The Oneida Indian Nation is part of new American currency, a $1 coin with a Native American theme of "Government - the Great Tree of Peace."

This week, Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Nation Enterprises Ray Halbritter and several members of the Nation’s council helped launch the new coin. The other members of the Oneida delegation from the council were Keller George, Chuck Fougnier, Clint Hill and Dale Rood.

The coin’s reverse — tails side — design features an image of the Hiawatha Belt with five arrows bound together, along with the inscriptions "United States of America, $1, Haudenosaunee and Great Law of Peace." The word Haudenosaunee is also known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The obverse — heads sides — design continues to bear the familiar image of Sacagawea, introduced in 2000.

Speaking at the event, Halbritter said, "The Oneida people have always taken great pride in being one of the founding members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. When the Peacemaker brought the nations together, he took up one arrow and showed how it could be broken easily. Then he took up a bundle of five arrows and showed how much stronger those arrows were when they were bound together."

Halbritter added, "The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was really the first United Nations. The founding fathers of this country used it as model to create their own confederacy: Benjamin Franklin proposed a similar union of the British colonies in his Albany Plan in the 1750s, and the idea resurfaced in the 1770s as the colonies banded together to break the chains of British tyranny. The new United States even adapted some Haudenosaunee symbols for its own: the eagle, which sits atop the Tree of Peace and keeps watch over the confederacy, and the thirteen arrows, together so much stronger than any single arrow could be."

For information on obtaining the coin, visit www.usmint.gov/catalog.