lands in trust with very specific rules regarding its uses. We are caretakers of our Mother Earth, not lords of the land. Our claims are valid only so far as we dwell in peace and harmony upon her." In 1981 the Iroquois Council of Chiefs (or Haudenosaunee) expressed similar ideas. The Council distinguished the "Western European concepts of land ownership" from the Iroquois view that "the earth is sacred" and "was created for all to use forever—not to be exploited merely for this present generation." Land is not just a commodity and "In no event is land for sale." The statement continues, "Under Haudenosaunee law, 'Gayanerkowa,' the land is held by the women of each clan. It is principally the women who are responsible for the land, who farm it, and who care for it for the future generations. When the Confederacy was formed, the separate nations formed one union. The territory of each nation became Confederacy land even though each nation continued to have a special interest in its historic territory." The Council's statement reflects its unique view of property among the Iroquois. The system of the Grand River Iroquois (two Iroquois reservations in Canada) integrated the traditional Iroquois property structure with the new way of life after being confined to a reservation. The reservation was established under two deeds by the Crown in the 18th century following the American Revolutionary War. These deeds gave corporate ownership of the lands to the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Individuals were granted leases for a specific plot by the Confederacy. The Iroquois idea that land came into one's possession if cared for and reverted to public control if left alone was used in reservation property law. In one property dispute case, the Iroquois Council sided with a claimant who had made improvements and cultivated the land over one who had left it alone. The natural resources of the land are considered to belong to the tribe as a whole and not to those who possessed the particular parcel. The Iroquois leased the right to extract stone from the lands in one instance and fixed royalties on all the production. After natural gas had been discovered on the reservation, the Six Nations took direct ownership of the natural gas wells. They paid persons who had wells on their land compensation only for damages done by gas extraction. This setup closely resembled the