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Photo Credits: Marisol Villanueva, courtesy International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers |
Grandmothers and Ambassadors in Dharamsala
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Rita Pitka Blumenstein
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Rita Pitka Blumenstein — Alaska
The past is not a burden; it is a scaffold which brought us to this day. We are free to be who we are—to create our own life out of our past and out of the present. We are our ancestors. When we can heal ourselves, we also heal our ancestors, our grandmothers, our grandfathers and our children. When we heal ourselves, we heal Mother Earth.
Yup'ik mother, grandmother, great grandmother, wife, aunt, sister,friend, tribal elder. Born on a fishing boat and raised in Tununak, Alaska, Rita attended a Montessori school in Seattle for four years. She raised two children and worked at many hospitals delivering babies as a doctor’s aide in Bethel and Nome. She has traveled and taught basket weaving, song, dance and cultural issue classes world-wide, earning money for Native American Colleges.
Rita has participated in many healing conferences where her teachings of the “Talking Circle” were recorded and published. Rita is currently employed with South Central Foundation as a tribal doctor using plant and energy medicine. |
Mona Polacca |
Mona Polacca — North America
Indigenous people have come through a time of great struggle, a time of darkness. The way I look at it is like the nature of a butterfly. In the cocoon, a place of darkness, the creature breaks down into a fluid and then a change, a transformation, takes place. When it is ready and in
its own time, it begins to move and develop a form that stretches and breaks away from this cocoon and emerges into this world, into life, as a beautiful creature.
We grandmothers, we have emerged from that darkness, see this beauty, see each other and reach out to the world with open arms, with love, hope, compassion, faith and charity.
Hopi/Havasupai /Tewa elder is working on her Ph.D at the Interdisciplinary Justice Studies department of
Arizona State University. Mona has worked on issues of Native American alcoholism. domestic violence and
mental health for the elderly native peoples. |
Agnes Baker Pilgrim
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Agnes Baker-Pilgrim — North America
We grandmothers have come from far and wide to speak the knowledge we hold inside. In many languages we have been told it is time to make the right changes for our families, for the lands we love. We can be the voice for the voiceless. We are at the threshold. We are going to see change. If we can create the vision in our heart, it will spread. As bringers of light, we have no choice but to join together. As women of wisdom we cannot be divided. When the condor meets the eagle—thunderbirds come home.
The oldest living member of her tribe, the Takelma Indians, originally from Southern Oregon. Agnes is a world renowned spiritual leader, member of the Historic Society and keeper of the Sacred Salmon Ceremony. |
Beatrice Long-Visitor Holy Dance
We are here with a prayer for our generations, for our grandchildren who are suffering, for our children’s grandchildren. How are we going to survive? Our government is taking everything from us. Our people want
our Black Hills back. The only way to survive is through prayer.
Beatrice Long-Visitor Holy Dance
Lakota keeper of the traditional ways, great grandmother, Native American Church elder, sundancer, healthworker for people with diabetes. |
Rita Long-Visitor Holy Dance — N. America
Rita Long-Visitor Holy Dance
Lakota keeper of the traditional ways, great grandmother, Native American Church elder, beadworker. |
Margaret Behan — Red Spider Woman |
Margaret Behan — Red Spider Woman
If we want to see changes first of all we need to be in peace inside ourselves, and then we need to be patient with the ones that have not yet arrived in that place of peace.
Arapahoe-Cheyenne #003300, fourth generation of the Sand Creek Massacre. As a child, Margaret attended the Catholic Mission and Government Boarding Schools. Margaret is a Cheyenne traditional dancer. She has served as a dance leader in Oklahoma and in powwows across the U.S. A sculptress for 30 years, she creates clay figurines that have won her many honors, including shows at Eastern New Mexico University, University of Wisconsin, Santa Fe Indian Market and the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial. Margaret is an accomplished and published author, poet and playwright. She has presented workshops and retreats for women, adult children of alcoholics and co-dependents. Margaret is currently taking an active role a leader of her tribe as a teacher of Cheyenne Culture and the President of the Cheyenne Elders Council.
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Flordemayo — Central America
In this time of movement, where celestial doors have opened, we must
do what we have been asked to do. We are standing in the movement
and the vibration of a sacred prophecy. The prophecy tells us that consciousness
is preparing the spirit of the feminine, the spirit of the grandmothers.
It is in the prophecy that we shall walk into the light united
from the four directions.
Mayan elder born in a small village on the Nicaragua/ Honduras
border. Flordemayo’s father was a local shaman and Flordemayo’s
mother was a midwife and a healer. As her children grew, Flordemayo
began to work as a healer/curandera. Flordemayo is a sundancer
who considers her Mayan heritage a keystone of her work.
Grandmother Flordemayo is currently on the board of directors
of the Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge in San
Juan, New Mexico. (www.intk.org) |
Flordemayo |
Julieta Casimiro |
Julieta Casimiro —Central America
We need to keep hope alive. It is like a never-ending story. In my village
there is violence. What is happening in my village is happening in the
world.
At this moment, we need our faith. We need to make that faith stronger
so we can continue doing our spiritual work and continue helping others.
Mazatec elder, from Huautla de Jimenez, carries the tradition of healing and ceremonies with the use of sacred plants, the pre-hispanic Teonanactl, “Ninos Santos” way.
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Maria Alice Campos Freire — South America
Maria Alice tells of an old man, an old shaman in the last year of his life...In the last year of his life, he did not eat anything, not even drink water, only divine medicine. All the time he was listening to sounds, divine sounds. He called one of our sisters who was older than us and asked her to write down messages he received for the women. He said the women would transmute first and then the men. So women be courageous. Never doubt this task, but take it in your hands.
In the church of the Eclectic Cult of the Santo Daime, spiritual leaders are called “padrinhos” (godfathers) and “madrinhas” (godmothers). Maria Alice became one of the madrinhas of the Santo Daime community Ceu do Mapia for her contribution as medium and healer, bringing with her the fundamentals of Umbanda to this eclectic center. Founder of Centro Medicina do Floresta (Forest Medicine Center), where, since 1989, she develops research and healings with the plants of the Amazon, as well as education of children and youngsters for the preservation of Nature and sustainable development. A member of the Alliance of Peoples of the Rainforest, she is an activist in the defense of their traditions and patrimony. |
Maria Alice Campos Freire |
Clara Shinobu Iura
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Clara Shinobu Iura — South America
In these latest times we live in, when killing seems almost natural, we are here in these days of prayer so that we can illuminate a consciousness for this planet that is in agony. Inside our hearts, I believe each of us present at this gathering feels great hope. This is a seed being planted.
Born in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Clara studied philosophy at the University of Sao Paulo. Through her experiences of clairvoyance and mediumship, she was initiated through many teachings, from macrobiotics to Umbanda. After helping with the curing of Padrinho Sebastiao, spiritual leader of one of the Santo Daime’s largest churches, she was invited to live and work in Céu do Mapiá, his community located in the heart of the Amazon forest. Since 1999, she has directed the Santa Casa de Saúde (Holy House of Health) Padrinho Manoel Corrente, Céu do Mapiá’s holistic healing center. |
Bernadette Rebienot — Africa
Nothing happens in my country without consulting the women. Our wise people, our elders, they are like libraries. We consult them whenever we need to make large decisions. Every five years, in my country, it is the women who make a peace march. It is the grandmothers who for one month go into the forest to prepare for this peace march. They fast, they pray and invoke the ancestors. When the grandmothers speak, the president listens.
Born in Libreville, Gabon of the Omyene linguistic community, widow and mother of ten, grandmother of twenty-three. Before retiring, Bernadette worked as an educator and school administrator. Bernadette has participated in numerous national and international conferences on Traditional Medicine. She is a healer, master of the Iboga Bwiti Rite and master of Women’s Initiations. Bernadette has offered initiations and consultations for the past thirty years. She has been President of the Association of Traditional Medicine Practitioners for Gabonese Health (U.T.S.G.) since 1994. |
Bernadette Rebienot |
Aama Bombo
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Aama Bombo — Asia
Buddhi Maya Lama, who is also known as Aama Bombo (Mother Shaman), was born in the remote village of Melong in the Eastern part of the Bagmati Zone, Nepal, 65 years ago. Her father was a renowned shaman in the Nepalese Tamang tradition. Aama became a shaman in spite of the Tamang tradition that women are not supposed to practice shamanism. In the early days, her father restricted her in every way from practicing shamanism. However, when her father died at the age of eighty, his spirits and other gods and spirits started visiting and teaching her to be a shaman, against the prevailing cultural values of Tamang society.
Today, Aama has achieved great renown in Nepal. She treats around 100 patients every morning at her house in
Boudhnath, near Kathmandu. Patients come to visit her from around the country, as well as from India and
Tibet. She does not discriminate against those she heals, treating the poorest of the poor as well as the Royal
Family of Nepal with equal dedication and respect. |
Tsering Dolma Gyaltong — Asia
I’d like to talk about problems in the world and what the sources of these problems are. I am Tibetan, so I will speak about the situation in Tibet, which affects all of us. Tibetans took very good care of the land, but now it is becoming a place where radioactive waste from products all over the world are being buried. It is a danger for everyone.
Tsering Dolma was born in Tibet in 1929. Because of the Communist invasion of Tibet, she escaped along with her family from Tibet in 1958 to India. In 1972, she and her family (four children) came to Canada as refugees. She returned to India and became one of the founding members who revived the Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA).During the next ten years, she served as an executive member of TWA and established over 30 branch offices worldwide. In 1995, Tsering Dolma attended the Fourth World Women’s Conference held in Beijing, China. She faced many threats and dangers as she along with others openly criticized the Chinese government and its treatment of the Tibetan people and especially Tibetan women. She now resides in Toronto and remains as an advisor to the TWA. |
Tsering Dolma Gyaltong |
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