Happy New Year! And happy 100th to the Pencil Warrior. That many of his biweekly column have appeared since the October 19, 2004 edition. A lot of water’s flowed under the bridge in the four years since Bush’s disputed reelection that year; yet in his very first column Pencil Warrior gave notice he would be challenging the assumptions we who call ourselves Americans will need to reexamine if we expect to live in a more healthy and just world.

That first piece opened with the Warrior questioning why a serious public television interview with David Cobb, the Green party’s 2004 presidential candidate, should be a rare phenomenon, considered worthwhile only by a public broadcasting system drowned out by its corporate competitors. If we agree with the notion that democracy depends on widespread access to ideas that constantly evolve along with changing circumstances, why should we accept anything less?

When we started this joint enterprise, I thought the Pencil Warrior and I might be focusing our efforts on the disappearance of wild places and the degradation of familiar ones I’d witnessed with alarm through four decades of fishing, hunting, and just plain living. The fact that civilization needed to reverse the damage it was causing was a no-brainer, to me anyway. In our enlightened democracy, if enough people like me explained this, things would change for the better, right?

My own assumptions were showing, but through the Warrior’s mentorship I began to unravel the origins and dangers of such false assurances. He prodded me to dig a little deeper, beyond the sound bites and section D fillers, for clues that might help explain how our life ways became so dangerously out of balance. Much of what I found hidden there was disappointing, maddening - or downright frightening.

I had accepted the quote often attributed to my Dad’s ancestors, that “all things are connected,” in a biological and cultural sense, yet my investigations have imparted a broader and deeper understanding of the principle. Inquiries into how destructive, wasteful, and ultimately suicidal practices became the norm led me on a circular path through many disciplines: economics, history, psychology, communication, education, and sociology, to name a few. Among the great questions remaining to be answered are the origins and antidotes of antisocial behavior, including the greed that devastates our world today.

Always too, there is politics, which determines how these aspects of human activity will be expressed. The distribution and exercise of power in a society can be shared, yet this fact has been jealously suppressed throughout history in those societies where power is concentrated in the hands of a minority. This is the history of our own country, the Pencil Warrior reminds me, as he points to the scant level of awareness among Americans of the actual origins of their theoretical form of government.

Individual freedom and equality in a democratic society was first developed on this continent not by European colonists but by indigenous residents. Most conspicuously evident to Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, and their colleagues was the governmental structure of the united nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Male representatives to the grand governing council were chosen by respected women with the power of removal. Decisions were by consensus and a cultural premium was placed on listening skills and oratory, in that order.

While the history I grew up learning in mainstream public schools presents the “regrettable but necessary” (my quotes) destruction of Indian nations in the terminology of war, I’ve come to understand that just as pivotal was the undermining of their localized economies. Although the Iroquois had centuries of success holding off European armies, once they were convinced to upset the balance of their physical economy through fur trapping in exchange for goods and money, the handwriting was on the wall. In one fell swoop, a self-sufficient people began to lose their reciprocal relationship with the land while at the same time becoming dependent on unreliable external sources for the things they needed. Sound familiar?

This moment in history is remarkable in that nearly everyone on the planet understands, on one level or another, that familiar systems have broken down and fundamental change is underway. It will now be more crucial than ever that we tune out the propaganda urging us to maintain the status quo. We simply no longer have time to be distracted as we replace paradigms of waste and inequality with systems of real sustainability.

The Pencil Warrior’s ongoing mission is to provide his readers with truthful information and ideas they will rarely find in a commercial newspaper. Here’s to another hundred columns as we forge a brighter future together.

Dave Wheelock, davewheelock (all one word) @ yahoo.com, is a university coach and sports administrator. He is a member of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and holds a history degree from the University of New Mexico. Mr. Wheelock’s views do not necessarily reflect those of Socorro News, but frequently do.

Copyright 2009, Dave Wheelock; all rights reserved. This column originally appeared in The Mountain Mail and is reused with permission. It has been edited slightly for this site.