Raised by my mother on a steady diet of Black Panther quotes, co-op groceries, and community participation, I’ve spent most of my life seeking narratives that weave us into a greater whole. Whether looking at how race has shaped my relationship to the country, how nature shapes our relationship to each other, or even how technology can deepen our relationship with our own humanity, all my searching has been for a new, shared story.

The deepest exploration of this new story has been with my wife Elizabeth Stewart through our podcast How to Citizen, on which we reimagined “citizen” as a verb and democracy as something that we do, not just have. But even as we sought to expand the story of American democracy itself, we had missed its Indigenous roots.

That changed with an invitation we received in 2024 to join a small group with Indigenous elders from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (referred to as Iroquois by the French and Five (later Six) Nations by the English).

When Europeans arrived on this land, they found more than peanuts, potatoes, and pumpkins. They encountered a confederacy of sovereign Indigenous nations, bound together by a constant effort to live in peace, freedom, and reciprocity under the Kaianere’kó:wa (the Great Law of Peace)—a living system in which “law” and “peace” are one and the same. This democratic form of governance was a deeply embedded expression of interdependence in action and a prime example of Indigenous American democracy that united the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for hundreds of years before colonization—and which endures to this day, alongside and outside U.S. law.

At the core of the Confederacy is an understanding of the self-evident truth of our Interdependence with each other and the natural world. This web of life informs their democratic principles: Women share equal power in governance; humans live in reciprocity with the natural world; every decision considers seven generations ahead; peace is the highest calling of government; and law is rooted in the sacred and aligned with life.

Our first experience with the elders began on a snowy hillside in Malone, New York, near Akwesasne, the Mohawk Nation territory that spans northern New York and Canada. The road to that interdependence-themed gathering had been tended by Oglala Lakota wisdom-keeper Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook, a descendant of Afraid of Bear and George Sword, leaders within the Oglala Lakota Shirtwearer tradition. Afraid of Bear Cook, who came to Akwesasne through her marriage to Mohawk leader Tom Cook, had received spiritual instruction from her ancestors to share much of their ways and wisdom with “All Nations” and all four colors of the medicine wheel. The medicine wheel represents the interconnectedness of life, and its colors—black, red, yellow, and white—symbolize the four directions, four seasons, and all four races or nations of humanity.

Along her journey, she made deep relations with Amelia Rose Barlow. Barlow—daughter of John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist, Electronic Frontier Foundation cofounder, and author of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace—has dedicated her life to, as she puts it, “unspelling the code of separation and domination, in service of life.” She had been walking her own path of repair between her colonial lineage and Indigenous wisdom-keepers like Afraid of Bear Cook, anchoring her work in natural law and sacred relationship.

It was through Barlow and Afraid of Bear Cook’s 15-year relational foundation that our small group—white, Black, and Asian, aged 27 to 46—came to Akwesasne. Most of us didn’t know each other, but we’d all heard the same quiet call to live in deeper relationship with ourselves, our communities, and the Earth. We were all drawn to the principle of interdependence from our work in movements of bioregional finance, civic media, Rights of Nature, social work, climate justice, anti-racism, art, and more.

We stood outside in a curved line facing a fire, backs to the Adirondacks, eyes to the north. Afraid of Bear Cook’s nephew, a Mohawk man named Anontaks Barreiro, stepped forward to greet us. He identified his people as the people of the nation of the flint, keepers of the Eastern door of their Confederacy. He described their role as welcoming diplomats, travelers, and weary friends, ensuring that all who entered did so in peace and could join the circle under the great Pine Tree of Peace. “Do you come as friend or foe?” he asked. “Friend,” we answered. “Why have you come?” Barlow replied, “We come in peace to learn Interdependence.”

He nodded. “Good way,” he said, and left to consult his elders. A few minutes later, he returned. “I’ve spoken to my grandmothers and grandfathers. It warms their hearts to hear your good message. You are welcomed to our territory. Please, come in.”

Before any talk of ideas or history, we had been ritually received and were then welcomed with a ceremony. Elder Chief Beverly Cook, the longest serving elected chief in Akwesasne, and her siblings in blood and in law, wiped our eyes with soft white deer hide, so we could see clearly. They brushed our ears with eagle feathers, so we could hear one another. They gave us water, so we could speak our truths with clarity and warmth. And we were told to place our tears, held in white cloth, into the fire. This is called “the Condolence Ceremony.”

The ceremony prepared us to enter a deeper understanding of “relations”—with one another, with the elders, and with the land. For one week, we sat in a circle, sharing stories and building trust. The elders shared histories that were new to many of us, yet older than any founding myth we’d been taught.

One line was spoken again and again, echoing across time and territory, history and ceremony: “We welcomed them.”

Centuries ago, on lands not far from where we gathered, representatives of the newly arrived British colonists stood in similar formation and were welcomed in similar ceremonies. The Haudenosaunee met the Europeans with diplomacy, engaged in trade, forged political and military alliances, and offered guidance, repeatedly urging them to live in better relation with each other and with the land.

Onondaga Chief Canassatego addressed an intercolonial gathering in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, encouraging them to learn from the Haudenosaunee model: “Our wise forefathers established union and amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable … Do the same. Never fall out with one another.” He said this on July 4, 1744.

Benjamin Franklin paid attention. He printed Canassatego’s speech and shipped hundreds of copies to London. As Pennsylvania’s Indian commissioner, he sat in council with Haudenosaunee leaders and witnessed their governance firsthand. In 1750, he wrote, “It would be a very strange thing, if six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union … and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies.”

Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union was in part modeled on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Though it failed at the time, it seeded ideas that re-emerged in the Articles of Confederation and later in the U.S. Constitution.

Many of the symbols we now consider distinctly American have or share Indigenous roots. The bundle of 13 arrows held by the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States is described in Haudenosaunee narratives of the Peacemaker and the Great Law of Peace. The eagle sits atop a great Tree of Peace, ever watchful for threats. The original bundle represented the nations of the Confederacy. The image of “America” itself—often depicted as a Mohawk man, representing freedom and separateness from Europe—was widely used in revolutionary iconography. The very word “American” was originally synonymous with “Indian” before the Revolution, as scholar Dr. Robert Venables notes in his essay in the book Indian Roots of American Democracy. Even the phrase “We the People” was shaped in part by Indigenous understandings of governance as emerging from the whole—not from a monarch or a god.

As Cadwallader Colden put it in his 1727 book, The History of the Five Indian Nations, the Haudenosaunee were “living images” of humanity’s original condition—offering, he believed, a truer glimpse into natural government than anything found in Europe’s monarchies or imagined by its scholars.

The Haudenosaunee strove to model democracy in action—sovereignty paired with interdependence, law aligned with life. Some of it—unity, federalism, even impeachment—can be found in the U.S. system. But much of it was intentionally abandoned by the founders to make way for independence.

The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, Kaianere’kó:wa, is human law based on natural law. It is an understanding that the world is alive and that we live among beings, not things. That it is reciprocity, not domination, that holds a society together. And that consciousness—active, lived awareness—must guide our choices.

With us at our gathering in Akwesasne was José Barreiro (Hatueyael), a Guajiro-Taíno, from Cuban families. While not Haudenosaunee by birth, the Taíno Nation elder has lived in deep relationship with the Confederacy through marriage and kinship. He married Katsi Cook, a formidable Mohawk leader and revered midwife. He co-edited the influential Native American journal, Akwesasne Notes, with prominent Seneca scholar John Mohawk. And he’s been a trusted collaborator with Onondaga Faithkeeper Chief Oren Lyons, whose life’s work has been to spread Haudenosaunee principles throughout the world.

In Indian Roots of American Democracy, Barreiro wrote, “The Great Law of Peace is one of the fundamental messages of humankind.” But in our time together, Barreiro, who holds an irreplaceable understanding of Indigeneity from his decades of scholarship, journalism, activism, and spiritual practice across the Americas, cautioned us not to idealize. “There are no perfect peoples,” he said. “No one is.” Then he added, “We are imperfect people…with superlative principles.”

In Geneva in 1977, at the first United Nations conference focused on Indigenous issues, Chief Lyons highlighted many of these principles in his opening oration, “Where Is the Eagle Seat?” Asked to speak on behalf of the human rights of Indigenous peoples, he began, “Our nations who have principles of justice and equality, who have respect for the natural world, on behalf of our mother the Earth and all the great elements we come here and we say they too have rights … I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation.” 

The Haudenosaunee provide a powerful and relevant example for the United States, but interdependence is not just an Indigenous principle—it is the law of nature, exhibited by all living systems, and it reflects the fact that relationships, not isolation, are core to sustaining life. In this age of cascading crises, as we revisit the more complete founding narrative of our nation, living in the truth of our interdependence may be the most important choice we can make.

I think Afraid of Bear Cook and my mother would have gotten along. She also had an assignment for us younger people that she repeated often: Learn to get along, and have the courage to stand up for yourself. This is essentially interdependence and sovereignty in action—they mutually generate and define each other. E Pluribus Unum and Ex Uno Plures.

Interdependence is a reorientation: from relationships built on hierarchy and transaction to ones rooted in reciprocity; from governance that concentrates power in the hands of the few to governance that liberates the many; from seeing the Earth as a collection of resources to honoring it as a community of relations; from the pursuit of greed to the practice of peace. 

To shift our systems, we must shift our story. Fortunately, 2026 represents a season rich with narrative possibility. With our shared attention focused on remembering the founding events of 1776, let’s seize this current moment as a refounding one, with principles of interdependence intact and central. As we’ve learned from the restoration of devastated ecosystems like the Klamath River, when done the right way, those systems come back better than ever, faster than expected. I believe the same can be true for our democracy.

It is hard to let go of the myth of separation, dominance, and individualistic independence given the culture in which most of us have been raised. As our own small circle of relations initiated in Akwesasne can attest, practicing the dance of interdependence and sovereignty isn’t easy for us imperfect people, even when committed to superlative principles. But we keep at it in dialogue with the elder leaders who welcomed us in.  

It’s time to recognize that democracy in its highest form was not imported from Europe—it was native to this land, rooted in peace, equality, ecological stewardship, and balance, and it was willingly shared. This is not a call to replace the founding story. It is a call to expand it—a unifying vision that makes room for all the excluded to belong to the authentic story of this nation and to the story of life. And this time around, we can grow from We the People, to We the Living.

Visit ProjectInterdependence.us to learn more about the broad coalition we’re building—we’d love to hear from you.