Indigenous People’s Influence on American Democratic Institutions with Fern Naomi Renville

For the month of November, Fern Naomi Renville shared a purposeful presentation on the power that women hold and can wield. AAUW Seattle and Edmonds SnoKing co-sponsored this Humanities Washington Speaker and more than 70 people attended.

Fern talked about the power held in matriarchal Indigenous societies, including the Dakota and Seneca tribes of her ancestors. She told the story of how five tribes on the eastern coast of the USA gave up their wars with each other and came together to form the Iroquois Federation. Their government was so successful that Benjamin Franklin brought the concept of federalism from the Iroquois people to the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, our founding fathers were not able to absorb the part of the Iroquois Federation that made the grandmothers and women the “supreme court” and able to elect and remove officials.

Fern shared how the women of the tribes were respected because they brought children into the world and also grew large crops like corn and pumpkins along the river. The women kept their tribes well fed and even sold crops to the white settlers. She then told the story of the white buffalo calf woman and the prophecy that she would return.

In addition, she later told us that a bill passed in the US Congress in 1988:

S.Con.Res.76 - A concurrent resolution to acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the Development of the United States Constitution and to reaffirm the continuing government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States established in the Constitution. 100th Congress (1987-1988).

(Click here to read more information on this bill.)

She is a wonderful story teller and partners in her community with SNAG Productions, a Washington-based collective of Native American artists committed to sharing traditional stories with contemporary audiences. You can look up Fern Renville or SNAG Productions on the internet to find out lots more information.

If you missed this program or would like to see it again, please check out the
Humanities Washington website.