The Natural World teaming, with life allows each species to live & to be different. Differences do not cause conflict as much as disrespect. The following are Cultural differences that Hodenoshaunee have and they are offered for your consideration and understanding.

1) Our cultural knowledge explains that our two people were created separately on two different continents. We did not come across the Bering Strait. To be placed on a progressive continuum is in itself the purest form of racism.

2) We begin to travel in two paths with understanding, respect and cooperation,the bench mark of separation.

3) We have two distinct legacies of life. We each have an entirely different way of viewing the world. These differences have led us to deal with each other in a sometimes bizarre mannar.

4) Aboriginal world view contains a greater sense of the current completeness of existence.

5) Aboriginal people have a different way of seeing reality. Any discussion of land becomes a discussion of religion, kinship and is our view of land. We view everything as possessing a life and we look to the unity of whole as the completeness of existence. All life comes from Mother Earth.

6) Belief is more important than what they can prove.

7) Land does not belong to us. It belongs to the coming faces (generations to come). In this sense, we cannot own,sell buy and give land away. It belongs to all.

8) Everything is related and survival depends on how one exercises the use of resources. We only take what we can use.

9) Our view of time and space is different. The spirts allow us to return to the orgins of ceremonies and as long as we do them in completeness we can draw on that original power and strength. It seeks harmony in a cyclical contact over time. We are concerned with being and maintaining rather than becoming developing, changing, making and storing.

10) Every Hodenoshaunee person has a personal relation with nature and does not strive to control it. There is no connection of land, labor and wealth.

11) The future does not contain the stimulating prospect of progress.

12) To meet the Non-Native halfway is to self destruct.

13) Why is the option of leading a separate cultural domain into the future so shocking? Reaction would be pure racism. Any one wants to be different. Work on understanding the difference. Form a partnership not a marriage.

by Chief Harvey Longboat-Six nations