The interconnectedness of all things
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Sid Jamieson, a Cayuga nation member of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and a land trust board member, gave the opening blessing at the Rally 2018 Welcoming Dinner. Following are select quotes from his address.
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Sid Jamieson, a Cayuga nation member of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and a land trust board member, gave the opening blessing at the Rally 2018 Welcoming Dinner. Following are select quotes from his address:
I am here representing an ancient culture of conservation, balance and the interconnectedness of all things.
The Haudenosaunee Nations maintain a unique spiritual, cultural and historical relationship to the land. We consider ourselves as being one with the land, and stewards thereof. We do not consider ourselves to own the land.
Our traditional people continue to lead a holistic way of life, which is founded upon the ideology of: We are all a part of everything that is beneath us, everything that is around us and everything that is above us.
The opening address of all of our meetings and ceremonies is known as, “the words that come before all else” — reminding everyone gathered of their responsibilities to honor and respect Mother Earth and the living focus of the universe.
Guiding us along our journey is the seventh generation principle, which tells us that we must consider what our decisions will mean for the next seven generations to come. The Haudenosaunee have, through our environmental task force, a mission statement to conserve, preserve, protect and restore our environmental natural and cultural resources, to promote the health and survival of the sacred web of life for future generations, to support other indigenous nations working on environmental issues and to fulfill our responsibility to the natural world as our Creator instructed us to do.
We respectfully wish you well in your meeting and in the continued growth of land trust conservation.