On America’s Birthday, Frederick Douglass, the Haudenosaunee, and Unrecognized Founders

Hi you,

The United States has always been best defined by those it seeks to exclude: indigenous people, Black people, women, poor people, immigrants, LGBTQ+. We are on a constant journey toward liberty and justice for all, and sometimes we move backwards, but it’s these Others who call the nation into a higher state of being. Many in the nation resist the evolution. Sometimes we take in some of the principles and ideas. Sometimes we forget and need to be reminded.

We are in that moment again. We need to remember and re-member. We are being called to be founders again.

The First People of this land practiced democracy. The French called them the Iroquois Confederacy, but they call themselves Haudenosaunee. Five Nations, then Six. Once in a constant state of war, brought together to live under the Great Law of Peace. You know some of their names: Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. The Founding Fathers knew their names as well and admired their ways of self governance and of freedom, especially Benjamin Franklin. Our independence was only possible because of hundreds of years of interdependence with native nations already here. Here’s an excellent and accessible writeup from the

Institute of Natural Law

of that story, and I’m working on sharing more. In short: our elder indigenous brethren were co-founders.

Black people too have played this role. We represent America’s pride and its shame. We were the literal economic foundation setting the stage for the wealth that powered the nation’s rise, financially and culturally. There are too many to name, but Frederick Douglass was uniquely gifted in reminding the nation of its promise and possibility while holding it to account. His lifelong efforts to call this nation in to its higher self make him a co-founder as well.

In 1852 Douglass channeled a brilliant address in Upstate New York, Haudenosaunee land, asking “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” Here’s a version of the full text. In the summer of 2016 I performed a version of this address at the Brooklyn Public Library, and I’m sharing that recording today. I produced it as an annotated reading with some music, graphics, and commentary with the direction of

Mikhael Tara Garver

. It still works! That is a beautiful and sad fact.

I could go on. In the future I will. But suffice it to say that indigenous and Black people in this land have a very special bond and have played a special role in making the United States a worthy nation. We are the people who this nation stole from and the people who this nation stole; we are those here since time immemorial and those dragged here from afar. And we are founders. We all are. Remember that in this season of remembrance.

Thanks. Happy independence, and interdependence. One is not possible without the other.