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. This is Joe.
Susan. And I am.
I'm I'm in love. Bar the ash that's in the poll over there
my quote that story was OK that the sacred fire is
a lot of indigenous people have fire as their sacred item you know the wheat chills
the each Ollie said this Soon as if they're travelling as soon as they start they
start
a fire so for Native Americans and other indigenous people ceremony
is. Is started with the sacred fire and so the grandmothers
met on Monday morning at sunrise with the fire keeper and started the sacred fire
in
a sacred way and because the whole it was from Sunday from Monday morning til Sunday
night so it was
a whole week of the sacred fire so that made
us in sacred space the whole time with that sacred fire going and we
went Sunday night after the fire was out and collected ash
which is allowable we could touch it until after the fire was out. In the morning
each grandmother had one grandmother did
a ceremony three hours long and then one in the afternoon and one in the evening
and each time they would they would first go in to it was like it was like
a medicine wheel it was like twenty seven stones I think it was in two circles and
there was a it was open to the east just like
a medicine wheel would and they'd walk in and they do all the directions and they
do they do their own particular ceremony to their advantage of culture in that
fire and then they would bring that out and and when that was down time we were
allowed to go into that circle give thanks to that fire or use it
to cleanse yourself with or whatever and at the end when the fire was was going out
at the end of the ceremony we were there with told us that we were welcome to go
and take some of the ash and take that out with us and that carried what had gone
on that weekend in in the in the ash. Wheel or circle
around it was in the center of the big open power grounds that was surrounded by
a circular covered bleachers so it was all circular The fire was in the very middle
. So the question was for the sweat lodges were the stones in the sacred
fire or their own fire they were in their own fire Yeah yeah it was mix wets women
and their women have everybody had to be closed Yeah I'd have his address on below
your knees. I mean going. I wouldn't think more than six they were pretty small
there were six of them and they but only three of them would be functioning at one
time twice a day
a man was talking and he was sharing how. I didn't really see I'm I don't know
I'm going to say he's fifty I don't know how old he was but he was sharing how he
all of his life had had so much. Anger.
Hatred of the white man for his life for what we did to them
and he said about two years ago he came upon this realisation the oppressor
is just as traumatized as the oppressed and when he had that realisation
it totally lightened his attitude towards the white man is like oh you
know even though you were chasing and killing my ancestors you were being
traumatized as well I mean it's not easy to chase and kill someone it's not you
know it's not human nature that's not the Divine Being that we are doesn't hunt and
kill humans and that is that and somebody came up to me today and said there's
a woman here in this audience who I want you to meet and.
He went in matter and he said and she's real I wanted to make sure she was real
before I brought her to you and she's the real thing I would like to introduce
you to Custer's
a great great niece and she used it he said and here she is and it gave her name
and she stands up and she says I apologize
for my uncle's wrongdoing. Though all I did she broke.
It was it was really amazing. What I can add to it is that she didn't know
she didn't know where she was going when she took the trip with her sister or
friend she didn't realize that she would be on Cheyenne land she didn't realize so
it was it was it was it was
a part of what was to happen there in the healing. It wasn't her
intention to go there with Lorna Diana myself and Joe who camp together we went to
Little Big Horn and we took sacred ass from the sacred fire the fire was
started sunrise Sunday morning and the fire keeper kept the fire going all the
way until Sunday sunset. And he was a lookout
a man and so we gathered sacred ash which is what is on the table which if you have
a container with you you are welcome to take some home and we
went there and we had our sacred ash with us and the first place we went to. Was
to the the grave site of my ancestors were all Army
Cavalry my great grandfather was a cavalry he could have been
a Custer buddy I have no idea so I went there and I offered.
I just offered my understanding of their trauma
to help heal that and then we went to the Indian pieces and we did the same thing
all there and it felt very powerful. And there was we heard so many
stories about how the Native Americans were treated going back to
grandmothers and grandfathers and great great grandparents and how even now days it
is. It has been hard I think because they've heard the stories and live in that
fear and one woman got up and said I've always been afraid I didn't know what to do
and I couldn't go anywhere or do anything and now I know that there are people here
and now I can go forward and want to share about that that Calvary when we went
inside to that little viewing room the museum or whatever it was there was they had
recreated some of the the people that they had fought and custards army
and looking at this gentleman he looked so lifelike and so real
it really brought it home and there was
a little little thing talking about it and it said and I can't remember the
percentage but I think it was at least sixty percent of the Calvary were immigrants
so they were these poor people that were from another nation that had no idea what
they were going into they had no they were probably had nowhere to go and nothing
to do so the Calgary
a Calgary or whatever was the way to go to survive when they came to the Americas
so that was really interesting to them. So what I'd like to speak to.
Kind of follows Susan in some of the ancestral healing.
There were many layers of intention for ancestral healing and
one that I really came away with in learned
a lot in them still learning will always be learning about is my own
ancestral healing and that it's
a responsibility for me to tap deep into my ancestry one of the
things that was shared. Through story and through smaller circles in
the evening often in our culture
white culture we look to other cultures to find
healing and to find ways of of honoring prayer and ceremony
and what I came away with really strongly is that it's time for us
individually to tap into our own ancestry because we are all from indigenous
peoples. And it's not really about taking somebody else's
ceremony or ancestry and using that for our own healing it's about tapping deep
into him in you you have to go way back that was really
a powerful message for me I don't take it lightly I feel it's
a very important message. And it also.
Allowed me to understand something about my family we talked in
circle and through listening to people share about how
anger. Substance and substance abuse.
And and and emotions like that bitterness judgment can come
from the scars that we carry through our ancestors. And for the
first time in my life and I'm I'm not saying this lightly for the first time in my
life I felt like I could look at my mother's. Suffering with
compassion but in hearing the words that were shared I was able to understand that
she actually carries the suffering of many generations in her life without even
really knowing it and it gave me
a chance to look at her through different eyes which was really such such
a gift. You know I remember being in the circle and watching that everyone having
the traditions that they had and feeling that longing for that because. You know my
my heritage is so. So many different so many different routes I mean there's so
many different ways that I could go with that that I've never really followed any
of them and which one would I follow and you know and so so there was that that
longing for having a tradition and
a culture and also it brought me back to the fact that you know here I've lived
here on fashion my whole life and I've always kind of felt like I had to apologize
for that or something and watching the Cheyenne people being so proud of where they
live and their homeland and being that their homeland that I thought why I need to
take that back and maybe it's time for us to have our own new traditions that we
that we create I would love to talk about when the horses and the wolves came in
to the arena and it was really amazing but five of the grandmothers were writing
the horses and as. They were coming in and they were so it's
hard for me to talk about but I saw that the past and the present come
together and I found it and it became the now time and then it was healed and it
was amazing it was absolutely amazing and I just want to add something I remember.
Grandmother Agnus telling
a story about that ride she was the one the lead the horses in she was on the first
horse she hasn't
a mountain named after her in south western Oregon and quite
quite an amazing presence she told the story I don't remember what she said as far
as the timing but I think it was probably maybe weeks or. Shorter
a little bit longer prior to the ride into the circle that she had
a visit from her grandmother in the vision and if I remember the story right she
she said that her grandmother came to her in this vision and her grandmother was
a writer she rode horses that was her life was the horses and in the vision
all her grandmother told her was get on the horse. She didn't know what her
grandmother was talking about but when it came to be that there was this
opportunity for the grandmother some of them to ride the horses in for the first
time to welcome. She knew. At that point what her
grandmother was talking to you know about and she did with her grandmother said she
got on the horse my experience of when the writers came in. When they came in they
came in on the horses and then there was the shy and were drumming
a song to the horses they drummed
a couple of songs to the horses and there was one horse that was in front of me
that was kind of sideways so that it was like it was looking at me and I could see
I could see that it was like an expression on its face and the only way I can
describe it was that I could actually feel what the horse was experiencing and it
was it was humbled and it was grateful and it was appreciated it was all those
things it was like it was the horse going through and the horses going through the
experience of the healing also because they were used when we went to Custer's they
were used by the the Calvary would shoot them and lie behind the horses to protect
them while they were in battle there is
a grandmother from Guatemala and she had brought enough herbs to do food washes for
five hundred people and so you can imagine what you know. The
compassion in that she wasn't able to do all those five hundred but then the next
day when she had her prayer time she actually went around and anointed everybody's
third eye that she could reach with oil that opens your cell memories so that was
like a really big thing for me to I cried for
a while and that to. The last day when she gave her ceremony
she first asked the cloud people to come. To give us a little bit of
a reprieve from the heat because it had been one hundred seven and one hundred ten
and. I'm not joking you fifteen minutes later there were clouds in the sky
I wanted to start with one of the profound things that I heard there which was.
Allow the prayer to come. Which I thought was just just kind of blew me away it's
like you know how when you go to say
a prayer you're always just kind of blathering out something but just to take that
breath and allow it to come I thought that was beautiful
and anyway I kind of
a backtrack so the. Meeting grandmother Margaret was an amazing experience and
kudos to Lorna to bringing her here and when I said oh sure let's go did you know I
had two thousand and twelve I figured that's two years away it doesn't really
matter and then it kept getting closer and like oh wow what the heck is going on
we're going to Montana OK. So I wasn't really prepared for it I
guess I didn't really know what to expect and I didn't know why I was going and you
know I was just kind of along for the ride so we just blew and we set up our tent
and the next morning you know I got up and everybody's out and about I don't know
what it is standing around to see me do this but I get out of the tent and take the
first depth and I just trip been on him by fits and.
I go OK we are going to be humbled and air. Before we start this
any. So. About I kind of went fer
thinking you know I had this perception that the shy and people would be thinking
who are all these people coming into our territory and you know and and not feeling
necessary necessarily good thoughts about us invading their space and doing the
ceremony who are all these white people pretending that they know what's going on
and I found that it was absolutely to the contrary the Cheyenne people were just
the most warm and welcoming people and people came from oh over the world
there was
a woman from Scotland that was in her kilt and she was talking about how she was
embracing her heritage and she was doing her thing there was one from Spain who
came and talked and she was going to she was saying you know pray for us we're in
trouble right now and they were just from everywhere I was taken back by the
landscape because it is so. Barren and yet so fertile at the same time
the contradiction there the it's just the it's like nothing could live there and
yet the sacredness of the land is so great and on the last day we were there I
woke up thinking I just really missed the water. In so many way I miss the sound
I miss the coolness and the water and both the grandmothers that day their focus
was on the water and the blessings of the water and. One of them talked about how
we come into this world in
a river and and the other one was saying what she said I found very
profound was this that every time you use water to just thank it and so it's
become a real it's just become
a part of what I do now when I drink my water I'm just like thank you waters they
drink it so and I mean she said you know when you flush the toilet when you take
your shower when you get into water so just be aware of that at one point at the
ending of the ceremony there was somebody that got up and they were talking about
the Cheyenne people and she said I made
a commitment that every evening that I would say
a prayer for the shy and people and she asked us all to get up and all make
a commitment to say
a prayer for the shy people the last day one of the chiefs because there was
a number of chiefs wasn't there yeah even my seven clans and. One of
them got up there and he had tears in his in his eyes he said this is good
this is hard this is difficult this is good.
This is hard but this is really good you know because so many so many people in
their individual lives were healed during this week and the reason that we were
there was not it was not about politics it was not about all the things that you
think that it would be about it was really about prayer and ceremony and acceptance
of everybody and it was so powerful. The question is what can we take away
from this sharing. Of what comes to me is to
remember to tap in to your divine self
that with that connection. You
will be doing the work. Change you.
Did it changes it and if so how. For me my summer was very full I
did three incredible pieces of work. And
I feel clear or. More
really here well again. I'm
more. Aware. Of Water number
one and you know and being very grateful I mean. However it touches me whether I'm
showering in the morning I'm just the thank you water and I'm drinking it's thank
you Otter. I have.
I have
a lot of questions that I still need to answer so there's always it's always
a continuing journey. That this brought up that kind of fueled
a little bit more. Definitely more aware of prayer and the power of prayer
and trying to incorporate it more in my life I think that would be the changes.
What did I take away Well you know what what really lasts it's if it makes
a strong impression. I was impressed by that. The power
of
a group group energy focused on something higher that was real
that was that was really real what what certain people were experiencing in an
intensely and what I felt and it was real in the direction of helping
and opening and connecting and personally. Just the conversation
is I had with giant men three of them in particular never forget those.
I don't know it was like I was talking to somebody from another world. It was so
different it was new for me I'm sure there are people who had those experiences
a lot maybe they are that way there was much that I.
Felt in my heart through the six perience and the interconnection of
all things and how. I can't exist without water I can't exist
without the earth under my feet I mean I I'm here because of something or
someone else and and I feel. That was that
weekend for me in
a lot of ways. And that I also felt that it was such an honor
and I'm very grateful the for this to have the opportunity to be there in this
group within this group and to not have any expectations of what was going to
happen to be but to be a witness and to be a part of
a group that was holding sacred space for whatever was going to happen to happen
and it was safe it was
a safe place for that and I feel that that's going to be in my heart forever.
In it it is my belief that we are all part of the collective consciousness and
every time someone speaks from the heart or give someone well wishes or says I love
you it's adding to that and in me becoming of that collective consciousness in that
space. Things like what are happening now tend to
cease and will begin to cease and are beginning to cease so it'll happen less and
when it's in
a group like it was when we went to see the grandmothers It was amazing.
To. Shout and.
Not Judge. John.
John. That was. Done by or.
Leave. Given
model.