People Are Fighting About the New Ken Burns Documentary

I haven’t seen the new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution, but some people who have are not all pleased with it. 

I have seen enough…

The PBS series “The American Revolution” is a profound disappointment.

It sucks almost all of the magic out of our founding (for fear of venerating white males) and is dreary, boring, and overtly woke.

PBS had an opportunity to prove their conservative… https://t.co/mrb2NsrvwJ

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) November 20, 2025

I’m really trying to give this a fair hearing, but so far (I’m on ep.3) it’s a staggeringly negative portrayal of those who founded this country. To a point that I come away after each episode with the impression that the people who made it are not fans of The United States. pic.twitter.com/L6AzVoASVI

— Patrick Fox (@RealCynicalFox) November 20, 2025

It’s not just people on the right who think the show is woke (though some see it as a good thing).

I’ve been really enjoying the new Ken Burns American Revolution documentary.

It’s “woke” in an appropriate way, making sure to include a wide range of perspectives and stakeholders, while fundamentally affirming the core values that have inspired this country for generations.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 21, 2025

One of the points that has divided people happens early in the first episode. Here, Burns is suggesting that the formation of the United States was influenced by something known as the Iroquois Confederacy.

Less than 3 minutes into the Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution, and we get:

1. White people are bad.

2. Native Americans had a centuries-old democracy before British colonists arrived.

3. Benjamin Franklin copied the Native American blueprint. pic.twitter.com/fyx0CHYyQy

— Adam Johnston (@adamkjohnston) November 19, 2025

Apparently this is common knowledge to some people.

The League of the Iroquois being a framework for the Constitution is pretty basic middle/high school history textbook stuff my guy sorry you didn’t pay attention! https://t.co/8cCEs1h0Ng

— Julia Claire (@ohJuliatweets) November 19, 2025

I looked at this and I guess there is some evidence that Ben Franklin was interested in it, though his actual comments weren’t entirely complimentary:

It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.

Dig aside, Franklin did seem to have some respect for the Iroquois.

Among the founding fathers, Franklin may best illustrate the influence the Iroquois had on Americans. Franklin, who had a thriving printing business in Philadelphia, started printing small books containing proceedings of Indian treaty councils in 1736. They were the first distinctive forms of indigenous American literature and sold quite well, and he continued publishing such accounts until 1762.

Franklin carried the Iroquois concept of unity to Albany in 1754, where he presented his plan of union loosely patterned after the Iroquois Confederation.

However, that may be the high water mark for their influence. There were lots of other influences on the founding fathers which carried more weight which is why the US Constitution is very different from the Iroquois Confederacy.

Other scholars are not convinced. Anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker, for example, argued that European political theory and precedent furnished the models for American Founders, while evidence for Indian influence was very thin. Although the concept of the Iroquoian Confederation may have been similar to the United States’ first efforts to unite alliance, the Iroquois constructed their government under very different principles. The member nations of the Iroquois League all lived under matrilineal societies, in which they inherited status and possessions through the mother’s line. Headmen were not elected, but rather clan mothers chose them. Representation was not based on equality or on population. Instead, the number of Council members per nation was based on the traditional hierarchy of nations within the confederation. Moreover, the League of Six Nations did not have a centralized authority like that of the federal system the Euro-Americans eventually adopted.

Politifact actually did a fact check on this claim back in 2014:

“On balance, the consensus appears to be that although British North Americans were certainly aware of the confederal nature of the Iroquois government, the case for causation has not been made,” wrote Alison LaCroix, a law professor at the University of Chicago, in The Ideological Origins of American Federalism, published in 2010…

You don’t have to be a total denier of Iroquois influence to acknowledge that the meme goes too far when it says “the U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes.” The traditionally cited sources of inspiration for the drafters, including ancient Greek and prior European thought, played a significant role — almost certainly a decisive one.

“Even if the Iroquois Confederation was similar to the Constitution, which it was not, and even if some Americans admired aspects of Indian culture, that does not mean the Framers emulated Native American systems,” said Stewart Jay, a University of Washington law professor and author of Mortal Words: A History of the U.S. Constitution: Volume 1, Origins to World War II.

Jay added that more broadly, the democratic nature of the U.S. Constitution was greatly refined and extended by the civil rights amendments adopted after the Civil War, which were hardly conceived with Iroquois principles in mind.

Gautham Rao, an American University historian and author of the forthcoming At The Water’s Edge: Commerce, Governance and the Origins of the American State, concurred. “It is a fairly important idea that a great many societies and networks influenced American constitutional thought, the Iroquois among them,” Rao said. “But it is not true that the concept of ‘democracy’ embodied in the U.S. Constitution was directly suggested by the Iroquois.”…

On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.

To be fair, the documentary is not making quite as broad a claim as the meme Politifact was looking at. Still, it’s easy to overstate this connection. Here’s a pretty good response to the tweet above from a high school history teacher.

I teach US History in a public school.

The “Iroquois influence” claim started in the 1960s–70s as part of the Congressional “Indian Self-Determination” movement.
Historians across ideological lines (including Native scholars) have pointed out:
– Zero primary sources from the…

— Ninety Degrees (@quasiantipodean) November 20, 2025

The “Iroquois influence” claim started in the 1960s–70s as part of the Congressional “Indian Self-Determination” movement.

Historians across ideological lines (including Native scholars) have pointed out:

– Zero primary sources from the Founders cite the Iroquois.

– All constitutional debates reference Enlightenment, Rome, the Bible, and British law.

– The myth was politically useful, not historically grounded.

Even the Smithsonian now labels it a “symbolic gesture,” not a factual origin.

The actual foundations of the Constitution are crystal clear and well-documented:

1. The Age of Enlightenment

 Locke – natural rights, social contract

Montesquieu – separation of powers

Hobbes & Rousseau – theories of sovereignty

These ideas are quoted directly in debates, letters, and the Federalist Papers.

2. The Bible

Covenant theology – written covenants, mutual obligations

Hebrew judges – limited authority, rule of law

Moral and civil principles woven into colonial legal tradition

All the framers explicitly referenced Scripture, not the Iroquois.

3. British Constitutional Tradition

-Magna Carta

-English Bill of Rights

-Common law

Every founder was trained in English law, not Iroquois governance.

4. Greco-Roman Republicanism

-Roman mixed government

-Athenian civic virtue and citizenship

The framers quoted Cicero constantly.

Lots of other people calling this claim nonsense.

No historian thinks the League of the Iroquis was a basis for the US Constitution and it’s not progressive or daring to pretend that it was. https://t.co/fa8wGUBZDd

— Sam Haselby (@samhaselby) November 20, 2025

The relevant question to ask is why this is “pretty basic middle/high school history” since it isn’t true.

If the Iroquois never existed, the American Constitution would be essentially the same. This isn’t true of e.g. John Locke.

This story probably began as an “America was… https://t.co/iCvbse345n

— Eve Keneinan 𝛗☦️ن (@EveKeneinan) November 20, 2025

Modern nonsense.

The idea that the Founders were greatly inspired by Indian modes of governance rather than Parliament, English common law, The Glorious Revolution, Greek democracy, Roman republic, “Cato’s Letters,” the Holy Bible, and their own colonial governance is absurd. https://t.co/Yh9HJpr9J1

— Billy Gribbin (@BillyGribbin) November 20, 2025

And on and on it goes. 

Have you watched any of Burns’ documentary. Is it as woke as this makes it sound?

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