The Onondaga are one of only three tribes in the U.S. to practice their traditional form of government. The system includes safeguards guaranteeing each member nation's autonomy while offering mechanisms for them to act in concert. Ritual has an important role. John Brown Childs, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, whose great-great-grandparents were Haudenosaunee (members of the Iroquois Confederacy of six nations), describes ritual as a way for disparate, even hostile groups to "go into neutral" to accomplish a common goal. He hopes to adopt the approach, which he calls "transcommunality," in his work with rival inner city gangs, and he plans to publish a newsletter about the idea in the fall.

The traditional approach of the Onondaga is gaining recognition in environmental disciplines as well, says Robin Kimmerer, a botanist who teaches at the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Native peoples' "millennium-long understanding of the world" can enlighten resource management decisions and our understanding of ecosystems, she says. But what Kimmerer likes best is that traditional ways abandon the mechanistic view of nature as separate and distinct and allow the human animal to enter in the equation. This is evident at the Nation's school where the building itself mimics the shape of an eagle, where images of deer, corn, strawberries, and other plants and animals are everywhere, and where students are bused to the Nation's longhouse for ceremonies marking the agricultural seasons.

The school's attention to these cycles, Powless says, "does make you more attuned to what's going on. Go in the woods, that's what people here tell their kids. You don't need a playground."

Since the Onondaga do not have a written tradition, preserving spoken language becomes essential. Yet estimates put the number of fluent speakers in the U.S. of the Onondaga language at around 15. In 1971, a community-wide boycott of the LaFayette High School aimed to have the Onondaga culture and language included in the curriculum. The Nation falls under the jurisdiction of the LaFayette Central School District, and most native students graduate from its high school, located outside the Nation. Nearly a quarter of the student body at the school was native yet "there was nothing you could see visibly or anything in the curriculum to show that," says Denise Waterman, a senior at the time and leader of the boycott. She now works as a third grade teacher at the Nation school where two teachers hold language classes every day for all grade levels. Powless offers a weekly culture class to every grade level.

Much of what Powless teaches can be seen in the school — in its layout, windows, and central atrium. He and his 88 Haudenosaunee students spend their days surrounded with reminders of a heritage — a heritage that Powless thinks will carry them far.