A Message from the First People of Appalachia

We gather as Reimagine Appalachia, and we acknowledge, honor, and serve, to remediate, repair and restore, the ancestral lands of the Aboriginal American Indigenous peoples, and the people of the Appalachian region upon the lands which we now occupy. United through the (Kanonsonnionwe) The Iroquois Confederacy of Nations is governed by their Constitution (Gayanerekowa) The Great Law of Peace. It includes detailed rights of the Clan Mothers, all chiefs and the children with detailed instructions on the government formation, purpose and the principles of governance over the land and the relationship between the people of the land and the foreigners in peace and war. When the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked for examples of effective government and human liberty upon which to model a Constitution to unite the thirteen colonies, they found it in the government of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations. In the eighteenth century, the Iroquois League was the oldest, most highly evolved participatory democracy on Earth.