( Left to right) Ed Moy, director of the United States Mint, Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation Representative, and John Hayworth, director of the George Gustav Center/National Museum of the American Indian. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mint. Oneida Nation Participates in Launch of the New $1 Native American Coin
Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Nation Enterprises, and several members of the Nation’s Council took part in a media event in New York City on Jan. 25 that launched the new $1 Native American coin. The other members of the Oneida delegation were the following members of the Council: Keller George, Chuck Fougnier, Clint Hill and Dale Rood.
According to a news release from the U.S. Mint, “The theme for the 2010 Native American $1 Coin is ‘Government-the Great Tree of Peace’. The coin's reverse (tails side) design features an image of the Hiawatha Belt with five arrows bound together, along with the inscriptions UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, $1, HAUDENOSAUNEE and GREAT LAW OF PEACE. "Haudenosaunee" is also known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The obverse (heads side) design continues to bear the familiar image of Sacagawea, introduced in 2000.” Speaking at the event, Halbritter said: “The Oneida people have always taken great pride in being one of the founding members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. When the Peacemaker brought the nations together, he took up one arrow and showed how it could be broken easily. Then he took up a bundle of five arrows and showed how much stronger those arrows were when they were bound together. “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was really the first United Nations. The founding fathers of this country used it as model to create their own confederacy: Benjamin Franklin proposed a similar union of the British colonies in his Albany Plan in the 1750s, and the idea resurfaced in the 1770s as the colonies banded together to break the chains of British tyranny. The new United States even adapted some Haudenosaunee symbols for its own: the eagle, which sits atop the Tree of Peace and keeps watch over the confederacy, and the thirteen arrows, together so much stronger than any single arrow could be.” For information on obtaining the coin, visit: http://www.usmint.gov/catalog.
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