Amongst the many highlights of #itwiff25 were the Indigenous women’s films at imaginethiswomensfilmfestival . Out for a run in centralparknyc , I found this beautiful statue. The first wave of American feminists didn’t dream up equality in a vacuum. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Matilda Josyln Gage looked to their Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) neighbors in upstate New York, the Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Tuscarora Nations…they saw a living example of women’s authority. Here, Clan Mothers held decisive power: they named children, selected the male chiefs (hoyaneh), and could remove them if they failed their people. Women owned property, kept custody of their children, and had the final word in community decisions. Matilda Josyln Gage lived in Fayetteville, New York, just miles from the Onondaga Nation. She wrote with awe about Haudenosaunee women’s rights: contrasting them with the restrictions suffragists fought against. Historian Sally Roesch Wagner ha...