It is about to reproduce a PART TWO...

REGS: (NEW thread coming, so don't forget to save it to your fav's..)

..and here we go...

"Woman is the centre of the wheel of life. She is the heartbeat of the people. She is not just in the home, but she is the community, she is the Nation.

One of our Grandmothers.

The woman is the foundation on which Nations are built. She is the heart of her Nation. If that heart is weak the people are weak. If her heart is strong and her mind is clear then the Nation is strong and knows its purpose. The woman is the centre of everything."

----�� Art Solomon (Ojibwe), Kesheyanakwan (Fast Moving Cloud), Anishinaabe Elder.

"The traditional way of education was by example, experience, and storytelling. The first principle involved was total respect and acceptance of the one to be taught, and that learning was a continuous process from birth to death. It was total continuity without interruption.

Its nature was like a fountain that gives many colours and flavours of water and that whoever chose could drink as much or as little as they wanted to whenever they wished. The teaching strictly adhered to the sacredness of life whether of humans, animals or plants."

---- Art Solomon, Anishinaabe Elder

"There comes a time when we must stop crying and wringing our hands and get on with the healing that we are so much in need of."

---- Art Solomon, Anishinaabe Elder

"Grandfather, Look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation only the human family has strayed from the sacred way. We know that we are the ones who are divided and we are the one who must come back together to walk in the sacred way. Grandfather, Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion and honor that we may heal the Earth and each other."

---- Art Solomon, Anishinaabe Elder

In other words of Art Solomon, an Anishinaabe elder:

"To heal a nation, we must first heal the individuals, the families and the communities."

The closing words of Elder Art Solomon, at a conference at the University of Sudbury in 1992 were:

"We listened to three women yesterday. What they had to say tells me that spiritual rebirth is happening; spiritual rebirth is absolutely essential. The imperative for us now, as Native people, is to heal our communities, and heal our nations, because we are the final teachers in this sacred land. We have to teach how to live in harmony with each other and with the whole creation.

People will have to put down their greed and arrogance before they can hear what we are saying. I am not sure how many will do that. So we are in the process of healing ourselves, healing our communities, and healing our nations."

Dreamer's Rock, Rainbow Country, Ontario, Canada

(One of my many favorite Sacred places in the world)

This tall quartzite rock derives its name from a local Indian tradition that was used for dream visitation. On reaching puberty, Indian boys of the surrounding area were sent to the summit where they fasted and, through dreams, received powers from a "guardian spirit". The spirit would also advise them of their calling.

Shaw-wan-ossy-way, a famous chief and medicine man of the early 1800s, is reported to have acquired his healing powers after several visits to this rock where he lay in the shallow five-foot depression at the summit. Little used after the arrival of the Europeans, "Dreamer's Rock", with its incomparable view of the surrounding countryside, stands as a reminder of ancient Indian beliefs.

Art Solomon also once explained:

"I am a craftsman and I know that the craftsman puts something of himself into everything he makes.
The Hopis say that the Creator was the first worker. And since he is perfect, what he has made expresses his perfection. He is in it."

A passage from Art Solomon's book, Songs for the People: Teachings on the Natural Way (NC Press) describes Aboriginal society prior to the arrival of Europeans:

"We were not perfect, but we had no jails, we had no taxes,no wine and no beer, no old peoples�� homes, no children'��s aid society, we had no crisis centres. We had a philosophy of life based on the Creator. We had our humanity."

Art Solomon was the eldest of ten children born to a French Canadian mother and Ojibway father in the Killarney region of Georgian Bay, and attended Roman Catholic residential schools.

Art shared some of his experience while teaching in the Native Studies Department at Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario:

"You were just a kid doing a man'��s work. You know, we had to stand by that blacksmith fire well past what was reasonable or tolerable for children. We were kids, just like little Indian slaves. There was no one to comfort you or show you any care. For God's sake, I couldn'��t even see my sisters because they were all together, in another building. And, we, my sisters and brother were separated by the road between us. We could only go home once a year, maybe at Christmas, if we were lucky enough to have some one who was able to come.

My Mother had nine of us and she sure as hell couldn't leave her babies for us bigger ones. There was no money in those days. It was in the time of the First World War. My father couldn'��t come because he was a lumberjack working in the bush. That was the season he had to do the cutting in. During the summer, he was a fishing guide, a deep sea fisher man and a sailor who would go by train to Minneapolis and Detroit to pick up the boats of the wealthy Americans who were coming to Killarney, on the Georgian Bay (of Lake Huron).

There was lots of fish in the big waters (Lake Ontario and Lake Superior). It was a really hard time, those days. And that stuff stays with you. You learned it in your early childhood. It was really all you knew; the earlier stuff you forgot out of fear. Then we are left with trying how to figure it out on our own. It was very hard on my mother. We were a big help to her when we came home. But all that changed when they came back in August to take us away. That’s all I have to say about it."

Art wrote the following:

A Song for the People

Grandfather, Great Spirit I give you thanks That we can sit here In this circle of Life, We send Prayers And the very best thoughts

Grandmother Great Spirit As we raise this sacred pipe To give thanks to you And to all of your Creation, We give thanks To the spirit helpers Who came and sat among us.

Grandfather, Most sacred one, These are your prayers That we send to you As we sit here together and pray

Grandmother your children are crying. Grandfather your children are dying. The hands of greed And the hands of lust for power Have been laid on them And all around is death and desolation The gifts you made, for all your children Stolen, And laid to waste In a monstrous desecration.

Grandmother Great Spirit, As we sit and pray together We send you this prayer of affirmation. We your children whom you created in your likeness and image. We will reach out, And we will dry our tears And heal the hurts of each other. Our sisters and brothers are hurting bad, And our children, they see no future.

We know Grandfather, that you gave us a sacred power, But it seems like we don’t know its purpose So now we’ve learned as we sat together, The name of that power is love, Invincible, irresistible, overwhelming power, This power you gave us we are going to use, We’ll dry the tears of those who cry And heal the hurts of them that are hurting.

Yes Grandmother, We'll give you our hands And in our hearts and minds and bodies We dedicate our lives to affirmation. We will not wait nor hesitate, As we walk on this sacred earth We will learn together to celebrate The ways of peace, and harmony, and tranquillity, That come, And in the world around us.

Thank you Grandfather for this prayer.

From Eating Bitterness: A Vision From Beyond The Prison Walls by Art Solomon (who worked so actively on behalf of Native peoples in the prisons):

"When Christopher Columbus landed in North America not one Native person was in prison, because there were no prisons. We had laws and order because law was written in the hearts and minds and souls of the people and when justice had to be applied it was tempered with mercy. The laws came from the ceremonies which were given by the spirit people, the invisible ones.

As a people we were less than perfect as all other people are, but we had no prisons because we didn’t need them. We knew how to live and we also knew how not to live."

"Native people feel they have lost something and they want it back. It doesn'��t necessarily mean that when I talk about going back over there, that we stay over there. You have to get those teachings and pick up those things that we left along the way.

The drums, the language, the songs are all scattered around. We need to bring them into this time. You need these things to teach your children today in order to give them that direction and good feelings about who they are. They need to know where they are going. It doesn’t mean we have to go back to living in teepees. You can be a traditionalist and be comfortable wherever you are."

The Elder knows where the land is solid. He has been on that other path and found the way back to the good one. He can help others get there."

---- Art Solomon

"When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love.

Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it, because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world.

But with love, we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others."

---- Chief Dan George

"The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me.

The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me.

The strength of the fire, the taste of salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me.

And my heart soars."

---- Chief Dan George

"What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

---- Crowfoot

(*Remember.. Repetition has a purpose)

"Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother....
... and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?

---- Black Elk (Medicine Man Of The Lakota (Sioux)... (and Fools Crow's Uncle)

"Give me the strength to walk the soft earth..,
...a relative to all that is!"

---- Black Elk

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

"You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days, when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished.

The flowering tree was the living centre of the hoop and the circle of the four quarters nourished it.

The East gave peace and light,
the South gave warmth,
The West gave rain
and the North, with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance.

This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion. Everything the Power of the World does, is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball and so are the stars. The Wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round.

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. Our Teepees were round like the nests of birds and these were always set in a circle, the nation ‘s hoop, a nest of many nests where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children."

---- From: Black Elk Speaks, pp. 198-200) Spiritual Advisor to the Oglala Sioux in 1930.