Concept

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

Also known as: Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, Words That Come Before All Else, Haudenosaunee Words of Thanksgiving

A traditional spoken address of the **Haudenosaunee** (Six Nations / Iroquois Confederacy: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora) — recited at the opening of any significant gathering, ceremony, school day, or council. Names, in order, the various beings and powers that sustain life — the people, the Mother Earth, the waters, the fish, the plants, the food plants, the medicine herbs, the animals, the trees, the birds, the four winds, the Thunder Beings, the Sun, Grandmother Moon, the stars, the Enlightened Teachers, the Creator — and gives thanks to each, building a remembering of the world's structure that the Haudenosaunee tradition holds as the proper way to begin any consequential work. Each section ends with a phrase translated as *Now our minds are one* (*Eñ:nee neh wa-té-keñh-yaht-rí-yostaht* in Mohawk, or some variation) — affirming that the gathered have arrived at common attention together. The address is typically delivered by a designated speaker; it can be brief (perhaps fifteen minutes) or expanded over substantial time.

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address — Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen in Mohawk, the words that come before all else — is a traditional spoken address recited at the opening of any significant gathering, ceremony, school day, or council across the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The form predates European contact; it has been continuously practiced for many centuries; it is recited daily in Haudenosaunee schools and at every significant gathering of the confederacy and its constituent nations.

Structure

The address moves through the world in a loosely fixed order, naming each being or power, giving thanks for what they offer, and concluding each section with the phrase the standard English translation renders Now our minds are one. The order varies somewhat by speaker and occasion but conventionally proceeds:

The People — gathered here, alive, related.
[[mother-earth|Mother Earth]] — who supports our feet and from whom all comes.
The Waters — quenching our thirst, sustaining all life.
The Fish — who give themselves to us in the waters.
The Plants — that grow on the earth.
The Food Plants — [[three-sisters|the Three Sisters]] (corn, beans, squash) above all, also the fruits and the rest.
The Medicine Herbs — that sustain healing.
The Animals — who walk the earth.
The Trees — who shelter and sustain.
The Birds — who carry the sky.
The Four Winds — bringing weather, change.
The Thunder Beings — Hethushruh, the grandfathers who carry the rains.
[[sun|The Sun]] — Eldest Brother, who lights the day.
Grandmother Moon — who lights the night and orders the women’s cycles.
The Stars — that scatter dew at night.
The Enlightened Teachers — those who have come carrying instruction.
The Creator (the Great Spirit) — the source of all gifts.

After each, the formula: And so it is that our minds are one. The recitation gathers, gradually, a remembering of the world’s structure into the assembled attention. By the close, the gathered have, in some literal sense, come to one mind on the substrate beneath whatever business they have come to conduct.

What the address actually does

The address is not a ritual flourish prefixing real business. It is itself the foundation of the business that follows. Several practical effects:

It situates the gathering inside the world. Whatever business is to be done, it is to be done by people who have just remembered, together, that they live by the gifts of waters, plants, animals, weather, and the Creator. The remembering shapes how the business is conducted.
It reorders attention. A gathered group whose attention has just moved through the structured remembering is in a different state than one that began with an agenda. The agenda follows; the orientation precedes.
It builds and rebuilds the consensus the confederacy depends on. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is ordered around consensus, not majority rule; its functioning depends on the gathered actually arriving at one mind. The address is one of the practical mechanisms through which that arrival happens.
It transmits the cosmology. Children who hear the address daily for years grow up with a structured cosmology — what is, what we owe to it — as the substrate of their thinking.

In contemporary use

The Thanksgiving Address is recited regularly in Haudenosaunee schools (notably the Akwesasne Freedom School and the Onondaga Nation School), at Confederacy councils, at major Haudenosaunee gatherings, at significant non-Haudenosaunee events when invited. The Akwesasne Notes publication produced an English version (1993) widely circulated to non-Haudenosaunee audiences, with the explicit understanding that the English version is a translation that allows others to learn from the structure while not substituting for the ceremonial recitation in Haudenosaunee languages.

[[robin-wall-kimmerer|Robin Wall Kimmerer]]‘s Braiding Sweetgrass devotes a chapter (Allegiance to Gratitude) to the address, contrasting it with the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and exploring what a society shaped by such a daily practice would feel like. The chapter has introduced the address to many non-indigenous readers.

Honest about engagement

A note for clarity. The Thanksgiving Address is the property of the Haudenosaunee. The English version exists with the explicit permission of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and is offered for educational purposes, but the recitation itself is a ceremonial act that belongs to the tradition that produced it. Non-Haudenosaunee readers can — and [[0mn1one|the platform]] recommends should — read the address, learn from its structure, and shape their own practices of gratitude in response. Reciting the Haudenosaunee version as one’s own ceremony is not appropriate.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

A structured practice of gratitude. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s commitment to abundance for every form of life is incomplete without the actual practice of remembering the gifts. The Thanksgiving Address shows what such a practice looks like worked out across centuries.
A model for shared opening. Any organization, gathering, or community that wants to begin its work from common attention rather than from the agenda alone has something to learn from how the address works.
An ongoing teaching from a continuing tradition. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is one of the oldest continuously-functioning democratic-confederate governments in human history. Its political and spiritual practice is alive; its example is available; [[0mn1one|the platform]] takes it seriously.

Sources

Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World. Mohawk version with English translation. Akwesasne Notes, 1993 (multiple subsequent editions; widely available as an educational text). Source class: primary text.
[[robin-wall-kimmerer|Robin Wall Kimmerer]]. [[braiding-sweetgrass|Braiding Sweetgrass]]. Milkweed, 2013. (Chapter: Allegiance to Gratitude.) Source class: book / contemporary engagement.
Tom Porter (Sakokwenionkwas). And Grandma Said… Iroquois Teachings: As Passed Down Through the Oral Tradition. Xlibris, 2008. Source class: book / Mohawk elder’s teachings.
Akwesasne Cultural Restoration Program. Words That Come Before All Else: Environmental Philosophies of the Haudenosaunee. Six Nations Indian Museum, 2005. Source class: book / Haudenosaunee-produced engagement.

Lenses still to grow

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy itself — its founding, its constitution (the Great Law of Peace), its continuing political life.
[[three-sisters|The Three Sisters]] as living agriculture — already covered briefly in [[three-sisters]] but the Haudenosaunee context deserves more.
The Akwesasne Freedom School as a contemporary educational institution structured around the address.
Gratitude as practice more generally — the cross-cultural literature on structured gratitude.
The Pledge of Allegiance contrast [[robin-wall-kimmerer|Kimmerer]] develops in [[braiding-sweetgrass|Braiding Sweetgrass]].

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Spiritual

parallels

Oren Lyons as Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Lyons is among the principal living teachers of the Haudenosaunee tradition the address belongs to; his global teaching draws continuously on it

1 inbound link · 3 outbound