The Statue of Freedom Declares Interdependence

Gazing up at the Tholos, the lighthouse atop of the Capitol Dome in Washington DC, it is virtually impossible to discern the figurehead standing there serving as a constant reminder of our national ideal. On his deathbed in 1857, the sculptor of this magnificent bronze statue, Thomas Crawford, named his creation “America.” When she was mounted atop the Capitol, during the Civil War in 1863, her name was “Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace.” . Today she commonly is referred to as the “Statue of Freedom.” 

Native Hawaiian Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona, a Kahuna, a healer and seer, upon recognizing this distant mythic figure as the “Conscience of the Nation,” dedicated her life to bringing “Our Lady of Freedom,” as she named her, to public attention, first by appealing to her State Senator, Daniel Kahikina Akaka.  In 1993, with funding largely from the Foundation of I that was founded by Simeona, Crawford’s original plaster model was taken from storage and installed at ground level in the Russell Senate Office Building.  That same year the Statue was brought down from the dome to be refurbished. Now the plaster model presides over Emancipation Hall in the newly constructed Capitol Visitors Center.

Her sculptor, Thomas Crawford, a New Yorker working from his studio in Rome, had received many important commissions during the re-construction of the Capitol complex. Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War, (who became the President of the Confederate States of America), and Montgomery Meigs, (who became a general of the Union Army), were the curators of the Capitol art. The Statue was mounted on the Tholis of the Capitol in the midst of the Civil War when the nation faced its greatest trial to defend human freedom. Ironically, Philip Reid, the master craftsman who cast her, was a slave. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed him, just before the Statue was placed on the Dome.

Thomas Crawford presented three models of the Statue to Davis and Meigs.  These models morphed from a placid Athenian Goddess into a strong Euro/American Indian Goddess sharing characteristics both of Athena and the Iroquois Mother of Nations, Jigonsaseh. On the final model, at Davis’ request, Crawford removed the commonly used symbol for liberty, the Phrygian cap that was the Roman signification of a freed slave, and replaced it with an eagle surrounded by stars.  In a letter to Davis, Crawford explained the eagle as “… a bold arrangement of feathers suggested by the costume of our Indian tribes.”  Eagle, a primary figure from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, is perched atop the Tree of Peace guarding the peace of the Nation.

The stars encircling America’s headdress are also central to the Iroquois Cosmo vision.  Jigonsaseh was conceived in Sky World from where her pregnant mother, Ataensic, (known as Sky Woman), was pushed by her jealous old husband to the watery Earth below. Ataensic landed on Turtle’s back and from that point created Turtle Island, the continent of America. The fir-fringed cloak on the Statue signifies shelter from fear and want, two of the four central Iroquois freedoms. A Peace Medallion inscribed with the letters US binds her dress.  Peace Medallions were prized gifts from US Presidents to Native American Chiefs to seal friendship and trust.

These two significant mythic goddesses from Europe and America weave an important allegory to inform our times.  The word Capitol was derived from Capitolium, the site of Zeus’ temple in Rome.  The Greco/Roman mythological Zeus swallowed his pregnant wife, the Goddess of Wisdom, fearing the prophecy that she would bear a son who would supplant him. So, Athena, in full golden battle regalia, birthed herself through the head of Zeus, with her sword drawn. First known as the Goddess of War, Athena became famous for her arts of diplomacy and grew to be her mother’s daughter, the Goddess of Wisdom.  Like career women of today, she instigated the respect for feminine intelligence in the Greco/Roman patriarchic Cosmo vision. Similarly, this Athenian archetype paved the way for her Indigenous sister, Jigonsaseh, The Mother of Nations, to be recognized for the ideals of freedom and peace in her domain, the Americas.

Jigonsaseh, together with one known as Great Peacemaker, co-created the Great Law of Peace that became the Constitution of the Iroquois League of Nations.  The Iroquois Confederacy, the world’s first known participatory democracy, existed on the American continent centuries before European contact. Evidence is strong that the Founding Fathers relied heavily upon the Iroquois Great Law of Peace when they created the Constitution, but this usurpation could not be revealed because in Iroquois government the powers of both genders were balanced.  Colonial society had not evolved sufficiently to invite such egalitarian ideas into the mainstream conversation.

The sword, shield and laurel wreath are what remain of the Athenian symbols from Crawford’s first model. The shield, representing protection from tyranny, the Nation’s founding principle, was first utilized on the Great Seal before the Constitution was finalized. Ironically, the Founders did not see the “Right of Conquest,” as the worst imaginable form of tyrannical despotism. Initially declared a “right” by William the Conqueror, this “Right of Conquest” was Washington’s justification to begin the obliteration of the Indigenous peoples with impunity, and it remains an egregious offender to the ideals of freedom that the Founding Fathers aspired to realize. 

US history is fraught with struggles to remove these types of blinders to the European tyrannical protocols that contradicted freedom. The Statue of Freedom’s poised right hand rests on a sheathed sword wrapped in its belt—an acknowledgment of the Nation’s violent history. Her left hand holds the laurel wreath of victory, the ultimate triumph of freedom. Combining her historical given names, the Statue of America, Freedom Triumphant, stands upon a globe with the inscription, E Pluribus Unum, the Nation’s motto. As the National figurehead, she beckons Americans to look to her for the ideals of freedom and peace to which all the peoples of the world aspire.


In closing, a short prayer from the Native Hawaiian practice Ho'oponopono in honor of Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona:

I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you.

May peace be with you.