1. Money is Not Territory
“Religious” Dimensions of Iroquois
Wampum

2. On the “Freedom Trail”

3. Tourist Highlights

4. What Freedom?

5. Pilgrims on Cape Cod

6. First Theft

7. What is Religion?
• Exchange
• Indigenous traditions challenge conventional
(i.e., Constitutional) understandings of
religion
• Not strictly ideological--material
• Status of researcher as a participant in
cultural critique and creation

8. Wampum
• Worked shell bead
from the quahoag shell

9. Contemporary Wampum artistry

10. Wampum’s Value
• Purple (black) and
white
– Cosmological attributes
of Earth/Sky,
Night/Day, Creator
Twins
• Purity of intention
– Living force of words
spoken into wampum
and from wampum into
speaker

11. Hiawantha Belt of the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy
• Story of the
Peacemaker and
Hiawantha
• Condolence
– Grief as a sudden
disjunction between
humans and creation
– Wampum restores
relations

12. Tsha’hon’nonyen’dakhwa’
“Where they play games”

13. Wampum Belts
• “Two-Row Wampum”--Guswentha
– Treaty between Haudenosaunee and Dutch 1613
– Residence and exchange as equals
• Non-interference agreement
– Dutch version discovered in 1968
• Emphasis on exclusivity of trade relationship

14. NOON campaign for 2013
• http://www.honorthetworow.org

15. European Wampum
• Wampum as Money
– Tied to the Development of Colonial America
• Access to Beaver pelts
– Basis of trans-Atlantic commerce
– Creation of NYC (JJ Astor), Erie Canal
• Long Island factories
– Last “wampum mint” closed in 1899
– Reorganized worlds of Native and Europeans
• Exchange rate: 3 white/1 black to British penny

16. Wampum and Money: Expor-ations of
Religion as Exchange
• For Haudenosaunee • For Europeans wampum
wampum is an was the basis for trans-
expression of the Atlantic trade
cosmos – Extending colonial
– Extending the empires through
Confederacy through commerce
Condolence – Wampum as money
– Wampum as being • Immigrant phenomenon
• Indigenous phenomenon

17. Money and Native Americans
• Monetary exchange
network (Global
economy) has been the
most detrimental to
Native communities
– Not religion, per se
– Modern notion of
money derived from
Christian worldview

18. Theodor de Bry, Las Casas, the Black
Legend and GOLD

19. Money as Religion
• “Total fact” of modern existence
– Everything is evaluated with respect to monetary
value
• Symbolic, mythic, “faith based,”
• Materiality of our current existence
• Wampum clarifies religious nature of money
– No joke

20. Theology of Money
• Sacred reality is removed
from material life
– Anthrocentric emphasis
• Everything is here for
human beings
• God or Creator is “otiosus”
– Sign of God in money
– Removed from Creation
• Creates a dangerous world

21. Basic Call to Consciousness
What has befallen Native American people
will befall us all
• Environmental degradation
– Expressed in weather and sickness
• Loss of cultural identity
• Not apocalyptic; no sense of optimism
– Self-fulfilling prophecy of Religions which
emphasize the end

22. Native Nations and the UN
• World Stage that respects cultural differences
• Since 1978 there has developed a Indigenous
peoples consultation
– Lead by Oren Lyons of Onondaga
– Haudenosaunee passports
• Quote page 90
– World at a critical point

23. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues
• http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/index.h
tml
• Meeting at UN NYC every spring
• Discussions of the Doctrine of Discovery as a
critical aspect of Indigenous survival