Eva,
This is for you, your husband and the list: Bill Tall Feather is the Elder on
our council and we celebrated his 94th birthday on Saturday. Today I finally
figured out how to e-mail a picture and so I hope this works for you all.
As for Democracy and Power, I think that you need both. I have mentioned our
traditional situation on this list ad naseum so I won't mention it again. I
would say that a society that is not built around various expertises as well as
their pedagogical level presents several problems for me, not the least is
safety. Witness Chernobyl and Three Mile Island where the scientists could
design a workable plant but not a worker who could run it.
Around these issues of safety I would rather have the old "Clan Law of Blood" or
traditional law of the Cherokee Nation which ascribes responsibility for the
collection of the debt of responsibility to the Clan of anyone hurt by another's
irresponsibility. You could buy anyone's responsibility off by paying
reparations to the injured and their Clan, as long as it didn't include death.
For any infraction other than a death, if the criminal could make their way to
Chota, the City of Peace and convince the citizens to allow them to stay they were
given sanctuary. They had to stay at least a year until the "Friends Made
Ceremonial," the most sacred of all ceremonials when forgiveness asked for, must
be given. During that year they were rehabilitated and earned their forgiveness
and freedom.
Death was only payable by another death with the exception being that the
relatives of someone who was accidentally killed could be paid by the killer's
Clan giving someone from their own Clan to that the deceased Clan who would take
up the responsibilities of the one killed. Or if the deceased was despised then
the killer's Clan could be released by the simple payment of goods but if one of
the deceased's relatives objected then a life was met with a life.
You need not take the life of the killer, in fact any member, male, female, adult
of child would do. This may seem harsh to you folks but murder was not
committed very often in the old nation. Since anyone would pay for the sentence,
escape was impossible and Clans disciplined their own members before they lost
more valued members to the law. They thought better of it before they would do
it.
That is far from the situation today, in fact there is now a 150 year feud going
on because those who took the European legal model & signed a treaty which killed
one third of the nation in a death march. Those who went on the march demanded
the Law of Blood while those who signed the treaty hid behind the U.S.
Cavalry. It is still going on. We have at least as long a memory as the
Irish and the Yugoslavs. We believe in the rule of law.
Anyway Bill Tall Feather has lived his life by practicing the disciplines of the
traditions and when I offered to pay for a massage on his birthday, he refused
politely saying that he could take care of his own body. Maybe I should give up
massages myself.
REH
