WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:08.240 As our voices join together bring this night of celebration 00:08.240 --> 00:18.240 Let our hearts join together light the hymn star of creation 00:18.240 --> 00:20.160 We gather together 00:20.160 --> 00:27.520 I'm going to introduce those of us who went to the gathering and are going to share this evening. 00:27.520 --> 00:40.800 To my right is Lorna, this is Joe, Susan, and Diana. 00:40.800 --> 00:44.160 I'm love. 00:44.160 --> 00:52.720 The 13 grandmothers were created within the container of the Center for Sacred Studies. 00:52.720 --> 01:02.160 Joe T has made it her life's mission to study indigenous ways of life. 01:02.160 --> 01:08.000 And she created the Center for Sacred Studies. 01:08.000 --> 01:15.280 It is a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining indigenous ways of life 01:15.280 --> 01:28.080 through cross cultural spiritual practices, ministry, education, and a commitment to peace and unity for all people. 01:28.080 --> 01:38.320 Their activities include prayer services, ceremonies, and a variety of gatherings for worship according to various traditions. 01:38.320 --> 01:51.600 The purpose of these offerings is to invite individuals, families, and communities to develop devotion and to strengthen their relationship to the divine. 01:51.600 --> 01:57.360 They have the Council of the 13 Grandmothers is one of their programs. 01:57.360 --> 02:00.640 Another program is their ministry training program. 02:00.640 --> 02:14.880 It's a two year program towards getting a ministry available for you to use multiple indigenous ways of honoring spirit or practicing. 02:14.880 --> 02:24.480 They have a Stargate Mystery School, which is a residential program that explores non ordinary states of consciousness. 02:24.480 --> 02:28.560 And they have the Maitre breath work certification training. 02:28.560 --> 02:33.920 I don't really know what that is, but it's obviously some kind of breath work. 02:33.920 --> 02:47.920 In the fall of 2003, the Center for Sacred Studies sent out an invitation to 16 grandmothers of the 1613 answer. 02:47.920 --> 02:55.280 They all had stories of how they were connected before they were connected. 02:55.280 --> 03:10.000 But grandmother Rita Blumenstein, who's a 75 year old Yupik traditional healer, was guided by her great grandmother in 1942 when she was nine years old. 03:10.000 --> 03:24.800 Her great grandmother gave her 13 stones and 13 feathers, eagle plumes, and told her she would be part of a council of 13. 03:24.800 --> 03:38.800 And to save these precious relics for that time at their first gathering of the 13 grandmothers in 2004, the day after declaring themselves as an alliance. 03:38.800 --> 03:48.160 Grandmother Rita passed these 13 stones and feathers to the members of the newly formed alliance. 03:48.160 --> 03:57.040 It is a form of government ruled by a circle rather than a hierarchy of command. 03:57.040 --> 04:15.200 Since the inception of the International Council of 13 indigenous grandmothers, numerous elders around the world who are gathering their own councils or renewing their ancient rituals of leadership have approached us. 04:15.200 --> 04:30.960 The 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. 04:30.960 --> 04:46.320 The unfolding of our prayer shows us that many councils of elders are emerging in Europe, Australia, the Middle East to carrying the suffering world out of its misery. 04:46.320 --> 04:53.360 The International Council of 13 grandmothers is only one voice in this unity. 04:53.360 --> 05:04.000 And I'm just going to read a little bit of their from their alliance statement in October 13, 2004. They all signed this alliance. 05:04.000 --> 05:15.480 We are 13 indigenous grandmothers coming here from the Amazon rainforest, the Alaskan tundra of North America, 05:15.480 --> 05:32.000 the great forest of the American Northwest, the vast plains of North America, the highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, 05:32.000 --> 05:48.560 the mountains of Oksaka, the desert of the American Southwest, the mountains of Tibet and Nepal, and from the rainforest of Central Africa. 05:48.560 --> 05:56.120 We are affirming our relations with traditional medicine peoples and communities throughout the world. 05:56.120 --> 06:03.160 We have been brought together by a common vision to form a new global alliance. 06:03.160 --> 06:18.640 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. 06:18.640 --> 06:23.240 We come together to nurture, educate and train our children. 06:23.240 --> 06:34.560 We come together to uphold the practice of our ceremonies and affirm the right to use our plant medicines free of legal restriction. 06:34.560 --> 06:50.720 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. 06:50.720 --> 07:00.000 We believe that the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. 07:00.000 --> 07:13.880 We join with all those who honor the creator and to all who work and pray for our children, for world peace and for the healing of our mother earth. 07:13.880 --> 07:19.520 So the intent of the 13 grandmothers is healing and peace. 07:19.520 --> 07:27.360 Each six, every six months approximately, the 13 grandmothers gather in a new homeland. 07:27.360 --> 07:32.360 They gathered in Montana at grandmother Margaret's land. 07:32.360 --> 07:37.240 Well, it wasn't it was supposed to be at her land, but the fires made us move to the powwow grounds. 07:37.240 --> 07:44.400 Each grandmother who's holding the gathering has a special intent. 07:44.400 --> 07:53.200 Grandmother Margaret's special intent was healing ancestral trauma. 07:53.200 --> 07:55.760 So that's what we walked into. 07:55.760 --> 08:06.040 So a couple of 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. 08:06.040 --> 08:09.360 I was dead set against it and everybody here was going. 08:09.360 --> 08:14.680 And I'd heard about the 13 grandmothers for a very long time, and I just was like, nope. 08:14.680 --> 08:21.320 And then everybody left and I was driving by the theater and I heard Buffalo Heart and I went, forget this, I'm going. 08:21.320 --> 08:28.640 And so so I sat in the theater and I cried because their purpose is so beautiful. 08:28.640 --> 08:33.520 And I came back here and I said, I want to be a grandmother and I'm going to bring a grandma here. 08:33.520 --> 08:35.240 I want grandmother to come here. 08:35.240 --> 08:46.120 So somehow everything fell together and grandmother Margaret came in 2012 is where the next big gathering for them was going to be. 08:46.120 --> 08:49.080 And she said there would be the 13 tepees there. 08:49.080 --> 08:51.400 And I said, I'll be there. 08:51.400 --> 08:53.200 And everybody else said, we'll be there. 08:53.200 --> 08:55.560 And 2012 came and there we were. 08:55.560 --> 08:58.920 And that's our story of how we got there. 08:58.920 --> 09:02.400 And it was the journey's been pretty amazing. 09:02.400 --> 09:03.160 We were all there. 09:03.160 --> 09:12.360 We weren't all in the same place at the same time, but we all experienced this event and it was amazing. 09:12.360 --> 09:15.640 We got there and we were setting up our camp. 09:15.640 --> 09:21.280 We had a couple of tents to set up and a thunderstorm came by. 09:21.280 --> 09:25.760 Oh, it was lightning and thunder and the wind picked up. 09:25.760 --> 09:32.800 We had a fairly large structure halfway constructed and Susan was hanging onto one of the corners of it. 09:32.800 --> 09:39.400 I was hanging on the other and it was going up in the air and finally we got the fabric off of it and everything settled down. 09:39.400 --> 09:42.720 That was an introduction. 09:42.720 --> 09:51.440 We got our camp set up right on a Cheyenne man named Danny Sue just kind of wandered over to our campsite, 09:51.440 --> 10:00.400 introduced himself and welcomed us to the place that was so important to his people. 10:00.400 --> 10:10.960 He talked to us about his life and what he had done in his life and it was different. 10:10.960 --> 10:15.880 Just he was part of that that ground and you could kind of feel it. 10:15.880 --> 10:23.680 Another highlight for me was we actually had buffalo meat. 10:23.680 --> 10:30.120 There was a kitchen and there was one meal that everyone partook in on one of the days. 10:30.120 --> 10:34.440 It's a tradition and the buffalo is very important. 10:34.440 --> 10:38.000 Somebody said he's got the buffalo in his pickup truck. 10:38.000 --> 10:47.840 So I went out with four or five other people and there was a buffalo and said, yeah, got her an hour ago. 10:47.840 --> 10:53.480 And then he told about how he'd been waiting for three days for an animal to separate itself from the herd, 10:53.480 --> 10:57.600 because that's what they do when they offer themselves for this occasion. 10:57.600 --> 11:02.720 And one did, said one came out this morning, it's a two year old bull. 11:02.720 --> 11:06.560 And he said the hard part was getting it in the pickup truck by myself. 11:06.560 --> 11:08.400 I couldn't believe he did that. 11:08.400 --> 11:15.080 Anyway, they prepared it and it was very good and it was special. 11:15.080 --> 11:21.480 There were all kinds of people I could talk to about all kinds of things on the higher order. 11:21.480 --> 11:29.560 But I had conversations with Cheyenne men that were different for me. 11:29.560 --> 11:36.120 The ones that came to this gathering were the ones that I believe hold very important for them, 11:36.120 --> 11:42.600 their traditional values and their culture and the things that they want to retouch for themselves. 11:42.600 --> 11:49.640 And there was a calmness and a confidence and just an emptiness almost and the strength. 11:49.640 --> 11:54.080 But I don't see it very, very often. 11:54.080 --> 11:59.600 Guys in our culture are, you know, well, we won't go there right now. 11:59.600 --> 12:01.240 That's another story. 12:01.240 --> 12:04.040 But I sure related to the Cheyenne men. 12:04.040 --> 12:15.080 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 12:15.080 --> 12:27.240 where we all gathered every day where they were teaching different techniques of making hand tools and things like that. 12:27.240 --> 12:36.680 And at the I don't know what direction it was, but they had the buffalo skin, the hide stretched. 12:36.680 --> 12:38.440 So they did. 12:38.440 --> 12:40.520 Yes. So basically they killed. 12:40.520 --> 12:46.600 He killed it for the meat, but then they actually stretched the hide and grandmother. 12:46.600 --> 12:49.120 Yes, it was curing throughout the whole thing. 12:49.120 --> 12:55.280 And Grandmother Margaret, she scraped it and actually gave some to each one of the grandmothers to take back. 12:55.280 --> 12:59.720 So it was a it was a part of the ceremony that was really beautiful. 12:59.720 --> 13:06.280 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 13:06.280 --> 13:16.040 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. 13:16.040 --> 13:23.840 It was amazing to see these 13 women, 11, I think that two that weren't able to make it. 13:23.840 --> 13:33.000 But to go out there every day and each of them had three hours basically that they talked and they did what they do in their culture. 13:33.000 --> 13:34.920 They did their medicine. 13:34.920 --> 13:47.000 And it was amazing how these women at their age, at their evolution, they were able to do these these dances and ceremonies, 13:47.000 --> 13:51.480 you know, and just to talk in weather that was 110 degrees. 13:51.480 --> 13:56.280 Really, really, really amazing. 13:56.280 --> 14:00.720 One thing that for me that was. 14:00.720 --> 14:06.200 It really stood out and I call it the big sky, Montana, it's always been called the big sky. 14:06.200 --> 14:13.000 But I would look up and I would see so many different pictures in the sky. 14:13.000 --> 14:20.160 You know, I saw a bear upon a Native American and I saw a dolphin and I saw so many things. 14:20.160 --> 14:25.440 And you could look up and see that and then you'd look down and three minutes later, 14:25.440 --> 14:28.040 you'd look up and you would see the same thing as this. 14:28.040 --> 14:32.840 All these things were coming together and it was really beautiful. 14:32.840 --> 14:39.360 I was sitting on the bleachers and I was at the top of the bleachers and then kitty corner from me about 12 feet away, 14:39.360 --> 14:48.040 there was a woman sitting there and I noticed that my shadow was protecting her from the sun. 14:48.040 --> 14:59.400 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. 14:59.400 --> 15:02.960 And I would never know when someone here would be helping me. 15:02.960 --> 15:06.720 But that we all do. We all come together. 15:06.720 --> 15:09.960 There was something that was said. 15:09.960 --> 15:15.560 I think it was the last day of the closing ceremony, and one of the chiefs, I believe, don't quote me, 15:15.560 --> 15:21.360 got up and said, oh my gosh, what was it? 15:21.360 --> 15:26.080 Piece above, piece below and piece in the middle. 15:26.080 --> 15:29.800 And that resonated so much with me. 15:29.800 --> 15:34.800 There's. There's so many things I could talk about. 15:34.800 --> 15:39.120 Joe and I got there a week early to volunteer. 15:39.120 --> 15:48.120 So we had basically four days of being there, volunteering, working, setting up camp for everybody. 15:48.120 --> 15:55.560 The gathering was to have been at Grandmother Margaret's land, and they usually know for two years ahead of where each one's going to be. 15:55.560 --> 15:59.840 So I believe for two years she had been preparing her land for this gathering. 15:59.840 --> 16:02.840 There were 600 registered people. 16:02.840 --> 16:06.720 That's us coming from not Cheyenne land. 16:06.720 --> 16:12.960 And I'd say there was at least 400 at any one time Cheyenne there. 16:12.960 --> 16:16.440 So she was preparing for a thousand people. 16:16.440 --> 16:22.320 And then the fires came and they had to move two weeks before the gathering. 16:22.320 --> 16:24.960 She had to find another spot. 16:24.960 --> 16:35.960 And so luckily, they have this wonderful powwow ground, which I thought was very unique for us because we got to be in the energy of the powwows. 16:35.960 --> 16:44.600 Now, the week before the gathering started, well, a week and a half before the gathering started, they had had a powwow. 16:44.600 --> 16:50.040 They had seven hundred and eighty six registered dancers. 16:50.040 --> 16:54.920 Huge. And then we came in a week and three days after it was. 16:54.920 --> 16:58.320 Well, actually, we came in a week and a day after it was over. 16:58.320 --> 17:02.040 So so there's lots of energy there. 17:02.040 --> 17:10.800 They have their powwow ground set up with shaded bleachers and six, isn't it? 17:10.800 --> 17:16.080 Thank goodness is right. Six sweat lodges. 17:16.080 --> 17:27.560 And the Cheyenne people gifted us with a sunset and a sunrise sweat for three days. 17:27.560 --> 17:29.400 Each day there were two. 17:29.400 --> 17:33.120 Well, there was there were multiple there were small sweat lodges. 17:33.120 --> 17:38.440 So there were like two or three sweat lodges going each evening, each sunrise. 17:38.440 --> 17:44.520 So it was it was a very powerful piece of land to be on. 17:44.520 --> 17:47.920 And then I worked in registration once people started coming in. 17:47.920 --> 17:54.320 So I had the extraordinary gift of being able to greet people. 17:54.320 --> 18:03.640 And I got to greet a lot of Cheyenne who would come in and they'd say, what's going on here? 18:03.640 --> 18:06.240 And I would say. 18:06.240 --> 18:12.120 It's a gathering of the 13 indigenous grandmothers and thank you for hosting us. 18:12.120 --> 18:14.040 And they look at me like, what do you mean? 18:14.040 --> 18:15.920 They didn't even. But it's their land. 18:15.920 --> 18:19.160 I said, thank you for gifting us your land to have this on. 18:19.160 --> 18:23.040 Grandmother Margaret invited a million and one people to come, of course. 18:23.040 --> 18:25.400 Everybody she saw, she'd invite. 18:25.400 --> 18:31.720 And she met this young man in, I'm assuming, California, because that's where he comes from. 18:31.720 --> 18:36.680 He has the Wolf Connection, which is a wolf rescue organization. 18:36.680 --> 18:39.040 And she said, come with your wolves. 18:39.040 --> 18:46.040 He had never and I had the gift to the whatever to actually be the first person to greet him. 18:46.040 --> 18:51.520 And I had a conversation with him and he chose a great spot to park with his wolves. 18:51.520 --> 18:55.120 He had never taken his wolves out of L.A. 18:55.120 --> 18:57.640 And and they had a great time. 18:57.640 --> 19:03.200 They had an air conditioned RV that they had that iced water. 19:03.200 --> 19:09.360 And they. Yeah, he takes them for four or five mile hikes every day no matter what. 19:09.360 --> 19:11.000 But this was in, you know, it was great. 19:11.000 --> 19:16.480 They always tethered and they all had their own handler. 19:16.480 --> 19:18.360 There are five wolves. Thank you. 19:18.360 --> 19:27.480 And one of the chiefs stood up during the talking in the powwow grounds and he talked about the wolves. 19:27.480 --> 19:30.160 But he prefaced it with the buffaloes. 19:30.160 --> 19:36.400 He said, we bought a herd of buffalo 25 years ago. 19:36.400 --> 19:39.000 We fenced them in. 19:39.000 --> 19:46.280 And creator very clearly told us they're not to be fenced in because they broke right through the fences. 19:46.280 --> 19:50.760 But they stayed on our land. 19:50.760 --> 19:55.880 When the buffalo returned, the elk returned. 19:55.880 --> 20:01.760 And he said it has been many, many hundred years or more since we have had wolves here. 20:01.760 --> 20:05.560 And now the wolves are here. 20:05.560 --> 20:08.240 Not in the wild, but still there. 20:08.240 --> 20:15.320 And so he was talking about the return of the old ways of the old life. 20:15.320 --> 20:18.760 And he was talking about the wolves in particular. 20:18.760 --> 20:24.160 He said, I went up, my grandson, my son and I went to see the wolves. 20:24.160 --> 20:33.320 The wolves were on 30 foot leads and they had a shade structure that they could sort of like a den that they could get into out of the sun. 20:33.320 --> 20:39.640 And he went up and the wolf that they went up to talk to, whatever, was in the shade. 20:39.640 --> 20:48.720 And he had a he had tobacco and he offered a prayer of, you know, with his tobacco and he put the tobacco on the ground. 20:48.720 --> 20:57.120 And the wolf got up, came over, sniffed the tobacco and then looked at him. 20:57.120 --> 21:02.640 And looked at him and looked at him. 21:02.640 --> 21:09.680 And he said, Wolf, please pray for us. 21:09.680 --> 21:13.240 We need your prayers. 21:13.240 --> 21:17.000 We are a pitiful people. 21:17.000 --> 21:26.480 Each grandmother, like Lorna was saying, would take two to three hours to do her ceremony, whatever it was that she chose to do for us. 21:26.480 --> 21:40.400 The one I was most moved by was the Nepalese grandmother, Amma Bambal, B-A-M-B-O, who is a shaman. 21:40.400 --> 21:49.160 And each grandmother had a companion who was always there to get them water, to help them move, whatever. 21:49.160 --> 21:54.080 And her companion was a male. Most of the other companions were female, but her companion was a male. 21:54.080 --> 21:58.000 She did not speak English and she started drumming. 21:58.000 --> 22:01.200 So she started beating her drum. 22:01.200 --> 22:09.680 And I heard that she was calling in all of the goddesses and all of the animals. 22:09.680 --> 22:15.560 And it's a Nepalese, so I don't know what she's saying, but she's calling them and calling them and chanting and chanting. 22:15.560 --> 22:20.960 And she's just really getting herself into a trance. 22:20.960 --> 22:26.160 And she starts making animal noises along with it. 22:26.160 --> 22:31.280 And then she just falls over backwards and drops her drum. 22:31.280 --> 22:39.000 And her companion picks up the drum and starts drumming and starts yelling at her or shouting at her or telling her to come to keep going. 22:39.000 --> 22:41.640 Or I don't know what he was telling her because it was a Nepalese. 22:41.640 --> 22:45.280 But it was it was fascinating. 22:45.280 --> 22:59.000 And as she's doing this, the Center for Sacred Studies knows that when the grandmothers do their ceremonies, people go places. 22:59.000 --> 23:04.600 And so the Center for Sacred Studies has a container for those people. 23:04.600 --> 23:06.320 Joe was on this team. 23:06.320 --> 23:14.680 The laymen, us, don't really aren't aren't ministers of the Center for Sacred Studies. 23:14.680 --> 23:23.040 They would manned the audience and as station behind and they would watch their section of the audience. 23:23.040 --> 23:32.960 And when they saw someone doing odd things or whatever, they just raised their hand and they would go behind that person and raise their hand. 23:32.960 --> 23:36.040 And then pretty soon you would see people in white. 23:36.040 --> 23:43.520 The people from the Center for Sacred Studies would come and stand behind the person and they would make an assessment. 23:43.520 --> 23:48.680 Is this a spiritual thing or is it a physical thing? 23:48.680 --> 23:54.640 And for each of the events that I saw, it was all spiritual. 23:54.640 --> 24:06.240 And they would just in just tell their neighbors, just give them space, let it go and not not interrupt their process. 24:06.240 --> 24:21.120 There's a woman across from me and I'm going to have to put this down, who for the whole 45 minutes that this Nepalese grandmother was doing her ceremony, was doing this. 24:21.120 --> 24:27.880 Forty five minutes and I can't do it for two minutes. 24:27.880 --> 24:34.280 So, you know, it's extraordinary energy that is running through the crowd from that one grandmother. 24:34.280 --> 24:45.080 I mean, it's incredible trust and power of each grandmother to be able to carry us. 24:45.080 --> 24:50.920 So that was a great example of what the Center for Sacred Studies does. 24:50.920 --> 24:57.040 Grandmother Margaret, her intent was ancestral healing, ancestral trauma. 24:57.040 --> 25:03.480 She got a vision two years ago of recreating the ride home, 25:03.480 --> 25:13.240 the ride home, there was the Trail of Tears where all the Cheyenne were herded down to Oklahoma. 25:13.240 --> 25:15.800 Two chiefs said, no, we're not staying here. 25:15.800 --> 25:23.160 And they gathered their people and they rode home being chased, murdered, massacred. 25:23.160 --> 25:26.160 But they did some of them did make it home. 25:26.160 --> 25:33.120 She wanted to recreate that ride as a thread of healing all the way. 25:33.120 --> 25:44.240 So she went on Kickstarter, raised enough money to provide provisions and, you know, 25:44.240 --> 25:53.880 trucks and trailers and vans to to get everybody through that ride. 25:53.880 --> 25:58.760 She rescued nine Mustangs that were going to be slaughtered. 25:58.760 --> 26:09.000 She got twenty three people, not all were in the whole ride, but they came and went as they could. 26:09.000 --> 26:14.280 And they rode as much as they possibly could the trail back home. 26:14.280 --> 26:21.400 They made detours to massacre sites to do extra healing. 26:21.400 --> 26:28.160 It was filmed. She got a film crew as part of this Kickstarter money and filmed the whole 26:28.160 --> 26:32.160 trail home, the ride home, and it will be a movie. 26:32.160 --> 26:39.320 I was wandering around one evening and there was Grandmother Margaret gathered with the writers 26:39.320 --> 26:47.760 and we all three of us got to sit and listen to them tell their tales of the healing that happened for them. 26:47.760 --> 26:51.600 Not just not just the ride, but for them. 26:51.600 --> 27:06.880 We can bring this night of celebration that our hearts join together like the him star of creation. 27:06.880 --> 27:14.960 We can again become a planet of light. 27:14.960 --> 27:23.200 Uniting our souls as one, we are the end of night. 27:23.200 --> 27:31.440 We can again become a planet of love. 27:31.440 --> 27:42.160 And the light will come to shine in Earth as it shines above. 27:42.160 --> 27:50.240 Lack and limitation are not our birthright. 27:50.240 --> 28:12.640 We are the sons and daughters of the unlimited light.