Plantagon blog

Chief Oren R. Lyons writes:

Long ago, we developed our own answers to the questions the European philosophers and political theorists have been asking for centuries.  Upon the continent of North America, prior to the landfall of the first white man, a great league of peace was formed.  The inspiration for the founding of the league came from a prophet called the Peacemaker.  He was a spiritual being, fulfilling the mission of organizing warring nations into a confederation under the Great Law of Peace.  This is a long history, too long to recount in this article.  Suffice it to say it is a great epic, the equal of any in the European tradition.  It tells of war and destruction that culminated on the lake now called Onondaga.  After many years of hard work, some say perhaps even 100 years, the Peacemaker gathered the warring leaders, who had been transformed into rational human beings by the wisdom of hi teachings, in a grad council and began to instruct them as to how the great league of peace would work.

He organized the families into the clans, and then he set up the leaders of the clans.  He established that the league of peace would be matrilineal and that each clan would have a clan mother.  Thus, he established in law the equal rights of women.  He raised the leaders of each clan, two men, one the principal leader and the second his partner.  They were to work together for the good of the people.  He called these two men “Hoyanah” or the “good minds”, the peacemakers: and they were to represent their clans in council.  This, he established the principle of representation of people in government.  Henceforth, he said, these men will be chosen by the clan mother, freely using her insight and wisdom and ratified by full consensus of the clans, chiefs and Grand Council of Chief of the Five Nations.

Then, he also made tow houses in each nation.  One he called the Long House and the other he called the Mud House.  The houses would work together in ceremony and council, establishing the inner source of vitality and dynamics necessary for community.  He made two houses in the Grand Council, one called the Younger Brothers consisting of the Oneida and the Cayuga Nation and later enlarged to include the Tuscarora.  The other was the Elder Brothers, consisting of the Mohawks as the Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Onondaga whom he made the Firekeepers, and the Senecas who were the Keepers of the Western Door.  Thus he established in North America the principal of a bicarmal form of government that continues up to this day.

This council still governs.  Its first duty is to carry on the sacred ceremonies; the second duty is to meet in council for the welfare of the people.  Now the Peacemaker made the house, and the rafters of the house were the laws that he laid down, and he called us Haudenosaunee, the people of the Long House.

After instructing the people and giving them the Great Law of Peace, he took an arrow and broke it.  Then he took five arrows, each representing the nations of the confederacy: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.  He bound them with the sinew of a deer and attempted to bread these arrows.  “See, here is your strength, in unity,” he told the people gathered.  “This will protect your people.  The symbol of this great union will be the great white pine, with four white roots, the truth which will grow in the four cardinal directions of the earth.  These roots will be there for people to follow.  Those who have nowhere to go will follow these roots back to their source, the Great Tree and come under the shelter of the great long leaves of peace.  I will uproot this tree, and i command you to come forward and to cast into this hole all of your weapons of war, that you shall never raise against on another again.  And these weapons will be carried by the currents under the earth to the farthest reaches.  And I will replace the tree and i will not leave you defenseless.  I place in your hands the sacred tobacco which will be your direct relations to the Creator and as long as you believe in the power of the Creator, you will survive.  And so now we have planted the Great Tree of Peace.”

He said to the new leaders: ”When you sit and council for the welfare of the people, think not of yourself, nor of your family, nor even your generation. Make your decision on behalf of the seventh generation coming. Those faces looking up from the Earth, layer upon layer, awaiting their time…”

That is a profound instruction on responsibility and mission, we share this with you.

Use it, it has served us well.

Hans Hassle writes:

PLANTAGON will show that sharing is more profitable than greed.

PLANTAGON will show that the willingness to accept responsibility gives more power than the wish to avoid responsibility.

This is a Value Change needed for Survival.

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 10⁹ hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

It is obvious that we cannot continue ”Business as usual” if we want to survive. We need to create corporations that are not only fixated on money, corporations going far beyond the environmental and broader sustainability imperatives.

We need to create corporations built from a deep sense of responsibility for the common good.

This means a core business that is good for society, as well as democratic and transparent organizations that are able to balance commercial success with idealistic principles.

This blog will be a blend of corporate information, political statements and individual stories.

So below, we use the authentic letter from SWECORP Citizenship and Hans Hassle to Onondaga Nation to start our story. This was written June 24, 2003 one year after the first discussions to start the PLANTAGON project took place between Chief Oren R. Lyons and Hans Hassle at the World Trade Center Club in Stockholm…

First of all I want to express our deepest gratitude to Onondaga Nation, its people and its leaders, for inviting us to your home. It is with honour and great respect for your knowledge, experience and history we put our feet on Onondaga ground. 

I also want to excuse my colleagues and myself not being humble enough during our stay at Onondaga and during our cooperation in the future, not being part of or understanding the indigenous wisdom and insight. We can never be anything else than white men, trying to do our part for the common good and Mother Earth. It is my hope though; we can love each other the way we are, as I truly believe we are very much more the same than different. 

Most of us would agree humankind is not taking care of Earth and ourselves the best way we could. Social, environmental and political development shows us a possible future no one can avoid to see, nor want. 

Economy plays a major role in this situation, both in creating it from the very beginning and taking us from here to the future, really deciding which way to take. Political power is fighting for its influence, but we already know the economy is driven by corporations, or at least the major part of the economy. Today, 51 of the world’s largest economies are corporations, not states, and it brings an enormous responsibility to the owners, their boards and their managers – a responsibility that comes with being the dominant institution on the planet. In this world of ours, greed, individual ambition and fear are being strongly supported by the system, by the voluntary rules we play by. As an example one can reflect upon the fact that among the very largest world markets are the markets for weapons, narcotics, tobacco, sex and environmental disastrous fossil energy. 

There is no way we can continue business as usual. And we should never forget we do have a choice. 

Big changes often start with small ideas. That is why Swecorp Citizenship® AB very proud and excited presents the Plantagon® project. But, this is not our idea. We welcomed the innovator Åke Olsson about a year ago and we are now determined to, in close cooperation with Åke and his team, realize his dream – as we see it as a concrete possibility to contribute to a positive change while doing good business using our knowledge and experience as technical, strategic and management consultants.  

This presentation is put forward to Onondaga Nation for our meeting 1 July, 2003. We sincerely hope this is the start of a very long story that will be told by many people for a long time; helping individuals, corporate leaders, political leaders and many others to see Change is possible if there is enough will, creativity and wisdom. 

I once again thank all members of Onondaga Nation for inviting us to explore the possibilities of a joint venture and hopefully share the dream of Plantagon®. 

In a feeling of great honour, 

Stockholm June 24, 2003 

Hans Hassle

Swecorp Citizenship AB 

Hans Hassle, CEO

Below, we use the authentic letter from Hans Hassle to Chief Oren Lyons to tell the background of PLANTAGON. This was written about a year after our first meeting at Onondaga Nation, to inform the Council of Chiefs about the personal background of Hans Hassle and Chief Oren Lyons…

Katrineholm, 12 Jul. 04

Dear Oren, I am writing this to you as additional information, as requested regarding the Plantagon®-project. The purpose is to describe our common background and relation so far. Please excuse me for doing it in a very brief and simplifying way, concentrating on our common actions, as the letter would be very long if I included my point of view on the more personal relation.

Our first contact was in Sweden, late 1998 or early 1999. We met after a seminar you gave at IFL outside Stockholm. I was invited to listen by Karl-Erik Edris, one of the leading teachers on corporate responsibility and ethics at IFL.

Before this meeting I had been in contact to Tonia Moya to try to get a direct contact to you, inviting you to take part in a millennium event that I was producing at the Stockholm Globe Arena. The project included a TV-documentary.

After one or two more meetings in Sweden concerning the millennium project, you invited me as an observer to the Millennium Peace Summit at the UN-building in New York. I came together with three Saami elders and Tonia Moya. The reason was to give me and Tonia Moya (who had now become part of the TV-part of the project) the possibility to present and discuss our proposal with other indigenous elders, that through your participation would too be invited to Stockholm Globe Arena and the TV-project.

After these initial contacts we have performed together several seminars and other similar activities for business- and political leaders, academics and “ordinary people” in Sweden, aiming at supporting the development of long term thinking and sustainable leadership – addressing both social and ecological issues.

We even made a short seminar “tour” together with Karl-Erik Edris on corporate citizenship 2003, travelling to four or five different cities in two weeks. Still, one of the most interesting seminars was, to me, the seminar on “Female Wisdom and corporate citizenship” in my hometown Katrineholm, spring 2002.

Getting to know you personally and starting to understand more about the threats against your culture, at the same time realizing the importance of getting your way of thinking regarding leadership, sharing and long term perspective into our western society, I suggested to you to discuss with me the possibility for Onondaga Nation to take part in a business case that I was looking into at the time. This was during the first half of 2003.

This was a different kind of business project, both to its content and administration. The project was based upon an innovation that was presented to me about a year earlier, a greenhouse dramatically changing the way we produce ecological and functional food, presented by the Swedish innovator Åke Olsson.

Noteworthy was also hat one of Europe’s largest engineering companies, SWECO, was another stakeholder.

They had both agreed with me to run this project as a business case built on sound values and very well developed corporate citizenship, using my model for this kind of activities – the Companization – trying to constitutionalize ethics and sound values in corporate thinking and actions. I had two reasons for asking you and Onondaga Nation to participate in this project:

• I wanted to “give back” something to you, both as a white person and as your friend. I saw here an opportunity for Onondaga Nation to earn good profits and doing good things at the same time, giving you the possibility to “take back” something from the same system threatening you. To me, as an outsider, the project that we were setting up here in Sweden seemed to be something that could be helpful for you as a model of “Going Well by Doing Good”. Maybe this could be an alternative business that would be possible for you to run at Onondaga (and also be international part owners of) in case the project would turn into an international corporation.

• Second reason was to secure the legitimacy of the corporate model used in the project – the Companization. If this model really works, and many think it will, it can turn around the perspective on why corporations exist and what their responsibilities are. This will give power and great responsibility to the owners of the idea, to the organization and individuals presenting it to the market. As the model seems to work hypothetically, the first time it is tried in real life it should be done by a large company. This is to give maximum impact on the market. If successful, this will be quite a remarkable political statement and instrument. Therefore, it is essential that the owners of this company can handle the situation and all the influence it would create for them.

During my 23 years in business I met very few organizations and individuals that could. Part from SWECO securing the technical and financial quality, the project therefore needed someone that for a long time and with high legitimacy could secure the ethical-, ecological-, social- and leadership way of thinking in this potential international corporation to be.

That is very brief our common background so far. It is now about two years ago we started the first discussion on what came to be the Plantagon® project.

During spring and summer 2004 we have had great interest shown from ministers of the Swedish Government, officials of the Foreign Department of the Swedish Government, Non Governmental Organizations, leading business leaders, lawyers, auditors and of course media.

So far we did not let more then necessary out, and we will not until we agree upon doing it. But, I am convinced we are holding something important in our hands. It is therefore my deepest felt wish that you will get the support needed to go into the next step of our common work.

Below, I attach background information on SWECORP, myself, the innovator Åke Olsson, SWECO and the Companization model as requested. Please let me know if you need complimentary or other information.

Warmest regards, Hans Hassle