"This is a replica of the Two Row Wampum, the basis of our sovereignty. It's the Grandfather of all the treaties between our two peoples. We made it with the Dutch in the early 1600s. The two rows of purple beads represent the Red Man and the White Man living side by side in peace and friendship forever. The white background is a river. On that river of life you travel in your boat and we travel in our canoe. Each of us is responsible for our own government and religion and way of life. We don't interfere with each other. The rows are parallel. One row is not bigger. We're equal. We don't call each other 'Father' or Son', we call each other 'Brother'. That's the way it's supposed to be between us."

Todadaho Chief Leon Shenandoah Haudenosaunee

Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy

Address to the United Nations General Assembly

October 25, 1985

KIDS FROM KANATA has developed a special new version of the school program in celebration of the millennium. The project has borrowed the symbol of the Two Row Wampum (Kaswentha), a treaty recorded in the form of a Wampum Belt, between the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Dutch, and later applied to all European people. It reflects the goal of a healthy and respectful relationship between Native and non-Native cultures.