The project is engage with representatives of the Onondaga Nation to propose a community building/space in their territory in Syracuse, NY. The community is planning to build a “senior center” and is in the process of defining its program and location. An important point of departure will be the long and rich cultural history of the Onöñda’gaga’, or Onondaga, The Hill Place People, and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. 

Starting from an altogether system of premises, we see fundamental differences between this system of thought and our western world set of paradigms. Concepts of ownership, what is private and public, how individuals relate to community, questions of gender, work, distribution of responsibilities, relationships of power, decision making, spatial construction, all of it is shaped and permeated by a specific set of values and epistemology.

 

In this system, or imaginary, as Charles Taylor calls it, man is understood as part of nature, not separated from it. The continuous, complex, and long-term cycles of the natural world permeate all aspects of this “circular culture”, imbedding it into a holistic system where cultural, social, and economic elements are interdependent and always in flux. “Compatible with this sense of flow is a consciousness of cycles: the year consists of seasons that are a repetition of the seasons of the previous year, and the ceremonies are the same as those of the year before and the year coming. They are re-enactments of earlier cycles and events.

 

In that sense, Haudenosaunee understanding of the nature of time is not the same as European or Euro-American perspectives, which explains time as a line rather than a cycle, and “progress” along that line as part of a deliberate path towards a utopian ideal. Haudenosaunee history for the past four centuries can be understood not only in geopolitical and economic terms, but also in terms of coping with the collisions between two very different views of humanity’s purpose in the world.”