# Great Law of Peace

> the constitutional and diplomatic tradition of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:indigenous-decolonial:great-law-of-peace` |
| Family | Indigenous Governance & Decolonial Change |
| Domain | Rights |
| Kind | movement |
| Archetypal function | The Prior Relation |
| Epistemic status | sourced_claim; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Great Law of Peace belongs to the **Indigenous Governance & Decolonial Change** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

The Great Law orders relations among nations, councils, clans, leadership roles, condolence, and peace through an Indigenous legal-political tradition that is not reducible to a Western text constitution.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Great Law of Peace, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Prior Relation.** the constitutional and diplomatic tradition of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

## Gift

Unity without erasing constituent nations.

## Wound / Shadow

Outsiders extract a simplified governance lesson from a living sacred-political tradition.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Great Law of Peace to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Prior Relation enters through Great Law of Peace. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What must remain in relationship rather than be converted into a portable technique?

## Game function

**leverage.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Great Law of Peace; another player names a countermove. Initiative 1.

## Relationships

- **institutionalizes — Haudenosaunee Confederacy:** Haudenosaunee Confederacy institutionalizes Great Law of Peace by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **counteracts — Clan Mother:** Great Law of Peace counteracts Clan Mother by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **translates into — Sectoral Bargaining:** Great Law of Peace translates into Sectoral Bargaining by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **legitimizes — Loyalty Test:** Loyalty Test legitimizes Great Law of Peace by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Great Law of Peace from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Great Law of Peace is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: cultural_historical, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
Sentinel factors: Indigenous authority; cultural specificity. These are descriptive handoff annotations, not a verdict and not a mutation of Engine Output.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Great Law of Peace: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [The Haudenosaunee Confederacy](https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/) — Haudenosaunee Confederacy, ongoing. Contemporary self-description of governance, nations, and the Great Law of Peace.
- [S. Con. Res. 76](https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/76) — U.S. Senate, 1988. Congressional acknowledgment of Haudenosaunee influence claims; not resolution of scholarly debate.
- [UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples](https://www.ohchr.org/en/indigenous-peoples/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples) — United Nations, 2007. International declaration concerning self-determination, culture, land, and participation.

---

Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
