A Sustainable World of Equality & Peace: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on the Women's Suffrage Movement
Join the Archives Partnership Trust, League of Women Voters, Cultural Heritage Tourism Network and our regional partners for a very special program with Humanities New York Public Scholars Sally Roesch Wagner and Freida Jacques as they discuss the Haudenosaunee influence on the women's suffrage movement in New York State and its legacy.
Friday, May 19th
4:00 P.M.
Roberson Museum and Science Center - Binghamton, NY
Freida Jacques describes the world she inhabits as a Haudenosaunee woman. The democratic governmental system, established long before Columbus and based on peace, provides a balance of responsibilities between women and men based on a matrilineal clan system - a model that inspired 19th century U.S. reformers. Gratitude, healing and use of the Good Mind constitute lessons from the Haudenosaunee culture that provide a model for the Euro-American culture to use in creating a democratic, peaceful country. Freida also explores the original instructions that all Peoples received. These instructions result in living in relationship with nature in a sustainable manner.
Sally Roesch Wagner will explore how the woman’s rights movement took form in the territory of the Haudenosaunee where women have always lived with far greater status and authority than in the non-native world. Based on her most recent book, Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists, Dr. Wagner will share her research on how Haudenosaunee women fired the revolutionary vision of early feminists by providing a model of freedom for women at a time when Euro-American women experienced few rights.
Together they explore the impact that Haudenosaunee women, living in absolute equality, had on Euro-American women who lost all their rights, even their legal existence, when they married. Euro-American women learned from and were inspired by the equal political authority, control of their bodies and property, religious voice, custody of their children, satisfying work, and absence of rape and domestic violence women experienced in Haudenosaunee nations.
Note: this program is free and open to the public.
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