Vatican City - July 3, 2008 - An extraordinary group of indigenous female elders from all over the world, The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, www.grandmotherscouncil.com will convene at the Vatican on Wednesday, July 9 at 10:30 a.m. where they will be holding a prayer circle in St. Peter's Square, accompanied by 9 year-old Davian Joell Stand-Gilpin, great-great-great-great granddaughter of Chief Dull Knife of the Lakota Nation, who will be performing traditional dances in native costume. Included in the Grandmothers' prayer will be the recitation of the names of all those who have come before them trying to open this dialogue between the Pope and indigenous people around the world. Having received no response from the Vatican to their first letter delivered in 2005, one of the Grandmothers will ascend the staircase to the papal residence to formally present a second letter.
Despite the Pope's sudden cancellation of his July 9th public audience, to which they held tickets, the Grandmothers have decided to persevere, despite much hardship, in laying down their prayers at the Vatican. Encouraged by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's official apology to the aboriginal peoples of Australia, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent apology to First Nations people in Canada, and Barack Obama's promise, if elected, to appoint a Native American adviser to his senior White House staff, the Grandmothers will let nothing deter them from contributing momentum to this wave of support and healing for the world's indigenous peoples.
In their first letter addressed to Cardinal Walter Kasper at the Vatican, dated October 22, 2005, the Grandmothers write, "Our peoples must still live with the continuing legacy of this first denial of our right to be treated as equal participants in the community of nations. Our peoples are still struggling for the right to live on earth and practice our cultural and spiritual traditions as our ancestors did." No response was received from the Vatican.
The July 9th gathering represents an enormous physical and logistical feat as the Grandmothers gather from all four directions of the World. The Grandmothers intend to present themselves in full native regalia and with the collective force of their individual personalities backed by centuries of indigenous tradition and wisdom.(more . . .)
Click here to see the full text of the letter that the Grandmothers took to the Pope. There is a long history of attempts to get the Vatican to rescind the edicts: click here to see the timeline of these attempts. In support of the Grandmothers petition, legal staff have assembled evidence that rescinding these edicts would be consistent with other actions that the Vatican has taken.
