Eatenonha: Native Roots of Modern Democracy

201 Pages·2019·0.664 MB·English

by  Georges Sioui

Native Roots of Modern Democracy
McGill- Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago
© McGill- Queen’s University Press 2019
ISBN 978-0-7735-5639-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-2280-0046-4 (ePdf)
ISBN 978-0-2280-0047-1 (ePUB)
Legal deposit third quarter 2019
Bibliothèque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.
The cover image is in fond remembrance of a very dear Ojibway friend I once
had in my life, Roy Thomas. At the centre: the mother giving thanks for life,
teacher of the essential virtues that help create balance in society: kindness,
rectitude, empathy, love, and compassion for all beings of all orders.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Eatenonha : native roots of modern democracy / Georges Sioui.
Names: Sioui, Georges E., 1948– author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190118482 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190118504
| ISBN 9780773556393 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780228000464 (ePdf) | ISBN
9780228000471 (ePUB)
Subjects: lcsh: Wyandot Indians—Canada.
Classification: lcc e99.h9 s56 2019 | ddc 971.004/97555—dc23
This book was typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon.
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
A Note on Terminology xiii
Introduction 3
1 A Road Trip in the Eastern United States 8
2 Seawi: Hurons of the Rising Sun 24
3 The Seawi of the Forty Arpents 45
4 The Sioui Case Explained 100
5 The Essential Thread of Canada’s History 117
6 Eatenonha: Native Roots of Modern Democracy 144
Epilogue 159
Appendix 161
Notes 169
Bibliography 177

This is a story of me, of my Seawi Clan, and of my Wendat peo-
ple. It is also a story of Canada and, as such, is an exploration
into the historical and future significance of the Native soul of
Canada in the world context. Most centrally, it presents our
country, Canada, as our motherland, our Eatenonha, instead of
as a common property we acquire and own by the fact of being
and becoming Canadian. This book is also a gift, from me and
from my people, to Canada and to the world.
In the first chapter, I am inviting you, dear friend and reader,
on a road trip in the eastern United States that I made with my
very dear life-companion Bárbara in February 2012, where she
and I converse, and at times surmise, about some less certain,
sparsely documented aspects of my people’s historical trajectory.
This first section also takes you to Brazil and Argentina to give
you a glimpse into my people’s ancestral thinking about the con-
tinental unity of a Native American way of comprehending life
and the world.
In chapter 2, I take you back, through a tale of my unconven-
tional family’s life on our Reserve, to a time when Nature herself
was so much more present than now in our ways of thinking and
living. That piece is titled “Seawi: Hurons of the Rising Sun.”
Chapter 3 presents the virtually unknown history of the Seawi,
a group of Wendat traditionally refractory to the socio-political
order imposed by the colonial powers of New France. That section
begins to explain how an ancient Aboriginal sense of Canada’s
viii Preface
history was preserved among that community. The section also
contains two lectures I gave, one in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2010
and the other in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 2013. In these two
papers, I present some of the life, ideology, and work of my own
parents to further familiarize you, my reader, with the social and
family context where I have my roots.
Chapter 4, “The Sioui Case Explained,” is my rendering of how
this landmark legal case was founded and engineered to be victo-
rious in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1990. It is meant as an
illustration of how my people’s preservation of an ancestral sense
of our (and Canada’s) history and evolution was used to create
a case where all components of the larger society saw how we
collectively stood to come out winning, mostly through gaining a
new capacity to achieve a more unified, stronger society.
Chapter 5, “The Essential Thread of Canada’s History,” consti-
tutes an original retelling of how a large body of Native nations
in the Northeast had created, in pre-European times, what I style
a “commonwealth of nations” based on peace, trade, and reci-
procity. The geopolitical centre of this vast commercial and social
network was the Wendat Confederacy. Contrary to what is still
taught in almost all Canadian schools, the Five Nations (Iroquois)
Confederacy, in Aboriginal times, only occupied a place of mar-
ginal importance. It was not able to, nor did it have a will to,
threaten or disrupt the centuries-old political order established
in the land – a role and an ambition that have conventionally
and unjustly been ascribed to the Hodenosaunee (the Iroquois).
From this novel perspective, Canada can no longer be thought of
as a country fated to borrow its political ideology from its reput-
edly stronger and culturally more sophisticated neighbour to the
south. Instead, our new understanding of the Aboriginal geopoli-
tics of the Northeast makes us see Canada as the true originator,
and potentially the international seat, of the discourse on modern
democracy in times to come.
I have titled the last chapter of this essay “Eatenonha: Native
Roots of Modern Democracy.” My whole purpose in writing this
book has been to reveal to my readers, to all Canadians, and to
the world some of the deepest, most honoured secrets possessed
Preface ix
by my people and by all people who are Indigenous, as well as
those who understand and respect our Aboriginal/Indigenous
way of thinking and living. To contextualize those secrets, I have
chosen to write about the Wendat because they are my own peo-
ple and because among Canada’s many first civilizations, we were
the one that most immediately and materially attended to the
birth and the beginnings of Canada as it is now known.
The most important, most ineffable secret I have been meaning
to share with all of you, dear readers, is that we, First Peoples, had
created for ourselves a society, indeed a world, that can be looked
at as a true democracy. A society where all beings of all natures
are equally valued and respected and where women – and the
feminine order – are meant and made to have their place in the
centre of their families and communities. What I have proposed
in this essay is, quite simply, that our world can only achieve its
due measure of order, peace, and security if we, collectively, strive
to re-educate ourselves with regard to the place that the Great
Power of the Universe, the Supreme Being, or still, Nature herself,
has willed us to occupy as humans amid the Great Sacred Circle
of Life. Man, the leader, the defender, the provider, can only
accomplish the roles flowing from his own nature if he does not
substitute himself for the woman and usurp her place in the cen-
tre. This is what is essentially implied by the term matricentrism.
In my life, I have been instructed by my Elders to “help heal
the world.” The present book represents my – and my people’s –
continuing quest to carry out that duty, in unity with the whole
human and other-than-human community. Together, my dear
readers and relatives, we will keep on creating a great, world-
wide way of educating all of our peoples, all our children. I,
and countless others, have been building and promoting this
virtual institution for many years: The School of Circular and
Matricentric Thinking.
Etsagon, my dear relatives! (Let us take heart and be happy!)