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In autumn 1977, delegates from the Haudenosaunee, Native Americans also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, traveled to a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland. They had a warning and a prophecy to share, presenting it alongside a description of their core values and view of the world. Their “Basic Call to Consciousness,” as it is known, contained the following paragraph:

The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives — the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end.

The Haudenosaunee regard gratitude as essential to survival. From the perspective of Western individualism, that view might seem hard to grasp. In the Business as Usual story, self-made success is among the most highly prized of victories. If we can stand on our own two feet, why give thanks to the beans and the corn? Yet the notion that we can be completely independent or self-made denies the reality of our reliance on other people and on our natural world.

The Haudenosaunee see humans as interconnected parts of a larger web of life, where each being is uniquely valuable. Crops, trees, rivers, and the sun are respected and thanked as fellow beings in a larger community of mutual aid. If you have this view of life, you don’t tear down the forests or pollute the rivers. Instead, as their “Basic Call to Consciousness” describes, you accept other life-forms as part of your extended family. “We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the wellbeing of the Vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the fourlegged beings.”¹⁷

The Haudenosaunee’s expressions of thanksgiving are “the words that come before all else” and precede every council meeting. Instead of being reserved for a special day each year, thanksgiving becomes a way of life.