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 breathwork certification training. 02:28.560 --> 02:33.920 I don't really know what that is, but it's obviously some kind of breathwork. 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 --> 03:34.240 And to save these precious relics for that time, at their first gathering of the 13 grandmothers in 2004, 03:34.240 --> 03:48.160 the day after declaring themselves as an alliance, 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 re-emergence 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 from their alliance statement. In October 13, 2004, they all signed this alliance. 05:04.000 --> 05:15.440 We are 13 Indigenous Grandmothers coming here from the Amazon rainforest, the Alaskan tundra of North America, 05:15.440 --> 05:31.920 the great forest of the American Northwest, the vast plains of North America, the highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, 05:31.920 --> 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 --> 05:56.080 We are affirming our relations with traditional medicine peoples and communities throughout the world. 05:56.080 --> 06:03.200 We have been brought together by a common vision to form a new global alliance. 06:03.200 --> 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 --> 06:34.560 We come together to nurture, educate, and train our children. 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 --> 06:42.000 We come together to protect the lands where our peoples live and upon which our cultures depend, 06:42.000 --> 06:50.720 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 --> 07:13.840 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. 07:13.840 --> 07:19.520 So the intent of the 13 grandmothers is healing and peace. 07:19.520 --> 07:27.280 Each six, every six months approximately, the 13 grandmothers gather in a new homeland. 07:27.280 --> 07:32.240 They gathered in Montana at Grandmother Margaret's land. 07:32.240 --> 07:37.200 Well, it wasn't, it was supposed to be at her land, but the fires made us move to the powwow grounds. 07:37.200 --> 07:44.400 Each grandmother who's holding the gathering has a special intent. 07:44.400 --> 07:53.120 Grandmother Margaret's special intent was healing ancestral trauma. 07:53.120 --> 07:55.760 So that's what we walked into. 07:55.760 --> 08:04.320 So a couple years ago, two years approximately, I went to a movie at the theater called The Next Seven Generations. 08:04.320 --> 08:09.280 And I didn't want to go. I was dead set against it and everybody here was going. 08:09.280 --> 08:14.640 And I'd heard about the 13 grandmothers for a very long time and I just was like, nope. 08:14.640 --> 08:21.280 And then everybody left and I was driving by the theater and I heard Buffalo Heart and I went, forget this, I'm going. 08:21.280 --> 08:28.560 And so I sat in the theater and I cried because their purpose is so beautiful. 08:28.560 --> 08:33.440 And I came back here and I said, I want to be a grandmother and I'm going to bring a grandma here. 08:33.440 --> 08:35.200 I want grandmother to come here. 08:35.200 --> 08:46.080 So somehow everything fell together and Grandmother Margaret came in 2012 is where the next big gathering for them was going to be. 08:46.080 --> 08:51.360 And she said there would be the 13 teepees there. And I said, I'll be there. 08:51.360 --> 08:55.520 And everybody else said, we'll be there. And 2012 came and there we were. 08:55.520 --> 09:02.320 And that's our story of how we got there. And it was the journey's been pretty amazing. 09:02.320 --> 09:10.000 We were all there. We weren't all in the same place at the same time, but we all experienced this event. 09:10.000 --> 09:15.600 And it was amazing. We got there and we were setting up our camp. 09:15.600 --> 09:21.200 We had a couple of tents to set up and a thunderstorm came by. 09:21.200 --> 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 on to one of the corners of it. 09:32.800 --> 09:34.880 I was hanging on the other and it was going up in the air. 09:34.880 --> 09:39.360 And finally we got the fabric off of it and everything settled down. 09:39.360 --> 09:44.320 That was an introduction. We got our camp set up. 09:44.320 --> 09:51.440 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 --> 10:09.520 He talked to us about his life and what he had done in his life. 10:09.520 --> 10:15.920 And it was different. He was part of that ground and you could kind of feel it. 10:15.920 --> 10:23.680 Another highlight for me was we actually had buffalo meat. 10:23.680 --> 10:30.160 There was a kitchen and there was one meal that everyone partook in on one of the days. 10:30.160 --> 10:34.400 And it's a tradition that buffalo is very important. 10:34.400 --> 10:41.760 Somebody said he's got the buffalo in his pickup truck. So I went out with four or five other people. 10:41.760 --> 10:47.760 And there was a buffalo and said, yeah, got an hour ago. 10:47.760 --> 10:53.360 And then he told about how he'd been waiting for three days for an animal to separate itself from the herd. 10:53.360 --> 10:57.520 Because that's what they do when they offer themselves for this occasion. 10:57.520 --> 11:02.640 And one did. He said one came out this morning. It's a two-year-old bull. 11:02.640 --> 11:08.320 And he said the hard part was getting it in the pickup truck by myself. I couldn't believe he did that. 11:08.320 --> 11:14.960 Anyway, they prepared it and it was very good and it was special. 11:14.960 --> 11:21.440 There were all kinds of people I could talk to about all kinds of things on the higher order. 11:21.440 --> 11:29.440 But I had conversations with Cheyenne men that were different for me. 11:29.440 --> 11:36.000 The ones that came to this gathering were the ones that I believe hold very important for them, 11:36.000 --> 11:42.480 their traditional values and their culture and the things that they want to retouch for themselves. 11:42.480 --> 11:51.360 And there was a calmness and a confidence and just an emptiness almost in the strength. 11:51.360 --> 11:59.520 Don't see it very often. Guys in our culture are, you know, well, we won't go there right now. 11:59.520 --> 12:04.000 That's another story. But I sure related to the Cheyenne men. 12:04.000 --> 12:14.960 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 12:14.960 --> 12:27.120 where we all gathered every day where they were teaching different techniques of making hand tools and things like that. 12:27.120 --> 12:36.640 And at the, I don't know what direction it was, but they had the buffalo skin, the hide, stretched. 12:36.640 --> 12:44.320 So they did. Yes. So basically they killed, he killed it for the meat, but then they actually stretched the hide. 12:44.320 --> 12:49.040 And grandmother, yes, it was curing throughout the whole thing. 12:49.040 --> 12:55.200 And grandmother Margaret, she scraped it and actually gave some to each one of the grandmothers to take back. 12:55.200 --> 12:59.680 So it was a part of the ceremony that was really beautiful. 12:59.680 --> 13:06.160 Well, I'll tell you, it's so hard to put into words what it was like to be there with those women 13:06.160 --> 13:10.960 and people from all over the world that came for the same thing. 13:10.960 --> 13:16.000 For everything we believe in, peace and love and healing and harmony. 13:16.000 --> 13:23.760 It was amazing to see these 13 women, 11, I think the two that weren't able to make it. 13:23.760 --> 13:32.960 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. 13:32.960 --> 13:34.880 They did their medicine. 13:34.880 --> 13:46.960 And it was amazing how these women at their age, at their evolution, they were able to do these dances and ceremonies. 13:46.960 --> 13:51.440 You know, and just to talk in weather that was 110 degrees. 13:51.440 --> 13:56.240 Really, really, really amazing. 13:56.240 --> 14:04.480 One thing that for me that was, it really stood out and I call it the big sky, Montana. 14:04.480 --> 14:06.240 It's always been called the big sky. 14:06.240 --> 14:12.960 But I would look up and I would see so many different pictures in the sky. 14:12.960 --> 14:20.160 You know, I saw a bear paw and a Native American and I saw a dolphin and I saw so many things. 14:20.160 --> 14:26.080 And you could look up and see that and then you'd look down and three minutes later you'd look up 14:26.080 --> 14:30.320 and you would see the same thing as all these things were coming together. 14:30.320 --> 14:32.880 And it was really beautiful. 14:32.880 --> 14:41.360 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 there was a woman sitting there. 14:41.360 --> 14:48.080 And I noticed that my shadow was protecting her from the sun. 14:48.080 --> 14:59.360 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. 14:59.360 --> 15:04.640 And I would never know when someone here would be helping me but that we all do. 15:04.640 --> 15:06.640 We all come together. 15:06.640 --> 15:12.880 There was something that was said, I think it was the last day of the closing ceremony. 15:12.880 --> 15:21.360 And one of the chiefs, I believe, don't quote me, got up and said, oh my gosh, what was it? 15:21.360 --> 15:26.080 Peace above, peace below, and peace in the middle. 15:26.080 --> 15:29.200 And that resonated so much with me. 15:29.200 --> 15:34.000 There's so many things I could talk about. 15:34.000 --> 15:39.120 Joe and I got there a week early to volunteer. 15:39.120 --> 15:47.520 So we had basically four days of being there, volunteering, working, setting up camp for everybody. 15:47.520 --> 15:51.440 The gathering was to have been at Grandmother Margaret's land. 15:51.440 --> 15:55.440 And they usually know for two years ahead of where each one's going to be. 15:55.440 --> 15:59.760 So I believe for two years she had been preparing her land for this gathering. 15:59.760 --> 16:02.800 There were 600 registered people. 16:02.800 --> 16:06.640 That's us coming from not Cheyenne land. 16:06.640 --> 16:12.960 And I'd say there was at least 400 at any one time Cheyenne there. 16:12.960 --> 16:16.480 So she was preparing for 1,000 people. 16:16.480 --> 16:20.560 And then the fires came and they had to move. 16:20.560 --> 16:24.960 Two weeks before the gathering, she had to find another spot. 16:24.960 --> 16:31.600 And so luckily they have this wonderful powwow ground, which I thought was very unique for us 16:31.600 --> 16:35.920 because we got to be in the energy of the powwows. 16:35.920 --> 16:43.040 Now the week before the gathering started, well, a week and a half before the gathering started, 16:43.040 --> 16:44.480 they had had a powwow. 16:44.480 --> 16:50.080 They had 786 registered dancers. 16:50.080 --> 16:51.120 Huge. 16:51.120 --> 16:56.640 And we came in a week and three days after it was, well actually we came in a week and a day 16:56.640 --> 16:58.320 after it was over. 16:58.320 --> 17:02.000 So there's lots of energy there. 17:02.000 --> 17:11.440 They have their powwow ground set up with shaded bleachers and six, isn't it, thank goodness 17:11.440 --> 17:16.000 it's right, six sweat lodges. 17:16.000 --> 17:27.520 And the Cheyenne people gifted us with a sunset and a sunrise sweat for three days. 17:27.520 --> 17:29.600 Each day there were two sweat lodges? 17:29.600 --> 17:33.040 There were multiple, there were small sweat lodges. 17:33.040 --> 17:38.400 So there were like two or three sweat lodges going each evening, each sunrise. 17:38.400 --> 17:44.480 So it was a very powerful piece of land to be on. 17:44.480 --> 17:47.840 And then I worked in registration once people started coming in. 17:47.840 --> 17:54.320 So I had the extraordinary gift of being able to greet people. 17:54.320 --> 18:03.600 And I got to greet a lot of Cheyenne who would come in and they'd say, what's going on here? 18:03.600 --> 18:10.720 And I would say, it's a gathering of the 13 indigenous grandmothers and thank you for 18:10.720 --> 18:12.080 hosting us. 18:12.080 --> 18:13.920 And they'd look at me like, what do you mean? 18:13.920 --> 18:15.840 They didn't even, but it's their land. 18:15.840 --> 18:19.520 I said, thank you for gifting us your land to have this on. 18:19.520 --> 18:23.440 Grandmother Margaret invited a million and one people to come, of course. 18:23.440 --> 18:25.520 Everybody she saw she'd invite. 18:25.520 --> 18:30.880 And she met this young man in, I'm assuming California, because that's where he comes 18:30.880 --> 18:31.880 from. 18:31.880 --> 18:37.040 He has the Wolf Connection, which is a wolf rescue organization. 18:37.040 --> 18:39.840 And she said, come with your wolves. 18:39.840 --> 18:46.480 And I had the gift, whatever, to actually be the first person to greet him. 18:46.480 --> 18:51.600 And I had a conversation with him and he chose a great spot to park with his wolves. 18:51.600 --> 18:56.400 He had never taken his wolves out of LA. 18:56.400 --> 18:57.640 And they had a great time. 18:57.640 --> 19:05.280 They had an air conditioned RV that iced water. 19:05.280 --> 19:09.500 He takes them for four or five mile hikes every day, no matter what. 19:09.500 --> 19:11.000 But this was great. 19:11.000 --> 19:16.640 They're always tethered and they all had their own handler. 19:16.640 --> 19:18.800 There are five wolves, thank you. 19:18.800 --> 19:26.160 And one of the chiefs stood up during the talking in the powwow grounds and he talked 19:26.160 --> 19:27.160 about the wolves. 19:27.160 --> 19:30.240 But he prefaced it with the buffaloes. 19:30.240 --> 19:36.520 He said, we bought a herd of buffalo 25 years ago. 19:36.520 --> 19:43.640 We fenced them in and creator very clearly told us they're not to be fenced in, because 19:43.640 --> 19:46.640 they broke right through the fences. 19:46.640 --> 19:51.000 But they stayed on our land. 19:51.000 --> 19:56.120 When the buffalo returned, the elk returned. 19:56.120 --> 20:00.640 And he said, it has been many, many, hundreds of years or more since we have had wolves 20:00.640 --> 20:05.880 here and now the wolves are here. 20:05.880 --> 20:08.480 Not in the wild, but still there. 20:08.480 --> 20:15.600 And so he was talking about the return of the old ways, the old life. 20:15.600 --> 20:18.560 And he was talking about the wolves in particular. 20:18.560 --> 20:24.280 He said, I went up, my grandson, my son and I went to see the wolves. 20:24.280 --> 20:29.600 The wolves were on 30 foot leads and they had a shade structure that they could sort 20:29.600 --> 20:33.560 of like a den that they could get into out of the sun. 20:33.560 --> 20:39.880 And he went up and the wolf that they went up to talk to, whatever, was in the shade. 20:39.880 --> 20:46.080 And he had tobacco and he offered a prayer with his tobacco. 20:46.080 --> 20:54.600 And he put the tobacco on the ground and the wolf got up, came over, sniffed the tobacco 20:54.600 --> 21:02.920 and then looked at him and looked at him and looked at him. 21:02.920 --> 21:09.960 And he said, wolf, please pray for us. 21:09.960 --> 21:13.440 We need your prayers. 21:13.440 --> 21:17.280 We are a pitiful people. 21:17.280 --> 21:23.280 Each grandmother, like Lorna was saying, would take two to three hours to do her ceremony, 21:23.280 --> 21:26.600 whatever it was that she chose to do for us. 21:26.600 --> 21:38.640 The one I was most moved by was the Nepalese grandmother, Amma Bambal, B-A-M-B-O, who is 21:38.640 --> 21:40.920 a shaman. 21:40.920 --> 21:47.480 And each grandmother had a companion who was always there to get them water, to help them 21:47.480 --> 21:49.520 move, whatever. 21:49.520 --> 21:51.020 And her companion was a male. 21:51.020 --> 21:54.240 Most of the other companions were female, but her companion was a male. 21:54.240 --> 21:58.120 She did not speak English and she started drumming. 21:58.120 --> 22:01.680 So she started beating her drum. 22:01.680 --> 22:09.920 And I heard that she was calling in all of the goddesses and all of the animals. 22:09.920 --> 22:13.960 And it's in Nepalese, so I don't know what she's saying, but she's calling them and calling 22:13.960 --> 22:16.160 them and chanting and chanting. 22:16.160 --> 22:21.880 She's just really getting herself into a trance. 22:21.880 --> 22:26.400 And she starts making animal noises along with it. 22:26.400 --> 22:31.480 And then she just falls over backwards and drops her drum. 22:31.480 --> 22:36.320 Her companion picks up the drum and starts drumming and starts yelling at her or shouting 22:36.320 --> 22:39.080 at her or telling her to come to keep going. 22:39.080 --> 22:45.780 Or I don't know what he was telling her because it was in Nepalese, but it was fascinating. 22:45.780 --> 22:53.240 And as she's doing this, the Center for Sacred Studies knows that when the grandmothers do 22:53.240 --> 22:59.240 their ceremonies, people go places. 22:59.240 --> 23:04.840 And so the Center for Sacred Studies has a container for those people. 23:04.840 --> 23:06.560 Joe was on this team. 23:06.560 --> 23:17.480 The laymen, us, aren't ministers of the Center for Sacred Studies, manned the audience and 23:17.480 --> 23:23.140 as station behind, and they would watch their section of the audience. 23:23.140 --> 23:29.640 And when they saw someone doing odd things or whatever, they just raised their hand and 23:29.640 --> 23:33.120 they would go behind that person and raise their hand. 23:33.120 --> 23:37.840 And then pretty soon you would see people in white, the people from the Center for Sacred 23:37.840 --> 23:43.620 Studies would come and stand behind the person and they would make an assessment. 23:43.620 --> 23:48.920 Is this a spiritual thing or is it a physical thing? 23:48.920 --> 23:54.960 And for each of the events that I saw, it was all spiritual. 23:54.960 --> 24:01.240 And they would just tell their neighbors, just give them space. 24:01.240 --> 24:02.300 Let it go. 24:02.300 --> 24:06.440 And not interrupt their process. 24:06.440 --> 24:10.920 There's a woman across from me, and I'm going to have to put this down, who for the whole 24:10.920 --> 24:18.760 45 minutes that this Nepalese grandmother was doing her ceremony, was doing this. 24:18.760 --> 24:23.760 45 minutes. 24:23.760 --> 24:28.040 And I can't do it for two minutes. 24:28.040 --> 24:34.800 So it's extraordinary energy that is running through the crowd from that one grandmother. 24:34.800 --> 24:45.300 It's incredible trust and power of each grandmother to be able to carry us. 24:45.300 --> 24:51.480 So that was a great example of what the Center for Sacred Studies does. 24:51.480 --> 24:57.300 Grandmother Margaret, her intent was healing ancestral trauma. 24:57.300 --> 25:03.620 She got a vision two years ago of recreating the ride home. 25:03.620 --> 25:10.920 The ride home, there was the Trail of Tears where all the Cheyenne were herded down to 25:10.920 --> 25:13.500 Oklahoma. 25:13.500 --> 25:16.020 Two chiefs said, no, we're not staying here. 25:16.020 --> 25:23.340 And they gathered their people and they rode home being chased, murdered, massacred. 25:23.340 --> 25:26.400 But they did, some of them did make it home. 25:26.400 --> 25:33.320 She wanted to recreate that ride as a thread of healing all the way. 25:33.320 --> 25:45.720 So she went on Kickstarter, raised enough money to provide provisions and trucks and 25:45.720 --> 25:54.120 trailers and vans to get everybody through that ride. 25:54.120 --> 25:59.020 She rescued nine Mustangs that were going to be slaughtered. 25:59.020 --> 26:02.500 She got 23 people. 26:02.500 --> 26:09.300 Not all were in the whole ride, but they came and went as they could. 26:09.300 --> 26:14.460 And they rode as much as they possibly could the trail back home. 26:14.460 --> 26:21.640 They made detours to massacre sites to do extra healing. 26:21.640 --> 26:22.640 It was filmed. 26:22.640 --> 26:29.820 She got a film crew as part of this Kickstarter money and filmed the whole trail home, the 26:29.820 --> 26:30.900 ride home. 26:30.900 --> 26:31.900 And it will be a movie. 26:31.900 --> 26:37.700 I was wandering around one evening and there was grandmother Margaret gathered with the 26:37.700 --> 26:44.660 writers and we all, three of us got to sit and listen to them tell their tales of the 26:44.660 --> 26:48.140 healing that happened for them. 26:48.140 --> 26:55.140 Not just the ride, but for them. 27:48.140 --> 27:57.900 We are the sons and daughters of the unlimited light.