that said if an Indian woman married a white man, she lost her status as an Indian, especially in Canada, and like, she started to lose a lot of her rights and she became, just like Eve was, subjugated under the man. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, and the residential schools is something that a lot of people in the United States don't really know much about. And Secretary Deb Haaland has done two investigative reports now to really just look at the number of schools that existed in the United States, the number of indigenous children that were taken to these schools, estimating the numbers of deaths that happen for their children. And that same process is happening in Canada, where they're formally going through a truth and reconciliation process. But we know that children are at the center of Haudenosaunee life. That's who we live for. This is who we do our work for is for our children, the future generations, and the responsibilities that we carry to our children. So taking away the children was another process of breaking apart communities. MOMMABEAR: It totally destroyed the women, you know, and women were too deep in their grief at the loss of their children, I mean... it's a hard historical pill to swallow, you know? And how do you rebuild after that? And when she's relegated inside the law to be less than, it was really horrendous. But, you know, there's a lot of other historical facts where I believe it was a Seneca clan mothers who signed, sent a letter to Washington, trying to preserve their lands. And that's why Tonawanda exists, still exists today. And there's different instances where, you know, even our own chief said to Washington, don't ignore the voices of the women, or theres going to be hell to pay, because it is them who toil the soil and take care of our food. And you can't ignore the voices of women. So there's been advocacy, I think, throughout history, to be able to say, like, you can't leave the women out, even in, I believe, in 1924 with the Citizenship Act, when the United States came and wanted to give citizenship to Indian men, they said, no, we don't want to be part of a government that doesn't include its women. So, you know, part of that is just there's been instances in history where, you know, people have said things, you know, don't ignore them, but they did. And so now, you know, we're in a historical moment where Haudenosaunee women are reclaiming their voices, reclaiming their history, calling home their children that were lost at residential school. You know, we're restructuring, we're rebuilding our identity. And, we're taking back our truth. And I think it's a great time to be alive, because now, you know, we have a huge responsibility to that next generation of young men and women who are watching us. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Were rematriating. MOMMABEAR: Were rematriating, yeah. And we're going to lactate this story all over this world. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Sally, as someone who is not Haudenosaunee you make a lot of great strides to teach about and write about the Haudenosaunee. So why do you do this? It's really very selfish and very self-serving, because the patriarchal world that I come from has led us on an inevitable path to the destruction of life on the planet. That's the trajectory. And to be in the presence of people who have a history and a body knowledge and a head knowledge and a lengthy tradition of living in harmony and balance with all of life. That's the path to survival. I'm a great grandmother. I want my great grandson, Camden, to have a world, and I can't provide that. But if at best I can open the ears of non-native people to this is who we have to listen to.... MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: I find that so unselfish. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: It feels very selfish, you know, it's - I mean, it's not for any noble purpose. It's the - I mean, I want life on the planet to survive. And seeing the path to it is... yeah. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: Well English is my second language, but, you know, the way I've always seen it and the way that I grew up is that the women are always taking care of the details, from the seed planting to the harvest to the canning, you know, the organization of the house, to the smaller details of our big ceremonies were taken care of by women on the outside. But, you know, inside the ceremony, men were conducting them. But, you know, there's always a balance. And so, I go back and think to those moments as a little girl and understanding our stories and how I seen our, my mother and my grandmother, like, you know, they were just - they never complained about the harshness of their life. They were totally embracing of whatever their circumstance, and they were always thinking on how to do it different. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: When you say that about your grandmother being, you know, the center of the household, my grandmother was the center of the household, but in a house she had no right to, you know, cooking in pots that she didn't own. You know, completely under the authority of her husband. And so while she was the, the virtual head of the household, you know, keeping things going, she was doing it under the authority of her husband, who owned it all. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: As we're bringing this conversation full circle and, you know, what is it that you would want people to know? What do you believe is the most important lesson that people can learn about the Haudenosaunee as it relates to women's authority and democracy? MOMMABEAR: You know, there's this image in my head as a young girl, probably I was a pre-teen about 10 or 11 years old. That is forever etched in my mind, and it's an image of my mother. I was watching her one day washing corn and her hair was black and her skin was brown, like the earth. And I was just a kid playing on a swing, watching my mother, prepare her corn and, as she was sorting her seeds, the wind came up and she jumped up and grabbed her corn washing basket. And she got her wood ash and she started to work with the wind. And as she worked with her corn, the ash was flying. She was using the wind to sort the ash, in the hull of the corn away from the corn. And it was so rhythmic. And it was just, she was like, just poetry in motion. And she was just so beautiful. So...in one with the Earth. And to me, that identified power. And she claimed it. And to me thats the image of a woman who doesn't have to apologize for who she was. She was 100% in tune with the power of the earth. The wind, the corn, her living body. And she was unapologetic. And in that moment, she was a scientist. She was a cook. She was a mathematician. She was a reader of the universe. And without words, she gave me a powerful image. And I'll never forget. And it was just so pure. And it was so truthful. And that... I have spent the rest of my life to be half of that. Because I think that's what the world needs to get back to, is to... be rooted in truth. And to know your own truth and to journey within. And I'll never forget the beauty. The 100% unmolested beauty of my mother preparing her corn so she could feed me. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Thank you. MOMMABEAR: I don't know if I answered the question. I don't know why that came up, but I think it's just real important that the world know that unless the mothers in the house, therell always be strife, and there will always be discourse and unrest. But until we put the mother back in the house where she should be making the decisions and being the center post of love, light, life, nurturing, then, only then can we save ourselves from this catastrophe that we're headed for. We need to call her home. MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: I knew tears were going to happen at some moment. MOMMABEAR: And I don't cry, I never cry, but, I guess our mothers are here, huh? MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: They're saying, look at these girls. They're old gals now, but.... MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah. MOMMABEAR: A white woman and an Indian woman. Loving on each other. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER: Thank you. MOMMABEAR: May the mother force be with you. [laughter] This episode is dedicated to the memory of our dear sister in spirit, Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner.