Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign at Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South
New York, New York
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Starting Sunday January 27th,11:00am, Judson will be hosting a series of Native American Testimonies on the last Sunday of every month, as part of the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign. The first guest speakers will offer poetry and information on the campaign.
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Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong is Dine’ (Navajo & Apache) and her clans are Bitter Water born for Red Clay. Her father, Jimmie Bidziil Bizahaloni, was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Indians of All Nations that took over Alcatraz Island in 1969. A lifelong activist, Firewolf became a member of AIM as a teenager, has been part of the Black Mesa Coalition since it’s inception, and is a co-founder of Native Resistance Network.
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Sally Bermanzohn, an ally of Indigenous rights, is active in the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign, and a member of Native Resistance Network. Now retired, she taught social movements and Native American Studies at Brooklyn College, and wrote Through Survivors’ Eyes, and coauthored Violence and Politics: Globalization’s Paradox.
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The Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign:
A partnership between the Onondaga Nation and Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON) is developing a broad alliance between the Haudenosaunee and their allies in New York and throughout the world. This statewide advocacy and educational campaign seeks to achieve justice by polishing the chain of friendship established in the first treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch immigrants. Environmental cleanup and preservation, and opposition to hydro-fracking are the core components of the campaign.
Two Row History:
The Two Row Wampum belt is the symbolic record of the first agreement between Europeans and American Indian Nations on Turtle Island/North America. 2013 will mark the 400th anniversary of this first covenant, which forms the basis for the covenant chain of subsequent treaty relationships made by the Haudenosaunee and other Native Nations with settlers on this continent. The agreement outlines a mutual, three-part commitment to friendship, peace between peoples, and living in parallel forever (as long as the grass is green, as long as the rivers flow downhill and as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west). Throughout the years, the Haudenosaunee have sought to honor this mutual vision and have increasingly emphasized that ecological stewardship is a fundamental prerequisite for this continuing friendship.
Symbolic Enactment:
A focal point of the year-long educational and advocacy Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign will be a symbolic “enactment” of the treaty in the summer of 2013. It will bring the treaty to life with Haudenosaunee and other Native People paddling side-by-side with allies and supporters down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City. These two equal, but separate rows will demonstrate the wise, yet simple concept of the Two Row Wampum Treaty.
