I'm going to introduce those of us who went to the gathering and are going to share
this evening to my right is Lorna. Mrs Jo.
Susan. And I am.
I'm I'm love. The thirteen grandmothers were created
within the container of the Center for sacred studies Jyoti.
Has made it her life's mission to study indigenous ways of life.
And she created the Center for sacred studies. It is
a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining indigenous ways of life
through cross cultural spiritual practices ministry education and
a commitment to peace and unity for all people their activities
include prayer services ceremonies and of all righty of gatherings for worship
according to various traditions the purpose of these offerings is to invite
individuals families and communities to develop devotion and to strengthen their
relationship to the divine. They have the Council of the
thirteen grandmothers as one of their programs another program is their ministry
training program it's a two year program. Towards getting
a ministry available for you to use multiple indigenous ways of. Honoring
spirit or practicing they have a stargate Mystery School which is
a residential program that explores non ordinary states of consciousness and they
have the May tree breathwork certification training I don't really know what that
is but it's obviously some kind of breath work in the fall of two thousand and
three the Center for sacred studies sent out an invitation to
sixteen grandmothers of the sixteen thirteen answer they all had
stories of how they were connected before they were connected. But grandmother read
a bloomin Steen who's
a seventy five year old you pick traditional healer was guided by her great
grandmother in one nine hundred forty two when she was nine years old her great
grandmother gave her thirteen stones and thirteen feathers eagle
plumes and told her she would be part of
a council of thirteen and to save these precious relics for that time
at their first gathering of the thirteen grandmothers in two thousand and four the
day after declaring themselves as an alliance grandmother Rida passed these
thirteen stones and feathers to the members of the newly formed alliance.
It is a form of government ruled by a circle rather than
a hierarchy of command since the inception of the International Council of thirteen
indigenous grandmothers numerous elders around the world who are gathering their
own councils or renewing their ancient rituals. Of
leadership have approached us center for sacred studies in this era we are
witnessing
a reemergence of the voice of the wise ones and the elders
the gathering of councils the unfolding of our prayer shows us that many
councils of elders are emerging in Europe Australia the Middle East to
Karinda suffering world out of its misery the International Council of thirteen
grandmothers is only one voice in this unity and I'm just going to read
a little bit of their from their alliance statement in October thirteenth two
thousand and four they all signed this alliance we are thirteen
indigenous grandmothers coming here from the Amazon rain forest the Alaskan tundra
of North America. The great forest of the American Northwest.
The vast plains of North America. The high lands of Central America
the Black Hills of South Dakota. The mountains of.
The desert of the American Southwest. The mountains of Tibet and
Nepal. And from the rain forest of Central Africa. We
are affirming our relations with traditional medicine peoples and communities
throughout the world we have been brought together by a common vision to form
a new global alliance Ours is an alliance of prayer education
and healing for our Mother Earth all her inhabitants all the children
and for the next seven generations to come we come together to nurture
educate and train our children we come together to uphold the practice of our
ceremonies and affirm their right to use our plant medicines free of legal
restriction we come together to protect the lands where our peoples live and upon
which our cultures depend to safeguard the collective heritage of traditional
medicines and to defend the Earth herself we believe that the teachings
of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future
we join with all those who honor their Creator and to all who work and pray for our
children for world peace and for the healing of our Mother Earth
so the intent of the thirteen grandmothers is healing and peace each
six every six months approximately thirteen gather grandmothers gather in
a new homeland they gathered in Montana
a grandmother Margaret's land well was it was supposed to be our land but the fires
made us move to the powwow grounds each grandmother who's holding the gathering
has
a special intent. Grandmother Margaret's special intent was healing
and c'est royal trauma so that's what we walked into
so a couple years ago two years approximately I went to
a movie at the theater called the next seven generations and I didn't want to go I
was dead set against it and everybody here was going and I had heard about the
thirteen grandmothers for
a very long time and I just was like nope and then everybody left and I was driving
by the theater and I heard Buffalo Hart and I went for get this I'm going and so so
I sat in the theater and I I cried because. Their purpose is so beautiful and I
came back here and I said I want to be a grandmother and I'm going to bring
a grandma here I want grandmother to come here so somehow everything fell together
and grandmother Margaret came by in two thousand and twelve is where the next big
gathering for them was going to be and she said there would be the thirteen tepees
there and I said I'll be there and everybody else said we'll be there in two
thousand and twelve came and there we were and that's our story of of how we got
there and it was the journey's been pretty amazing we were all there we were all in
the same place at the same time but we all experience this event and it was amazing
we got there and we were setting up our camp we had
a couple of tents to set up and thunderstorm came over it was
lightning and thunder and the wind picked up really had
a fairly large structure halfway constructed and Susan was saying you know on to
one of the corners of it I was saying on the other and it was going up in the air
and finally we got the fabric of it and everything settled down so it was an
introduction. We got our camps set up in. A
Cheyenne man named Danny Sue just kind of wandered over to our campsite introduced
himself and welcomed us to the place that was so important to his
people. He talked to us about his life and.
What. He had done in his life and it was different this. He
was part of that that ground and you could kind of feel it another highlight for me
was. We actually had buffalo meat there was
a kitchen and there was one meal that everyone partook in on one of the days and
it's
a tradition in the. Buffalo is very important somebody said he's got the buffalo in
his pickup truck so I went out with three or four or five other people and there
was
a buffalo and said Yeah I got an hour ago and then he told about how it
he'd been waiting for three days for an animal to separate itself from the herd
because that's what they do when they offer themselves for this occasion and one
did said one came out this morning it's
a two year old bull and he said The hard part was getting in the pickup truck by
myself I couldn't believe he did that anyway they prepared they prepared it and it
was very good and it was special there were all kinds of people I could talk to
about all kinds of things on
a higher order but. I had conversations with giant men
that were different from me the ones that came to this gathering were the ones that
I believe hold very important for them their traditional values and their culture
and the things that they want to read really really touch for themselves. And there
was a call missing
a confidence and just an emptiness almost And and the strength. I
don't see it very often. Guys in our culture you know well we won't go
there right now. But I sure related to this I and then to add to
the buffalo story one of the things that I noticed is they had an area
off to the side of the Circle where we all gathered every every day where they were
teaching different. Different techniques of of making hand
tools and things like that and at the. I don't know what direction it was but they
had the buffaloes again the hide stretched so they did Yes
So basically they kill he killed it for the meat but then they actually stretched
the hide and grandmother yes it was curing throughout the whole thing and
grandmother Margaret she scraped it and actually gave some to each one of the
grandmothers to take back so it was a it was
a part of the ceremony that was really beautiful Well I'll tell you it's so hard to
put into words what it what it was like to be there with those women and people
from all over the world that came for the same thing for everything we believe in
peace and love and healing and harmony it was amazing to see these thirteen women
eleven I think they're the two that were able to make it. But to go out there every
day and. Each of them had three hours basically that they talked and they did with
they do in their culture they did their medicine and it was amazing how these women
at their age at their evolution they were able to do these these
dances and ceremonies you know and just to talk in weather that was one hundred ten
degrees really really really amazing. One thing that
for me that was. It really stood out and I call it the Big Sky
Montana it's always been called the Big Sky but it I would look up and I would see
so many different pictures in this guy you know I saw bear upon
a Native American and I saw
a dolphin and I saw so many things and you could look up and see that and then
you'd look down and three minutes later you'd look up and you would see the same
thing is this all these things were coming together and it was really beautiful I
was sitting on the bleachers and I was at the top of the bleachers and then kitty
corner from me about twelve feet away there was
a woman sitting there and I I noticed that my shadow was protecting her
from the sun and it came to me how we're all connected by
this thread that we may never know that I could help someone and they would never
know it and I would never know when someone here would be helping me that but that
we all do we all come together there was something that was said I
think it was the last day of the closing ceremony and one of the chiefs I believe
don't quote me got up and said. Oh my gosh what was it piece
above piece below. And peace in the middle and that resonated so much with me.
There's there's so many things I could talk about Joe when I got there
a week early to volunteer so we had basically four days of being there
volunteer in working setting up camp for everybody this gathering was to have been
a grandmother Margaret's land in danger usually know for two years ahead of where
each one is going to be so I believe for two years she had been preparing her land
for this gathering there were six hundred registered people that's coming from not
shy am land and I'd say there was at least four hundred at any one time Cheyanne
there so she was preparing for
a thousand people and then the fires came and they had to move two weeks before the
gathering she had to find another spot and so luckily they have this wonderful
Powell ground which I thought was very unique for us because we got to be and the
energy of the powwow was now the week before the gathering started.
A week and a half before the gathering started they had had
a power well they had seven hundred in eighty six registered dancers
huge and then we came in
a week and three days after it was well actually we came in a week and
a day after it was over so. So there's lots of energy there they have their
Powell ground set up with shaded bleachers and six
isn't it you think goodness is right six. Sweat lodges and the Cheyenne
people gifted us with
a sunset and the sunrise sweat for three days.
There was the there were multiple they were small sweat lodges so there were like
two or three sweat lodges going each evening each sunrise so it was it was
a very powerful piece of land to be on. And then I worked in registration
once people started coming in so I had the extraordinary gift of being able to
greet people and I got to greet
a lot of Cheyanne who would come in and they'd say what's going on here.
And I would say it's
a gathering of the thirteen indigenous grandmothers and thank you for hosting us
and they'd look at me like What do you mean they didn't have it but it's their land
I said thank you for gifting us your land to have this on grandmother Margaret
invited
a million and one people to come of course everybody she saw she didn't fight and
she met this young man in I'm assuming California because that's where he's comes
from he has the wolf connection which is
a wolf rescue organization and she said come with your wolves he had ne'er and I
had the gift whatever to actually be the first person to greet him and had
a conversation with him and he chose
a great spot to park with his Wolves he had never taken his wolves out of L.A.
And and they had a great time they had an air conditioned R.V.
That the air water and they yeah he takes them for four five mile hikes every day
no matter what but this was in you know it was great they always tethered and they
all had their own handler. There are five wolves thank you and one of the
chiefs stood up during the talking in the powwow grounds and he talked about the
Wolves but you prefaced it with the buffaloes he said We bought
a herd of buffalo twenty five years ago we fenced them in and
creator very clearly told us they're not to be fenced in because they broke right
through the fences but they stayed on our land when the
buffalo returned the elk returned and he said it has been many many
hundred or years or more since we have had wolves here and now the wolves are here
not in the wild but still there and so he is talking about the return of the
old ways of the old life and he was talking about the walls in particular he said I
went up my grandson my son and I went to see the wolves the wolves were on thirty
foot leaves and they had a shade structure that they could sort of like
a dead end that they could get into out of the sun and he went up in the the wall
fit they went up to talk to whatever was in the shade and he had
a he had tobacco any offered
a prayer of ept you know with his tobacco and he put the tobacco on the ground and
the wolf got up came over sniffed the tobacco and then looked at him
and looked at him and looked at him and he said
Wolf. Please pray for us we need your
prayers we are
a pitiful people each grandmother like Laura was saying would take two to three
hours to do with her ceremony whatever it was that she chose to do for us the one I
was most moved by was that the Nepalese grandmother Alma.
Bomb Bowl be A.M.B.O.
Who is a shaman and. Each grandmother had
a companion who was always there to get them water to help them move whatever and
her companion was
a male Most of the other companions were female but her companion was
a male she did not speak English and she started drumming so she started beating
her drum and I heard that she was calling in all of the goddesses
and all of the animals and it's
a Nepalese so I don't know what she's saying but it she's calling them and calling
them and chanting and chanting and she's just really getting herself into
a trance and she starts making animal noises
along with it and then she just falls over backwards and drops her drum her
companion picks up the drum and starts drumming and starts yelling at her shouting
at her or telling her to come to keep going or I don't know what he was telling her
it was never really but it was it was fascinating and as she's
doing this the Center for sacred studies know that when the grandmothers do their
ceremonies people go places. And so the Center for sacred
studies has a container for those people they
a Joe was on this team the lame in us don't really aren't aren't ministers of the
Center for sacred studies. Manned the audience and as
station behind they would watch their section of the audience and when they saw
someone doing odd things or whatever they just raise their hand and they would go
behind that person and raise their hand and then pretty soon you would see people
in white the people from Star Center for sacred studies would come and stand behind
the person and they would make an assessment is this a spiritual thing or is it
a physical thing and for each of the events that I saw it was all
spiritual and they would just just tell their neighbors to give
them space let it go and not not interrupt their process there is
a woman across from me and I'm going to have to put this down who for the whole
forty five minutes that this this Nepalese grandmother was doing her ceremony was
doing this. Forty five
minutes and. I can't do it for two minutes. So you know
it's extraordinary energy that is running through the crowd from that one
grandmother and mean it's incredible trust. And power of
each grandmother to be able to carry us so that was
a great example of what the Center for sacred studies does grandmother Margaret her
intent was ancestral healing ancestral trauma she got
a vision two years ago of recreating the ride home the right
home. There was the Trail of Tears were all the shy in were herded down to
Oklahoma to Chief said no we're not staying here and they gathered their people and
they rode home being chased murdered massacred but they did some of them did make
it home she wanted to recreate that ride as
a thread of healing all the way so she went on Kickstarter.
Raised enough money to provide provisions and you know
trucks and trailers and vans to to get everybody
through that ride she rescued nine mustangs that were going to be slaughtered
She got twenty three people not all were in the whole ride but they
come came and went as they could and they rode as much as they possibly could the
trail back home they've made detours to massacre sites.
To do extra Healy it was filmed she got
a film crew is part of this Kickstarter money and filmed the whole trail home the
ride home and it will be
a movie I was wandering around one evening and there was grandmother Margaret
gathered with the writers and we all three of us got to sit and listen to them tell
their tales of the healing that happened for them. Not just not just
Brian but.