The Great Peace... The Gathering of Good Minds, CD-ROM and Resource Guide by Raymond Skye (Tuscarora), Jeff Burnham (Oneida), Brenda Davis (Cayuga), and Sheila Staats (Mohawk). Brantford, Ontario, Working World, 1999.

The two-volume "Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas" prefaces its treatment of the subject with a defense that "this history of Native Americans has been written by Euro-Americans and Euro-Canadians." Despite a "growing number of Native Americans who are writing about their past," the reader is told, "the professional study of Native American history remains largely the domain of historians and anthropologists of European descent."

"Professional study" is a problematic phrase, because Native American authors have been telling their own story in English since at least the days of George Copway (who also could run 60 miles a day) roughly two centuries ago. What is one to make of such a statement poised against the literate lives of Arthur Parker, Luther Standing Bear, Gertrude Bonnin or Vine Deloria Jr.? In our time, the academic landscape teems with Native people who have the requisite degrees, academic positions and publication records to write excellent encyclopedia entries.

A look at a list of contributors to "The Great Peace... The Gathering of Good Minds," a new CD-ROM and resource guide prepared by Working World, of Brantford, Ontario, caused me to reflect on the racial assumptions that seem to have built the Cambridge history.

The contents of the CD-ROM and its resource guide also provoked reflection on another attempt by Haudenosaunee people to tell their own story to a diverse audience through the curriculum guide "Haudenosaunee: Past Present Future." Begun at the request of the New York State Department of Education about 10 years ago, drafts of this guide for public school education were severely criticized by some of the same academic gatekeepers who have trouble finding Native American, in this case Haudenosaunee, who tell their story the way the "professionals" think it should be done.

"The Great Peace" contributors' list will sound familiar to readers of the many drafts of the Haudenosaunee curriculum guide, which was shuffled through New York's education bureaucracy, cut by roughly half, and then, jettisoned, unpublished, to the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee. Contributors include many contemporary Haudenosaunee culture bearers, including Oren Lyons, Carol Cornelius, G. Peter Jemison, Audrey Shenandoah, Jake Thomas, Doug George-Kanentiio and Rick Hill.

Creators of the package, Raymond Skye (Tuscarora), Jeff Burnham (Oneida), Brenda Davis (Cayuga), and Sheila Staats (Mohawk), say the CD-ROM, which includes 2,600 screens of photographs, animation and text, will "serve to share a part of the history, culture, values and spirituality of Iroquois people from their perspective." The CD-ROM and its detailed resource guide are designed for school or home use on three levels: elementary, secondary and post-secondary.

The resource guide also contains a handy list of do's and don'ts for respecting Native cultures, which will be very helpful to some non-Indians. For example, the list, borrowed from the Haudenosaunee curriculums, urges readers not to refer to the first "Thanksgiving" at Plymouth Rock. Because Native peoples had observed such ceremonies long before the Pilgrims adopted some of them. Similarly, readers are asked not to call Native American creation stories "myths."

"The Great Peace" has been criticized by Toronto Star reporter Gerry Blackwell for a purported lack of technical sophistication and high price. Blackwell criticized as chaotic the organization of material that made sense to the CD-ROM's creators. Blackwell's review said little about the content of the CD-ROM, or the utility of people telling their own stories in what they regard as a proper historical and cultural context. Like the editors of the "Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas," Blackwell professes his inability to find a native telling that suits his technological and cultural tastes. His main complaint is that parts of the "Great Peace" lack animated bang for the buck. He complained that some of it reads like a book. "We are not Walt Disney," Raymond Skye told me in an e-mail message at the time the review was published.

While "The Great Peace" CD-ROM is certainly not Disney-most of the animation and sound is reserved for opening sequences and the sections aimed at children-it is a wonderful, necessary archive of knowledge from a Haudenosaunee point of view. The college-level material contains a number of insightful essays that reveal a unique collection of facts. For example, I found reflections I had not seen of a Russian academic, Alexander Vaschenko, on the debate regarding Iroquois roots of democracy. A number of essays by John C. Mohawk, which were entirely disregarded by the Toronto Star review, are especially good intellectual exercise. One may explore the origins of wampum, the Peacemaker's story, and many other subjects, including, profiles of each Iroquois nation's history and culture. Skye, who said the idea for the CD-ROM came to him in a dream, uses his talents as an artist as well as a photographer. The environmental bibliography at post-secondary level also is especially well done.

This collection could be used by schools and academic libraries across North America to provide a Haudenosaunee counterpart to the piles of books and academic articles that tell the story through the eyes of non-Indian so-called experts. The Haudenosaunee probably have been subjected to more anthropology per capita than any other people on earth during the last century and a half. The "Great Peace" CD-ROM is a valuable experiment because it adapts indigenous modes of expression to a new technology.

Bruce E. Johansen,
Professor of Communication and Native American Studies, University of Nebraska