Megan Kamerick with author Glenn Aparicio Parry and Oren Lyons, faith-keeper of the Turtle Clan,
Onondaga Council of Chiefs, with the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy

MK: Glenn, you open your book talking about this conversation you had on a train in 2016. There was a Bernie Sanders supporter, a Trump supporter and a Native American man from Oklahoma. That does sound like the opening of a joke, but somehow you all had a polite conversation even despite these huge political differences. How do you see us replicating what you experienced there through the theme of your book Original Politics?

GAP: I mean the closest thing you can do to it is to set up a formal dialogue and make sure that people understand that they need to listen for the purpose of understanding rather than just to ready their reply. We did it at the Seed Institute, bringing together indigenous elders and Western scientists, so it can be done.

MK: Oren, I know when you have people in traditional council or dialogues, there is a stick the speaker holds. That’s the person who is speaking and he is not interrupted, or she is not interrupted.

OL: Native protocol has always been respect. In our system when a person stands and speaks, everyone is silent. Nobody interrupts. Nobody counters anything until the person is through. It’s a protocol that early settlers learned from us. Their style of discussion is pretty ruckus. They yell at each other and you can’t hear.

GAP: There is a part in my book that I title a subheading “From ruckus to caucus.” The very word “caucus” is an Algonquin word. The settlers learned a lot of protocols from Native Americans at a famous gathering at Independence Hall that happened in 1774. Twenty-one Iroquois braves came, and they initiated rules changes so that you’re not supposed to interrupt a speaker on the Congressional floor. Back then it was the Continental Congress.

You also weren’t supposed to take notes or read something else while they were presenting. That’s the equivalent of somebody fiddling with their cellphone today. That’s why we have such a difference between the way American protocol is in the Congress and in our mother country, England where in the British Commons they jump and scream and dance and insult each other. You’re not supposed to do that.

You know I found out that most American ideals and values that we cherish so much were really founded on Native American values; liberty, justice, equality. Natural rights, what Thomas Paine called natural rights and often also called inalienable rights, these ideas came from Native America and the Founding Fathers took some of those ideas but obviously, they left out a lot.
They left out women and they left out people of color and they did not get that from Native thought because in Haudenosaunee societies, Oren can tell you, the Native women had a very integral role in the political process, nominating the male chief and having the right to remove him if he committed acts of malfeasance, inserting themselves in the process, calling a grand council.

All of these things were observed by Ben Franklin and other Founding Fathers. The first true founding document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, was really closely aligned on the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace and the Constitution also was aligned along that way.

I think the effect of Native America (this is really important) is still here but also that shadow is still here. When you have a person like our current President who becomes a catalyst for the revealing of the American shadow, all this stuff comes out of the closet and that’s both a danger and an opportunity.

I told the story in Original Politics which is a White Mountain Apache story and it goes like this. An old woman is weaving a beautiful rug and as she nears completion of the rug and gets up to stir the soup, her black dog who has been sleeping in the corner awakens and pulls on a thread with its mouth and unravels the whole rug. The woman returns. She is unphased. She looks at the rug. There was beauty and harmony before, now there is chaos and disorder, but she doesn’t get mad at the dog. She just picks up a thread, stares at the rug and reimagines an even more beautiful way to reweave the rug in harmony.

That to me is kind of where we are today. We have an opportunity to see America as it really is an hopefully, we can make some substantive changes and hopefully we can look at our history in a truthful way.

OL: This is what you don’t know or what you’re not told in your own history. It’s like a bad bet. You borrow $10 and you don’t pay it back and you don’t pay it back and finally, you shun the person that lent you the money in the first place, it becomes a bad debt and you make that person a bad person rather than paying the debt back. It’s the same thing.

This nation here was a great deal to the Confederation. Our system was old before it got here and it’s based on three principles. The first principle is peace. The second principle is equity and fairness. The third principle is for as long as the sun shines, the water flows and the grass grows green. How long is that? That’s right up to today.

MK: If we knew more of this history –

OL: Why don’t you know that? That’s the question you should ask.

MK: Why don’t we know that and what would be different if we learned this?

GAP: Everything would be different and we did know it at first when the Continental Congress was first formed, they did the credit to Chief Canasatego. They did say his words were wise to unite as a Confederacy. There was acknowledgment and for the first 50 years of this nation, all the world understood that the United States was a hybrid of European values and Native American values. That’s why the world was so fascinated with the United States in those early years.

Everything that Oren has been speaking about is embedded in the founding of this nation. A lot of it becomes forgotten in the 19th century and Andrew Jackson starts the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and he rounds up the Creek and the Seminole, which were in Florida, but it wasn’t even Florida then, it belonged to Spain. He starts an illegal war there. He was never prosecuted for it.

Then he gets the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and lastly the Cherokee in the horrible Train of Tears and marches them 1,200 miles out to Oklahoma. At that time, that’s when genocide kicked into full gear. That’s when the true history of this nation started to be submerged in the shadows. That’s when people forgot about their true roots. Participatory democracy was not invented by European men in powdered wigs!

OL: When the Continental Congress said to us that they were going to follow our example, they said, “You have advised us to make a union like yours. We are now going to take your advice and we’re going to make a union like yours.” That was in 1775.

Of course the response from one of our chiefs and the women, all of those leaders, their names became an office and when they died, the women owned that title and it was the women’s responsibility to choose the leaders and she holds that title, the clan mother. She can remove you for malfeasants. She makes the choice, but it has to be ratified by consensus, not by vote.
When your system went to a vote, our leader said, “You’re going to have trouble because you’re just going by a little more than a half agreement. If you have almost half that don’t agree, you’re going to have trouble.”

That’s where you are right now, and they told them that would happen. Of course, where are the women? How can you have a union without 50% of your population, especially your mother? How in the world are you going to have equity and how are you going to have liberty and how are you going to have democracy if you’re holding 50% of the population down. You know how hard they had to fight to get the vote. It came out of Central New York and that Central New York vote was influenced by our women talking to your women. That’s where that fight came from, right here. Our women said, “You guys have got to speak up.”

MK: We can’t return to a pre-contact world obviously, so how do we incorporate these ideas into our society now that seems much bigger and more complicated?

GAP: That’s true that we can’t return to that way, but we can return to some of the fundamental tools. We can put them in place and one of them is dialogue, listening for the purpose of understanding.

I’ll give you an example. It still can work! Susan Collins in 2018 when there was a government shutdown around Christmas, she actually used the talking staff in her offices. One Congressman, even though they were told not to interrupt each other, interrupted and then the first one was angry, so he threw the talking staff at the one that interrupted him and it broke a glass elephant on Susan Collin’s shelves. Susan Collins had a good sense of humor. She switched to a rubber ball and that dialogue actually did break the impasse and we got through that and came to an understanding. That way we can find some commonality.

OL: The principle of peace is not pre-contact. That’s today, right now, equity. That’s not pre-contact. All the things you’re talking about, you’re talking about a system basically, our system, that it is based on; peace and equity. Those are constants. There is nothing old about them at all and if you don’t have those, you’re going to suffer the consequences.

When the leadership of the Haudenosaunee you’re instructed to now look after all life. You accept responsibility to protect all life and all life is not just human beings. There’s animals and trees. Leadership of the Haudenosaunee is based on the protection of all life. It supersedes your responsibility to your own family or even your generation. Seven generations give you responsibility to the future. If you provide for that seventh generation, you yourself will have peace.

GAP: That’s what I see as something we need to learn from Native America. Our politics has to really think of the natural world. Look what has happened when we haven’t thought that way. Everybody is interrelated and if we don’t realize that, we’re going to kill ourselves off.

Megan Kamerick talks with Reckonings podcast producer/host Stephanie Lepp about her interviews Susan Pavlak,
a clergy sex abuse survivor, and Gil Gustafson, a former priest and perpetrator convicted of sex abuse.

Susan Pavlak: I remember walking out and going through the parking lot and getting in the car and her saying to me, “Are we friends?” I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Can friends do anything with friends?” I said, “Well, I guess. I think so.” She laid down on top of me and kissed me.

Subsequent to that, drove me to her home. I said, “I can’t stay overnight. My folks won’t let me stay overnight.” She said, “I’ll tell them it’s okay.”

MK: I was struck by Susan’s story because it’s a powerful evocation of how an abuser selects and cultivates a victim and in this case, it’s doubly confusing for her because her abuser was a teacher and a woman who uses the trust Susan’s parents would have in a female teacher to abuse her.

SL: That’s why she felt so trapped because this was a person of trust, a former nun, a teacher who had a relationship with her parents, someone she looked up to. She felt like it must have somehow been her fault because this was a person of faith and person who has a relationship with her parents.

It was many, many years later that a counselor proposed to her the possibility that she might have been abused. That was not even an idea in her mind.

MK: You structured this episode of Reckonings podcast in a really interesting way. The stories parallel each other. Then we hear how Gil evolves from a very busy parish priest to a perpetrator when he first fondled a 13-year-old boy.

Gil Gustafson: The fact that he didn’t seem to respond negatively said to me that he must be okay with it. I knew it was wrong to do that. I was taking advantage. This kid had served mass. It was pretty clear that he liked me, looked up to me and there was a certain sense of danger too. What if he reacts negatively? What if he tells one of the adults? Oh my god, then what? I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be doing this.

When I got home that night, it was like oh my god, what have I done? This is awful.

MK: Why did you want to include Gil in this? How did you decide? This is very difficult stuff for people to hear, but he’s so brutally honest about it.

SL: Yes, he was so brutally honest. He also confessed, which is rare. I wanted to include him because I want to show what it might look like, what it can look like for a priest who is committing clergy sex abuse to come forward to confess, to face consequences (he went to jail). To not just face consequences but really embrace the consequences as part of what he needed in order to heal.

Then to go on and work as an activist to address clergy sex abuse. I think his story is really important. It complicates things, but what can it look like? This might sound like a blasphemous question, but under what circumstances can an ex-perpetrator become an ally or an advocate? That’s what I want to show here. We don’t have to choose between consequences and compassion or consequences and becoming an advocate or an ally. I want to show an example of what that might look like.

MK: Susan tries to run away. She even cuts her wrists as a way to try to escape the situation, but she never told anyone. She speaks very powerfully of the impact this had on her.

Susan Pavlak: I had no joy. I had no energy. I had difficulty sleeping. I had intrusive thoughts. I was having a hard time getting up and going to class. I couldn’t put it together. I couldn’t make it work.

MK: How long did the abuse go on?

SL: When she did really try to slit her wrists and when she was at her teacher’s house and her teacher found her and bandaged her up, took her home in the morning, her parents then checked her into a hospital where she was at for months.

By the time she came back to high school, the teacher was gone, but her teacher continued to find her actually and continued abusing her. Again, Susan didn’t really understand that what was going on was abuse. It actually continued for another four years after high school.

Then, at a certain point, she got a phone call from the teacher asking to see her. For whatever reason, Susan at that moment knew how to say no and just said, “no” and hung up the phone. That is when the abuse stopped.

It was after that point that she spoke with a counselor in rehab and it was her counselor who introduced her to the possibility that she had been abused.

MK: In Gil’s case, his primary victim actually tells church authorities. He also contemplates suicide, but he doesn’t. He faces an identity crisis.

Gil Gustafson: I don’t want to keep running away from this. It’s time to turn and face what I have done no matter what the consequences are.

MK: He abused four boys. He was sentenced to prison and then probation when he came out. What I thought was interesting was that as part of this rehabilitation, he actually begins reading accounts of various victims to understand what impact he had.
SL: Yes, and actually also friends of his who had been abused by clergy (this is wild to me) reached out to him to try to understand why someone would do something like that. He was very much getting in touch with, not his own survivors’ experience because he wasn’t able to. Because of the terms of the probation, he was not able to have contact with them. He was very much getting in touch with the experience of clergy sex abuse survivors more generally.

MK: Susan also begins exploring the idea of restorative justice.

Susan Pavlak: There has to be redemption after horror. There has to be a way to repair. Restorative justice is everywhere in the Christian and Hebrew tradition as well.

MK: How does that help her heal?

SL: It’s interesting that had helped her heal because it was actually a failed attempt at restorative justice. Finally, when she understood that it was sexual abuse much later in her life, she took her case to the Vicar General who is second in command of the bishop because her abuser had been a nun.

The Vicar General asked her if she wanted to meet with her abuser and that he would facilitate a meeting between them, somewhat of a possibly restorative justice encounter between them.

Susan said yes and so the person in authority brought them together and her abuser really never took responsibility. She said, “I’m sorry that this happened to you.” Then Susan said, “I thought it was an odd way to put it because she wasn’t taking any responsibility. She had no sorrow that I know of.”

Susan, understanding that forgiveness is about her and forgiveness is what she needed in order to be free, forgave her abuser anyway. Her abuser never even looked up. That could be construed as a failed attempt at restorative justice in the sense that the perpetrator did not work to repair the harm that she had done, but for Susan, she still used it as an opportunity to forgive and to free herself, which is really instructive; the ability to take ones healing into ones own hands in that way is really impressive. Not to say that everyone can do it, but it’s really something to marvel at I would say.

Susan Pavlak: I would rather be free. I would rather not drag those chains behind me anymore. Forgiveness is about me, it’s not about her. Forgiveness is about my choices. I have forgiven and forgiven and forgiven that same person many times.

Casting her out or anyone out of community is like taking away their opportunity to get better. It’s important to me that we all have the opportunity to get better. There has to be a road back from even that kind of terrible behavior. There has to be light for them to come back towards or why come back? Why change?

MK: What happens to Gil after he serves his sentence?

SL: Gil, after he serves his time, he goes into therapy. He starts really digging into accounts of victims of sexual abuse to learn about the kind of impact he had on his own victims. He starts getting into the clergy sex abuse advocacy space.

The big moment for him is he is invited to speak at a conference on clergy sex abuse and it turned out that he was speaking right after a victim. Gil was thinking, oh man, now I have to get up and I’m the person who did these kinds of things? But he gets up and his basic message is the consequences were painful, but every single one of them had a gift.

Gil Gustafson: I misused my position of power to get my needs met. I must accept responsibility. Once we do that, once we accept our own personal responsibility, you can say, okay, now I’ve got to change. Holding people responsible and beginning to understand what it is that got them there the way they are, that’s the place of change.

Don’t spare your offenders their consequences. Don’t spare the consequences. You’re doing your offender no favors. The consequences can be the path to heal and become whole.

SL: After he had spoken, the victim who spoke before him actually asked if they could hug. They ended up having a hug that was very healing for both of them. That really set Gil on a path that ended up connecting him with Susan, really getting into this space and ultimately into restorative justice for clergy sex abuse.

Susan and Gil have come together to create “Uncommon Conversations” which is a facilitated process to bring, instead of restorative justice to individual perpetrators and survivors, bringing restorative justice to groups in the church. People in the pulpit also need healing. Everyone is going through this together.

They’ve developed a format that they can do with parishes or groups of people who are trying to work through clergy sex abuse in their community. There is no shortage of opportunities for them to offer this service.

It’s been hard for them because of the understandable stigma with perpetrators. Even though Susan is working side by side with him, some then see her negatively because she’s willing to collaborate with him, but that’s the nature of the work; coming together and perpetrators confronting and seeing clearly what they have done and then really trying to move forward together in a way that achieves healing and justice.