Law, Principle, and Reality

Introduction

Hello. I really feel better when I hear the women speak because they hold life. I know how much they mean to us and to our process of governance and how much we depend on them. When you have women like we have, things always look a little better, a little brighter. There is that fundamental respect for one another that we have within the Indian nations, for the partnership of man and woman. We understand what they have to do to continue, create, and protect life, and we understand that this is really a spiritual partnership. We have had good luck. We have had good luck because in our part of the country we have the Great Law, we have our instructions, and we are still able to define and follow them.

We are in a lot of crises at this point. I found it very difficult to sit and listen this afternoon to our spiritual rights and our most precious rights of religion and ways of life discussed and questioned and come to conclusions on. It is very hard to be unemotional about things like that when somebody is telling us that “This is what Justice Scalia said,” and “This is what Justice O’Connor said,” and “This is what other people have said.”

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