The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 26 December 2013

Air Date: 
December 26, 2013

Photo, above:  Tadadaho, Leon Shenandoah, Fire Keeper for the Haudenosaunee, 1915-1996, (Onondaga, Eel Clan)

"In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.
 We must live in harmony with the natural world and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction. We cannot trade the welfare of our future generations for profit... We are instructed to carry love for one another, and to show great respect for all beings of the earth. We must stand together, the four sacred colors of man, as the one family that we are, in the interest of peace . . .  Our energy is the combined will of all people with the spirit of the natural world, to be of one body, one heart, and one mind." --Leon Shenandoah

A Prophecy by Leon Shenandoah, Tadadaho of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy

Document: A Basic Call to Consciousness, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, 
Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977   What is presented here is nothing less audacious than a cosmogony of the Industrialized World presented by the most politically powerful and independent non-Western political body surviving in North America. It is, in a way, the modern world through Pleistocene eyes. 
          Scholars and casual readers alike should question the significance, in the age of the Neutron bomb, Watergate, and nuclear energy plant proliferation, of a statement by a North American Indian people. But there is probably some argument to be made for the appropriateness of such a statement at this time. Most of the world's professed traditions are fairly recent in origin. Mohammedanism is perhaps 1500 years old, Christianity claims a 2000-year history, Judaism is perhaps 2000 years older than Christianity. 
But the Native people can probably lay claim to a tradition which reaches back to at least the end of the Pleistocene, and which, in all probability, goes back much further than that.  There is some evidence that humanoid creatures have been present on the earth for at least two million years, and that humans who looked very much like us were in evidence in the Northern Hemisphere at least as long as the second interglacial period. People who are familiar with the Hau de no sau nee beliefs will recognize that modern scientific evidence shows that the Native customs of today are not markedly different from those practiced by ancient peoples at least 70000 years ago. Indeed, if an Iroquois traditionalist were to seek a career in the study of Pleistocene Man, he may find that he already knows more about the most ancient belief systems than do the modern scholars. Be that as it may, the Hau de no see nee position is derived from a philosophy which sees The People with historical roots which extend back tens of thousands of years. It is a geological kind of perspective, which sees modern man as an infant, occupying a very short space of time in an incredibly long spectrum. It is the perspective of the oldest elder looking into the affairs of a young child and seeing that he is committing incredibly destructive folly. It is, in short, the statement of a people who are ageless but who trace their history as a people to the very beginning of time. And they are speaking, in this instance, to a world which dates its existence from a little over 500 years ago, and perhaps, in many cases, much more recently than that.  And it is, to our knowledge, the very first statement to be issued by a Native nation. What follows are not the research products of psychologists, historians, or anthropologists. The papers which follow are the first authentic analyses of the modern world ever committed to writing by an official body of Native people.  -- from the Introduction

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block A: An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears by Daniel Blake Smith (1 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block B: An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears by Daniel Blake Smith (2 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block C: An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears by Daniel Blake Smith (3 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block D: An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears by Daniel Blake Smith (4 of 4)

Hour Two

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block A: Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots by Thomas S. Kidd (1 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block B: Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots by Thomas S. Kidd (2 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block C: Ethan Allen: His Life and Times by Willard Sterne Randall (1 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block D: Ethan Allen: His Life and Times by Willard Sterne Randall (2 of 2)

Hour Three

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block A: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul (1 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block B: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul (2 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block C: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul (3 of 4)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block D: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block A: A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke by James Horn (1 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block B: A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke by James Horn (2 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block C: God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas S. Kidd (1 of 2)

Thursday  26 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block D: God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas S. Kidd (2 of 2)

..  ..  ..

Music

Hour 1:  Last of the Mohicans. 

Hour 2:  Last of the Mohicans. Revolution!

Hour 3:  Glory. 

Hour 4:

 

`