GAMBLING A THREAT TO RESERVATIONS, INDIAN JOURNALIST TELLS STUDENTS

The gambling casinos viewed by many Indian tribes as an escape hatch from reservation poverty will be the tribes' undoing, predicts Mohawk Iroquois journalist and community activist Doug George. He lives on the Onondaga Reservation in Central New York, a region where the operation of casinos by the Mohawks and Oneidas has contributed to an atmosphere of strife charged with accusations of corruption and demagoguery."Gambling will ultimately result in the demise of the Indian people as independent," says George, contending it is a way for government to exert control and is contrary to Native American spiritual beliefs. "It extracts from the human spirit and produces nothing." He spoke Monday to a small gathering of students interested in learning more about the Iroquois culture. He is a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which just broke ground on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. He is the former editor of the Indian journal Akwesasne Notes and until this year wrote a column for the Syracuse Herald Journal. He is married to Joanne Shenandoah, a celebrated Oneida Iroquois singer who performed Sunday night in the Silver Feather Festival at Southeast. In December, George and Shenandoah will attend the World Parliament of Religions in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy are composed of members of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora and Cayuga nations. The confederacy was created 800 years ago by a prophet the Iroquois call the Peace Maker. Their story and the Christ story have remarkable similarities. Born of a Huron woman who was a virgin, the Peace Maker arrived at a time when the tribes who lived in what is now Central New York were in great turmoil. They were fighting among themselves and many were leaving their homeland. "We lost sight of the instructions the Creator gave us to use," George said."It extended into a period of violence when our own children were turning on us," George said, noting the parallel to current events. "When we lose sight of why we are on earth, we lose hope for the future."The Peace Maker gave the Iroquois powerful songs and universal symbols to guide them back to peace, George said. "We were a terrible people," George said. "We did a lot of bad things. That makes the act of conversion that much more profound."The Peace Maker said there is a method whereby violence could be avoided. Thus he created the first United Nations, and the Iroquois Confederacy became the birthplace of North American democracy. Though most schools teach that America's Founding Fathers are responsible for our democratic ideals, some historians believe the United States was modeled after the Iroquois federation.

In the confederacy, women assumed the power to select leaders and could veto any act initiated by men. They were the peacemakers and controlled the nations' economies. Leaders were chosen for their stable family life and were chosen with an eye toward their great spiritual responsibilities.

They practiced what George calls a "spiritual communism," in which the collective whole was considered in each decision. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels borrowed some of their ideas from the Iroquois, he said, but failed to recognize that spirituality must be at the society's core.

The coming century will be a time of limited resources, George says, when we have to acknowledge the right of other species to life. When the Europeans came to North America, they found clean water and plenty of wildlife. "We lived lightly upon the earth," he said.

They held planting ceremonies in which they spoke to the plants. "We are taught that all things that live have a spirit," he said. The Iroquois do not consider themselves citizens of the United States. They issue their own passports and do not vote in U.S. elections. When George founded a radio station on the reservation, he didn't seek the FCC's approval.

The Iroquois confederation is seeking the return of the millions of acres of homeland the nations say were illegally taken from them."The front line for Indian sovereignty is going to be fought in New York State," George said.