The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. Concern for the depredations of human rights by state power is no less evident in our time than in the eighteenth century. American Indians, some of the earliest exemplars of those rights, today often petition the United Nations for redress of abuses committed by the United States government, whose founding declarations often ring hollow in ears so long calloused by the thundering horsehooves of Manifest Destiny and its modern equivalents. One may ask what the United Nations' declarations of human rights owe to the Iroquois and other Indian nations. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Every person has a right to life, liberty and security of person.
Everyone has a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Everyone has the right of freedom of opinion and religion. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of governments . . . The thesis that American Indian thought played an important role in shaping the mind of European America, and of Europe itself, is bound to incite controversy, a healthy state of intellectual affairs at any time in history, our own included. Fortunately, there are fresh winds stirring.