Senate Resolution Acknowledges Haudenosaunee Influence on Constitution During Bicentennial Celebrations

The U.S. Senate passes a resolution on the 200th anniversary of the Constitution formally recognizing that “the original framers of the Constitution, including most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts, principles and governmental practices of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy” and acknowledging the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s influence on the construction of the U.S. Constitution. The resolution represents the first formal federal government acknowledgment that Indigenous democratic systems—particularly the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace—contributed to American constitutional development. The timing coincides with the Constitution’s bicentennial celebrations and follows decades of scholarship by historians Donald A. Grinde, Bruce E. Johansen, and others documenting connections between the Haudenosaunee’s federal system of representative government and the Founders’ political thinking, particularly Benjamin Franklin’s extensive exposure to Haudenosaunee governance through his publishing of treaty council proceedings from 1736-1762 and his participation in the 1754 Albany Congress where Mohawk leader Hendrick explained the Confederacy’s democratic structure.

The Senate resolution’s acknowledgment of Indigenous democratic influence reveals a profound historical irony: the United States borrowed democratic principles including federalism, representative government, checks on executive power, and impeachment mechanisms from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—a functioning democracy operating for centuries before European contact—yet simultaneously pursued systematic policies to destroy Indigenous governance, sovereignty, and political systems. While the Founders admired and adapted Haudenosaunee innovations like confederated governance balancing individual nation sovereignty with collective decision-making, the new American government immediately began violating treaties with Indigenous nations, forcibly removing them from ancestral lands, suppressing Indigenous political structures, and imposing Euro-American governance through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The resolution acknowledges intellectual debt to Indigenous democracy while the same government continues policies—including the 1887 Dawes Act’s ongoing legacy of fractured land ownership, termination of tribal governments, and denial of sacred site access—that undermine the sovereignty of the very people whose democratic traditions influenced the Constitution.

The 1987 resolution highlights critical differences between Haudenosaunee democracy and the U.S. system that adopted only selective elements while rejecting others. The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace granted equal power to women and men—a level of gender equality the United States would not achieve for over two centuries after the Constitution’s ratification (women gaining voting rights only in 1920). The Great Law established that leaders were servants of the people rather than their lords, with robust provisions for impeachment if leaders failed to serve well—principles that influenced American constitutional design but were implemented without the Haudenosaunee’s emphasis on consensus decision-making and community welfare over individual accumulation. The Great Law’s symbol of five arrows bound together representing unity and strength of five nations appears adapted in the U.S. seal’s eagle clutching 13 arrows representing the original colonies, demonstrating direct symbolic borrowing. The Senate resolution thus serves multiple functions: it provides overdue acknowledgment of Indigenous contributions to American democracy during a period of growing Indigenous rights activism; it creates an official record challenging narratives that attribute democratic innovations solely to European Enlightenment thought; yet it also highlights the hypocrisy of celebrating Indigenous democratic influence while continuing to suppress Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination through ongoing policies that deny land rights, restrict religious freedom at sacred sites, and maintain federal control over tribal governance through the Bureau of Indian Affairs—revealing how symbolic recognition can coexist with institutional oppression in service of managing the contradiction between America’s democratic self-image and its history of Indigenous genocide and ongoing colonial policies.