This article was originally published on July 4, 2021.
The United States of America traces its political roots to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but by then, democracy was old news in the so-called “New World.” During the American Revolution, thousands of Native Americans already lived under a system of governance that embodied many of the same ideals espoused in Philadelphia at the time.
As the founding fathers began crafting a more perfect union from scratch, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of what is now upstate New York carried on with the one it had been perfecting for centuries, grounded in an oral constitution known as the Great Law of Peace. Dating to perhaps as early as 1142, this charter is based on notions of unity, liberty and equality. It even provides for the separation of powers and outlines impeachment procedures. Is it a coincidence that American democracy emerged in a land so long imbued with such principles?
