TV Reviews : Moyers Explores Spirit of Indian Faith Keeper

In the broad range of Native American perspectives--from the corporate-style programs of Indian “progressives” to the militant politics of the American Indian Movement--Onondaga chief Oren Lyons stands in the peaceful middle ground of the sage.

But talking with Bill Moyers about his people’s spiritual beliefs and their influences on American life in “Moyers: Oren Lyons the Faithkeeper” (tonight at 9 p.m., KCET Channel 28; Tuesday at 10 p.m., KOCE Channel 50), Lyons is also a down-to-earth sage. This is a man perfectly suited to his role as a liaison between the Indian and non-Indian worlds.

Seated in his inviting cabin nestled in an Adirondack glen, Lyons takes Moyers and us through the tale of the founding of the Six Nations, or Iroquois Confederation, how this union not only established a democratic peace-keeping forum, but how it deeply influenced Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other framers of the Declaration of Independence. (Moyers and Lyons fail to mention it, but Jefferson’s Articles of Confederation were directly inspired by the Iroquois model.)

Moyers drinks up the tales and spiritual lessons, but persistently asks, regarding the post-Revolutionary era destruction of Native America, “What went wrong?” Lyons’ answers are both wise and troubling.

On one hand, the sadly fulfilled prophecies of environmental destruction confirm the soundness of preserving the cycles of life for “the seventh generation to come.”

On the other, Lyons critiques the United States’ separation of church and state as a severing of a spiritual basis for government. This ignores both the history of European church-state control from which many American colonists were escaping, and the deeply ingrained U.S. ecumenical tradition. It reveals a cultural impasse in a program otherwise redolent with inter-cultural understanding.