Roots of Democracy Discussion Guide
Presentation Transcripts
- Turtle Island Confederacies: Relationships and Balance
- Founding Narratives: The Evolution of Ancient Athenian and Early American Democracy
- Post-Contact Indigenous Governance
- Balancing Individual Interests and the Common Good
Additional resources for Turtle Island Confederacies: Relationships & Balance and Post-Contact Indigenous Governance (click here to download as a PDF)
Online
- Anishinabek Nation. https://www.anishinabek.ca/education-resources/
- Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. Three versions of the 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1854 Treaties between the United States and the Ojibwe. https://www.glifwc.org/TreatyRights/treaties.html
- Hansen, Terri. “How the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Shaped U.S. Democracy.” Native Voices, PBS, December 17, 2018,www.pbs.org/native-america/blogs/native-voices/how-the-iroquois-great-law-of-peace-shaped-us-democracy/.
- Noodin, Margaret, Stacie Sheldon, and Alphonse Pitawanakwat. Inawe Mazina’igan, or the Map of Our Sound. A map of the present-day Anishinaabe diaspora. https://ojibwe.net/projects/inawe-mazinaigan-map-project/
- Oneida Nation. “Kayanlaˀ Kówa – Great Law of Peace.” oneida-nsn.gov/our-ways/our-story/great-law-of-peace/.
- Onondaga Nation. https://www.onondaganation.org/government/chiefs/
- Parker, A. C., and Seth Newhouse. “The constitution of the five nations.” New York State Museum Bulletin, no. 184, Albany: The University of the State of New York, April 1, 1916, pp. 7-157. Internet Archive, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009, archive.org/details/cu31924101928012/page/n4.
- Schaaf, G. The U.S. Constitution and The Great Law of Peace: A comparison of two founding documents. Los Angeles: Center for Indigenous Arts & Cultures, 2004. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol14/iss2/7/
- U.S. Congress. H.Con.Res.331, October 21, 1988. “A concurrent resolution to acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution and to reaffirm the continuing government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States established in the Constitution.” https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf
- Witgen, Michael. An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Excerpt about the alliance formed in 1660 between the Anishinaabeg, Muskekowuck-athinuwick, and Dakota: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/toc/14944_toc.html
- Barreiro, J. “Indian Roots of American Democracy. Cultural Encounter I.” Special Constitution Bicentennial Edition, Northeast Indian Quarterly, 1988.
- Dahl, Adam. Empire of the People: Settler Colonialism and the Foundations of Modern Democratic Thought. University Press of Kansas, 2018.
- Gibson, John Arthur. Concerning the League: The Iroquois League Tradition as Dictated in Onondaga. Translated by Hanni Woodbury, Syracuse University Press, 1992.
- Grinde, Donald A. Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen, Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, 1991.
- Johansen, B. E. Debating democracy: Native American legacy of freedom. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1998.
- Johansen, Bruce E., Forgotten Founders: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy. Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1982.
- Miller, Cary. Ogimaag: Anishinaabeg Leadership, 1760-1845. University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Available as an e-book.
- Weatherford, Jack, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.
- White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Available as an e-book.
- Witgen, Michael. An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Available as an e-book.
Additional resources for Founding Narratives: The Evolution of Ancient Athenian and Early American Democracy (click here to download as a PDF)
Classical Greece
Primary Sources:
- Aeschylus. The Eumenides. Translated by Ian Johnston. Johnstoniatexts.com, 2012. http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/aeschylus/eumenideshtml.html
- Aristophanes. The Acharnians. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Acharnians.php
- Aristophanes. Knights. Edited by Robert Alexander Neil. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966. http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/aristophanes/knightshtml.html
- Euripides. “Orestes.” Translated by Ian Johnston. Johnstoniatexts.com, 2010. johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/euripides/oresteshtml.html.
- Euripides. “Suppliant Women.” Poetry in Translation, Translated by George Theodoridis, 2007. www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/SuppliantWomen.php.
- Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1968. http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html
Secondary Sources
- Burian, Peter. “Athenian Tragedy as Democratic Discourse,” Why Athens?: A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics, edited by D. M. Carter, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 95-118.
- Euben, Peter. "Political Corruption in Euripides' Orestes. " Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, edited by Peter J. Euben, University of California Press, 1986, pp. 43-75.
- Goldhill, Simon. “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology.” Nothing to Do with Dionysus: Athenian Drama in its Social Context, edited by John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 97-129.
- Hall, Edith. Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun, Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Longo, Oddone. “Theater of the Polis.” Nothing to Do with Dionysus: Athenian Drama in its Social Context, edited by John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 97-129.
- Ricks, Thomas. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. Harper Collins, 2020.
Enlightenment Thought and Ideologies
- Appleby, Joyce. “Republicanism in old and new contexts.” The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History and Culture, 1986, pp. 20-34.
- Bailyn, Bernard. The ideological origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2017.
- Calvert, Jane E. Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Frank, Jason. “Publius and political imagination.” Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 1, 2009, pp. 69-98.
- Greene, Jack P. “Colonial history and national history: Reflections on a continuing problem.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 2, 2007, pp. 235-250.
- Kramnick, Isaac. “The “Great National Discussion”: The Discourse of Politics in 1787.” The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History, vol. 45, no. 1, 1988, pp. 3-32.
- Maier, Pauline. Ratification: the people debate the Constitution, 1787-1788. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
- Martin, Jay. “The Province of Speech: American Drama in the Eighteenth Century.” Early American Literature, vol. 13, no. 1, 1978, pp. 24-33.
- Mayville, Luke. John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy. Princeton University Press, 2018.
- Orren, Karen, and John W. Compton, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the United States Constitution. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- Pears, Emily. “Chords of Affection: A Theory of National Political Attachments in the American Founding.” American Political Thought, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1-29.
- Sheehan, Colleen A. The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Smith, Rogers M. “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: the multiple traditions in America.” American Political Science Review, vol. 87, no. 3, 1993, pp. 549-566.
- Storing, Herbert J. What the anti-Federalists were for: The political thought of the opponents of the Constitution, Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
- Wood, Gordon S. The creation of the American republic, 1776-1787. UNC Press Books, 2011.
