August 06, 2026

The Seventh Generation Test

We are looking ahead, as is one of the first mandates given us as chiefs, to make sure and to make every decision that we make relates to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come.

Oren Lyons is a Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation and a traditional chief of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. He carried this teaching to the United Nations and other international forums through the late twentieth century, arguing that most modern law protects only the living while the Great Law of Peace protects those still unborn. The seventh generation principle asks every leader to measure a decision by its effect on children seven generations away, long after the decision maker is gone. That is compassion stretched past the limits of a single lifetime, a form of love for people whose faces we will never see.