BE THANKFUL AND BUILD PEACE EVERY DAY: THE HAUDENOSAUNEE THANKSGIVING ADDRESS

The words of The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address are gentle, inspiring, inclusive, and loving. They remind us to be thankful and peaceful every day. 

The words of “The Thanksgiving Address: the Words that Come Before All Else” in gatherings of members of the Haudenosaunee people, including the Onondaga, Iroquois, Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca, open our eyes and hearts to everything around us. 

 

The Haudenosaunee people give thanks every day, not just on Thanksgiving Day

 

1. This lovely 9-minute video version of The Thanksgiving Address, or “The Words that Come Before All Else,” was recorded by Ina Barrón with video produced by Sagehorse, Inc., and is featured on the Peace Alliance website.
 (Skip the commercials in all videos.) https://youtu.be/SfeL2VqL2VQ?si=1SAeRmGW0sxAsESM

2. Learn the background in this 4-minute Q & A video with representatives from the Onondaga Nation: Whatweni⋅neh – elder Frieda Jacques (Turtle Clan) and student Kateri - Riley Thornton (Snipe Clan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swJs2cGNwIU   

This video explains: “The Thanksgiving Address (the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen) is the central invocation for the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora). 

It reflects their relationship of giving thanks for life and the world around them. This video, filmed on location at the Onondaga Nation School in Onondaga Nation, focuses on the purpose and uses of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. (This video is part of the New York State Education Department Curriculum.)”

 

3. Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 presents youth from upstate New York’s Akwesasne, a Mohawk Nation, speaking a short (2-minute) version of the Address in Akwesasne.

The engaging high school students giggle and smile as they speak the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, understood as the “Words Before All Else,” “The Greetings To The Natural World,” or “The Opening Address.”  https://www.project562.com/blog/363283-a-real-thanksgiving-address-the-words-that-come-before-all-else 

4. This PDF version, from the National Museum of the American Indian would make a wonderful classroom illustration project or classroom or family read-aloud: https://americanindian.si.edu/environment/pdf/01_02_Thanksgiving_Address.pdf

 

5. To broaden students’ understanding of the Mohawk people today and to think about ecological concerns of the Mohawk people in upstate NY, show this 5-minute video that starts with Akwesasne Freedom School’s teacher Maxine Cole’s clear explanation of the daily nature of the Thanksgiving Address and moves to the role of the ash tree in Mohawk culture. This page is from the National Museum of the American Indian, and has many more teaching resources, including interactive quizzes and more.  https://americanindian.si.edu/environment/akwesasne/People.cshtml

 

6. The Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators, produced by the National Museum of the American Indian, introduces many concepts, including the Haudenosaunee’s Great Law of Peace, which influenced Benjamin Franklin and other creators of the United States Constitution. https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/HaudenosauneeGuide.pdf

 

7. Learn more about the peacebuilding mission of The Peace Alliance, working for peace education, enhancing personal peace practice, to pass HR 1111 to create a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding, and other social justice concerns. https://peacealliance.org

 

May we be thankful and build peace… every day.

 

Susan Gelber Cannon, November 2024

Oiling a Dead Man's Boat

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” 

–Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

For our 40^th anniversary in 2012, Kadir and I bought each other boats we could easily lift: Hornbeck’s fourteen-foot New Trick. These were the latest of Pete Hornbeck’s ultralight pack canoes, light enough to carry across trails between glistening glacial lakes in the Adirondacks. Crafted of a mix of Kevlar and carbon fiber, New Tricks are spare, slim, and canoe-like, paddled solo with a double blade, and weighing just under 25 pounds. The last few ounces were Hornbeck’s concession to beauty over lightness: the decks and gunnels—top rails—are rich cherry wood.

 

Kadir bought the second New Trick Pete’s crew made in October 2012. He asked for an extra layer of carbon fiber so he could muck over logs and beaver dams. Paddling was a pleasure, but the cherry gunnels needed care, and Kadir didn’t oil his gunnels. Until I propped it on logs, he stored his boat with gunnels and decks resting directly on the damp earth for weeks at a time until paddling season. 

 

When I remembered, I oiled the gunnels on his boat, then my boat, purchased six months later. The cherry rails gleamed. Eventually, we moved to western North Carolina, where the lakes are manmade, and Alzheimer’s gradually took Kadir’s mind and body. Kadir was unable to paddle, and there was little time for paddling for me. Our boats rested on racks until Kadir died in 2023. 

 

The first time I paddled after his passing, it was annoyingly windy on Lake Julian. Rollers marched toward me in steady formation—paddling conditions Kadir loved, and I hate. Gritting my teeth, I aimed my Hornbeck’s bow into the wind and knuckled down for my crossing. “It’s just one damn wave after another,” I observed. I was talking about grief as well as water. 

Cherry wood looks warm and lovely when cared for, and I oiled the gunnels of both boats each spring, eventually using the last drop of the aromatic tung oil mixture Pete Hornbeck gave us when we purchased our boats. But Kadir’s gunnels were separating from the rotting decks at his bow and stern. No one paddled the boat, so I needn’t have worried about it, but it bothered me. We’d paddled these beautiful crafts miles together in the Adirondacks. They’re full of memories.

I called Hornbeck Boats. Pete Hornbeck had died in 2020, so I told Josh and Andy about Kadir’s boat. “Sand the decks. Try longer screws. Hand tighten everything,” they suggested. I did. It worked. Andy added, “Oiling can do wonders.”

 

 

Rooting around in Kadir’s many crates of art supplies, I dug out a can of tung oil. I found an old t-shirt of Kadir’s and cut a square from the soft, purple sleeve. Dip. Wipe. Dip. Wipe. “I’m oiling a dead man’s boat,” I chuckled to no one. 

 

There is something satisfying about how good Kadir’s boat looks. And yes, purists spell the top rail of a boat “gunwale,” but Kadir would have spelled it gunnel. It makes more sense.

 

-Susan Gelber Cannon, July 2024