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The Mother of All Particles: Epic Discovery for Physics & Metaphysics

March 6, 2013 by Steven McFadden

Relatives , I invite you to read on and learn of a major moment of recognition, a discovery of importance for both Physics and Metaphysics

I invite you to check out this brief video clip from the March 5, 2013 edition of The New York Times. It’s a clip about discovery in 2012 of the Higgs Boson particle after a decades-long search by a large, sophisticated network of the world’s top physicists.

The Times wrote: “…It was the longest, most costly hunt in science, for an elusive particle that was said to be THE KEY TO THE WORKINGS OF THE UNIVERSE…

“For a generation of physicists, it was an appointment with history.” As you watch the video clip and listen to the scientists comment on the significance of this 2012 scientific and metaphysical breakthrough, you will hear them tell of finally grasping — at an elemental level — something essentially important about the feminine-yin half of the universe.

The perceptions of the scientists may well remind you of the understandings about 2012 shared with the peoples for the last two decades by our Mayan relatives in the South Direction. A turning point in time.

Of synchronus note, the same week the Times reported vividly on the Higgs Boson, the UN-sponsored International Womens Day released the a short video clip, One Woman involving 25 singers from 25 nations around the world. In the USA President Obama signed into law the historic Violence Against Women Act.

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“Profiles in Wisdom” – bestseller now an ebook

July 21, 2012 by Steven McFadden

“This wise and provocative collection is highly recommended.” – Library Journal

I’m pleased to report that Harlem Writer’s Guild has this week announced that one of my early books, the best-selling Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth, has been converted to an eBook file format. The new eBook version, EPUB, is becoming the standard for the eBook industry.

With the epic fires, drought and storms that have marked this summer, the publication of this work as an ebook seems all the more relevant. Many of the venerable native elders I interviewed for the book spoke of Earth Changes, as understood from their traditional teachings. And they offer much guidance on how we can respond.

In writing the book, I took my lead from John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage. Focusing on the quality and relevance of sagacity, the book Profiles in Wisdom presents the stories and thinking of 17 Native American spiritual elders. As our existing culture shifts, what do the ancient ones who have been trained in the sacred traditions of Turtle Island (North America) have to say to us? The elders offer penetrating and poetic insight on a host of crucial matters.

Profiles in Wisdom gives the elders an opportunity to relate their diverse teachings about the human relationship with the Earth. Each of the elders has a personal story, character trait, or insight that can help us get in touch with our own innate wisdom. Their teachings are in response to a series of critical questions asked of each of them: What is your personal story? What do you see happening in the world now? What do you see ahead? What specific advice do you offer to those who will listen? What have you come to know about living in balance on the Earth? How could other people apply these lessons?

Profiles in Wisdom is available for immediate download as an ebook on many web sites.

New York Times Book Review:“Profiles in Wisdom does a fine job not only of presenting the dignity, complexity, and wit of important Indian philosophers and religious leaders, but also of issuing cautions agains easy uplift and wisdom injections…There are some stirring and unexpected powers unleashed in this book.”

The Washington Times, John Elvin: “Our leaders should sit and listen to the counsel Steven McFadden has gathered in this book.”

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R.I.P. Mishomis, Grandfather William Commanda

August 4, 2011 by Steven McFadden

: At the UN – Grandfather Commanda (center) displays the Seven Fires Wampum Belt
at The House of Mica – UN headquarters on Manhattan Island.

Dear Relatives – Grandfather William Commanda died early on the morning of August 3, 2011, two days before the start of his annual gathering in Maniwaki, Quebec, Canada. He was 97 years old.

Among the many accomplishments in his long life as a protector and defender of the land, Grandfather served as Spiritual Advisor to the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth in 1995-95, a walk chronicled in Odyssey of the 8th Fire. The story of Grandfather’s leadership of this epic walk is also at the heart of the project to create an audiobook based on the nonfiction Tales of the Whirling Rainbow. I am honored to have known Grandfather, and to have traveled with him, since 1989. He was a remarkable man with a brilliant soul.

Rest in Peace, Mishomis (Grandfather)

* * * * * * * *

One vivid memory of Grandfather’s resolute nature comes from Friday, November 24, 1995 in the desert to the west of Rio Rancho, New Mexico. It was Day 155 in the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth, what I have come to describe as the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. In his 80s at the time, Grandfather served as Spiritual Advisor for the walk and its epic quest across Turtle Island (North America).

: Grandfather Commanda (author photo)

Grandfather was leading us from Atlantic to Pacific to meet with and learn from wise elders of all traditions, and to seek out “what had been left by the side of the trail long ago” as described in the Seven Fires Prophecy.

But our grand pilgrimage for peace and unity had hit the wall of human nature by the time we got to New Mexico. We had been arguing viciously among ourselves, and fractured into four or more groups — each group filled with suspicions and hostility.

As we arrived at a desert knoll to hold our council and air our ferocious grievances against each other, the wind rose. It blew so hard — 45 to 50 mph — that the air literally began to scream across the desert. The unrelenting desert gale blew stinging sand into everyone and everything. The storm rocked across the desert relentlessly, whipping ceaselessly through our gathering as we huddled low on a dune, seeking a windbreak. We prayed.

In the western desert, Grandfather listened to us for a long, long time, and then confronted our brokenness. His hands shook and his eyes filled with tears. He wiped his tears and then spoke. “No,” he said. “This is not my way, this is not the way. You must all stay together. You must stay in unity.”

He was unshakeable on this point: “You must all stay together as one group, one circle,” he said. “You can’t kick people out of the hoop. That’s not the way forward. You must find a way to stay together…You cannot fulfill the Seven Fires teachings any other way…”

In this manner it was settled. We were all to walk together — one reconciled, reunited walk.

* * * * * * * *

With the help of his companion Romola Treblecock, Grandfather Commanda developed his own website, a Circle of All Nations. Among the many treasures in his spiritual legacy to the people, he left his vision for Asinabka – an indigenous guided island for personal and planetary healing, located downtown in the river that runs through the heart of Ottawa, Ontario and Hull, Quebec. Grandfather Commanda’s final vision is only part way to fulfillment. It needs wider support to come to full realization.

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Pyramids Added to True Tales of The Whirling Rainbow

January 27, 2011 by Steven McFadden

Ever since writing and publishing Tales of the Whirling Rainbow last September, I’ve been tinkering with it: improving the content, layout, and adding photographs. This January I decided to add a new chapter about the thousands of pyramids and temples in Meso-America, and the role they have in the teachings about the transition of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012.

Temple of Ku’Kulkan – the grand pyramid El Castillo at Chichen Itza, on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

The full title of the ebook is Tales of the Whirling Rainbow: Myths & Mysteries for Our Times. It is available in over a dozen ebook formats, including Kindle, Nook, PDF for any computer, and also in iPad, IPhone and Smartphone formats, and its sold at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and other popular online retailers. For now, the most up-to-date version of the book is available at Smashwords.com.

The new chapter, based on interviews with traditional Mayan Daykeepers, expands the scope of the book by exploring the key role of the 21,000 pyramids and temples of Meso-America as they figure in the 2012 teachings of the Maya. This elaborate network of sacred centers, the Mayan Daykeepers told me, has a key energetic role to play in keeping the balance as Earth Changes intensify, and our human lives attain high velocity.

The tales offer many dynamic insights associated with 2012, including the role the Sun may play. The true tales are told in plain, precise language, creating a quick but deep investigation into the mythology of this moment in time. “The calendar of 26,000 years is new for the dominant civilization,” Mayan Daykeepers told me, “but the calendar portends big changes.”

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New ebook: Tales of the Whirling Rainbow

September 19, 2010 by Steven McFadden Leave a Comment

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve written and published a new book Tales of the Whirling Rainbow: Myths & Mysteries for Our Times.

The book is my account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an exploration of how those myths are echoed in real time. The true stories in the book arise out of my experiences over the last four decades, and also out of the venerable tradition of storytelling.

This ebook is in part a pastiche of elements I have written for other books and articles, now woven together in a new telling both by the context of time as 2012 approaches, and also by the living, mythic image of the whirling rainbow.

In his book Transformations of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell noted that a society that does not have a myth to support it and give it coherence goes into dissolution. “That,” he wrote, “is what’s happening to us.” And that, I feel, is why it is worthwhile to tell the rainbow tales again in yet another way in this ebook, to contribute a word picture of what I regard as a supporting and coherent myth for our times, a mystery to engage the fullness of the contemporary soul.

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Emphatic Echoes: The Cry of the Earth

April 24, 2010 by Steven McFadden Leave a Comment

As I think of it today, I am moved to post a link to Day 15 of the epic, non-fiction saga, Odyssey of the 8th Fire.

Odyssey of the 8th Fire is a an online journal I created in 2006 to tell the true story of a prayer walk for the Earth that lasted for eight months as a band of pilgrims walked from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, listening all the way to the call of the land, as well as the people, plants, and animals who live upon the land.

On Day 15 of this historic journey, the band of walkers arrived at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City. While at the UN they remembered the explicit messages of the traditional elders of Turtle Island (North America), as they fulfilled one of the core traditions of the land they have responsibility to caretake. Because the elders words remain relevant and worthy of careful consideration, I am posting a link to that one, small but significant part of the great, long saga.

Traditional elders of the Four Directions meet with UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali in his office at the conclusion of the Cry of the Earth. Photo by Wanelle Fitch, 1993.

My friend Cindy Pickard has produced a beautiful film exploring these themes: The 8th Fire. I highly recommend her film.

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Arising from Sacred Land, Aiming to the Future: Doug George-Kanentiio

October 14, 2009 by Steven McFadden Leave a Comment

On an August evening about two months ago, Doug George-Kanentiio offered a ten-minute oration while the Sun was setting. Choosing good words, he spoke about the power of great art, about our prophetic era, and about our relations with the land and each other. At the end, he gave voice to the emerging vision of establishing an Indigenous University in America.

The microphone Kanentiio stood at that evening was set on land about twenty-five paces from “Sacred Rain Arrow,” one of the sculptural masterpieces created by the late Allan Houser. Kanentiio’s talk was part of a benefit event for Go Native Arts, hosted in the garden of the Houser Estate about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An hour after Kanentiio’s oration, his wife Joanne Shenandoah stood before the same microphone. By this time the stars had emerged, and Jupiter was strong in the sky to the East. Joanne faced south, centered herself, and gave voice to the enthralling Prophecy Song from her Orenda CD. She was supported with harmonies arising from daughter, Leah, and flanked in the West by the beseeching bronze presence of Sacred Rain Arrow.

We are now reminded
to be aware of our place upon this earth.
and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves,
our families, our nations,
the natural world, the Creator.

The words sing,
we are to awaken.
Stand up, Be counted,
for you are being recognized
in the Spirit world.

– Joanne Shenandoah – Copyright

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Several days after the benefit event, I met Kanentiio again amid a crush of people by the bandstand at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. We found a quiet place to sit and talk.

To answer my questions about the land, Kanentiio began telling of where he was born and raised, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh (St. Lawrence River) at the New York-Ontario frontier. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Their confederacy is the oldest, active participatory democracy on Earth. With its Great Law of Peace, the Confederacy was a direct example and inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

A former editor of Akwesasne Notes, Kanentiio is also a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, and the author of several books, including Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. In collaboration with his wife, Joanne, he is co-author of Skywoman: Tales of the Iroquois.

For many years Kanentiio served on the board of directors for the National Museum of the American Indian, and he is currently serving on the board for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest interfaith gathering on Earth. Steadily growing in scope and influence, the Parliament will reconvene this December in Melbourne, Australia.

As we talked in Santa Fe, Kanentiio reminded me that Mohawk Territory straddles the border between the USA and Canada. It’s territory that’s in both nations, and it’s in neither. “Akwesasne is a nexus,” he said. “It’s situated at a juncture of land and water that is of considerable strategic importance. We straddle the St. Lawrence River at what were once known as the 25-mile rapids.

“Historically at Akwesasne the lives of the people were interwoven with the land and the water. People were called there because the place had all the resources necessary for life, and those resources gave stability to the people and to the community. That provided the Mohawk people with a high degree of cultural continuity, and it gave us a certain power and purpose. We always had that.

“Then in April of 1959 there came a break with this pattern. The St. Lawrence Seaway came into being, and our whole way of life changed. The natural, free flow of the living waters at 25-mile rapids was choked with locks. That energetic change fractured our community. It messed up the fishing grounds, and it separated the people from the water and from the land. We began to metamorphose from a vigorous people to a sedentary people. We became wage earners for the first time, dependent on money, and we began to lose our language. That brought about a huge change in values, and a whole generation of our children began to change from that point onward.

“When traditional indigenous peoples are separated from the land, then there is a break in trust in relation to the land – a break that goes both ways. We don’t trust the land, and the land doesn’t trust us. But you must have that trust. When we don’t communicate with each other, and when we don’t communicate with the land, the relationships become abrasive.”

In this context, Kanentiio mentioned Handsome Lake (Ganyahdiyok), the legendary figure who brought Gaiwiio (Good Words) to the people over 200 years ago. Among his life experiences, Handsome Lake was given a vision of the future. He foresaw environmental disasters including air and water pollution, and he offered prophetic cautions.

“Handsome Lake and others warned us that the final assault on the Iroquois – the greatest danger – would come from within. That’s what’s happening now,” Kanentiio said. “In terms of ideals, the Iroquois Confederacy represents something very good. But things change. Metamorphosis has continued and is continuing today, but at a faster pace. In our tradition we have in our creation story an important part about the twins, one twin of the good mind and one twin of the bad mind. That’s something to remember. These twins are always present.”

fatedwheel “Smuggling of tobacco and narcotics, and gambling — whatever commands a profit — has created a narco-culture at Akwesasne,” he said. “Our good, traditional Iroquois values of humility, compassion, simplicity, generosity and communal service have been replaced by greed, intimidation, violence, and death.”

After hearing this, I told Kanentiio of a meeting that happened about 17 years ago in Montreal. I found myself sitting beside the late Hopi messenger Thomas Banyacya in a hotel lobby after he had given a talk. As we conversed, Grandfather Banyacya told me that long ago, when the Earth had gone through another epic metamorphosis, gambling had been the precipitating factor. “That was the last straw,” Banyacya told me. “When the gambling and all its related problems built up to a certain level, that triggered the great flood that cleansed the land.”

After listening to my story, Kanentiio responded. “We Indian people are supposed to be the custodians of the land, but what we are doing now is running casinos. We are sidetracked. We have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. The bright, shiny thing along the path has enticed many of the people to become lost, to lose track. Handsome Lake warned of that a long time ago, and now it’s everywhere.

“The Earth is beginning to stir,” he said. “She’s beginning to express the dreams and visions of long ago. The Earth is showing us that she’s increasingly upset with us. The Earth is beginning to arouse. There will be huge changes in this time of reckoning, of healing, until the balance is restored. We are very close now. It won’t be subtle. Big winds will come. The Earth will shrug its shoulders.

“We are not able to change this movement toward purification,” Kanentiio said, “but we know some things will survive. The Confederacy will endure in spite of itself. That is a shared understanding among traditionals, that despite all the odds the Confederacy will survive and go on, as the larger world will also go on in a new way.

“People feel the urgency of the changes now, and many are motivated to do things. That’s good. Preserve what you can. You have to leave something good and tangible behind.

wampum_belt

A particular thing that Kanentiio would like to help leave behind is an Indigenous University for North America.

“A few years ago, Vine Deloria, Jr. thought maybe we could take the system of formal education, which had been used to undermine traditional native societies, and reverse it’s impact by creating our own institution based on the university system,” Kanentiio said. “We would create a formal, accredited university where native knowledge keepers would have a place to teach.

“We have native colleges, but an Indigenous University could in time meet and exceed universal standards for learning, and provide formal instruction in all native arts and sciences, of which there are many. It would have a high emphasis on online study. That’s a dream of ours.”

The Indigenous University would be open to everybody on the planet, no restrictions of race or religion. ”That is typical Iroquois,” Kanentiio explained. “Our way is to make it possible that people come to a meeting of the good mind. To get there, you need to sit in respect with one another. You have to invite people from all walks of life and viewpoints to share information, and you have to listen to one another.

“We have the ideas to create an Indigenous University,” he said. “What we need now are the physical and financial means to bring it about.”
wampum_belt

: Joanne Shenandoah and Doug George-Kanentiio

In a related effort to weave indigenous viewpoints into the world’s larger framework, Kanentiio and Joanne — as well as other native peoples from North America and around the world — have become involved with the Parliament of World Religions. “We have in part managed to get the Parliament to adopt a native perspective on the Earth: to regard the Earth not as a commodity, but as a being.”
wampum_belt

Kanentiio serves on the board of directors for the Parliament. He noted that the theme of their December, meeting will be ‘Reconciling with Mother Earth.’ “My hope for this Parliament,” he said, “is that teachers from world’s various disciplines, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and many more — can get together again in Melbourne and finally acknowledge that Earth is a living planet and should have standing. If spiritual leaders accept that, and take these spiritual understandings to their nations and congregations to make it a guiding principle, then that’s a good thing.

“We feel the real revolution in human society will come about through these spiritual changes,” Kanentiio said. “It has to happen there first, on the spiritual level. Once we change the spiritual, then the politics will follow.

“For me,” he said, “the roots of this understanding go back to our Iroquois value that all human beings have equal worth, if not necessarily equal abilities. Everyone’s life has meaning. Some are singers and healers, and some are cooks or builders, but each one of us has the blessings of existence. To cultivate this, to acknowledge, to have gratitude for being alive. You can always do that. Our lives are not casual, not by chance. We have been directed here to this time and place, and we are meant to take all of our life experiences with us, all the joys, suffering, and pain, and to take it with us with good mind when we return to the place of living light. That makes the light stronger for the generations to come.”
wampum_belt

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A Circle of All Nations, A Culture of Peace

May 27, 2009 by Steven McFadden 2 Comments

circle.logo My old friend and teacher, Grandfather William Commanda, Ojigkwnong, now age 95, will soon have another vital meeting with officials of the Canadian Government concerning his vision for Victoria Island (Asinabka).

Like the other key visions which have punctuated Grandfather’s life, the vision for an international healing center at Victoria Island has profound global importance.

Victoria Island is a jewel of nature, strategically located in the middle of the river that runs through downtown Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, under the shadow of Parliament Hill, where the government of Canada meets. For countless centuries, Victoria Island was a traditional spiritual meeting ground for the Algonquin peoples.

Grandfather envisions returning the island to its spiritual purpose by establishing an inclusive City Park, a Historic Interpretative Site, and International Peace Center at the Sacred Site of Asinabka -Chaudière Falls. The center would host programs and processes for individual, group, and planetary healing, development and peace.

Grandfather Commanda is the senior Algonquin Elder in this territory. Since 1970, he has been the Keeper of three sacred wampum belts of spiritual and historic importance: the Seven Fires Prophecy Belt, the 1701 Friendship Belt and the Jay Treaty Border Crossing Belt.

I first met Grandfather in 1989 when I interviewed him for my book, Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth. We then became closer friends in the mid-1990s as we participated in a prophetic and historic walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific – The Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth (Odyssey of the 8th Fire).

Over the decades, Grandfather has earned wide international respect as a visionary and healer. Most recently – May, 2009 – he was honored by being invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General of Canada. The Order of Canada is the centerpiece of Canada’s honors system and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.

Grandfather and his friends have been working for over ten years to develop the vision for Victoria Island, and now, in 2009, they feel the time is right to take another big step forward.

Many people and groups – Algonquin and non-Algonquin, from Canada, the U.S.A. and a host of other nations — have written to the Canadian Prime Minister, and other government officials, seeking to have this vision realized. More letters and expressions of support are needed and welcome now.

Victoria Island served as an important sacred ceremonial place for the original peoples of the land. It seems the land has been waiting for the ancient communal fires to be re-kindled..

With Grandfather Commanda’s vision to build a peace and healing center, comes an opportunity to cleanse and reawaken the land, to ignite the fires for a circle of all nations, and to help spark a culture of peace. Meegwich.

The sacred place of the vision: Chaudiere Falls between Ottawa and Hull in Canada.

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R.I.P. Leon Secatero

October 1, 2008 by Steven McFadden

by Steven McFadden

Grandfather Leon Secatero, 65
Headman, To’hajiilee Chapter, Navajo Nation
widely respected native elder,
a founder of Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth
died on Sunday, September 28, 2008.

Services were held each day after his death, concluding Thursday, October 2, 2008 at To’hajiilee-Canoncito, NM.

I remember Grandfather Leon as a true spiritual elder: calm, wise, full of understanding and insight. When I interviewed him in 2007 about his journey among the Wind Walkers, he related a part of his story in this manner:

Leon saw the Wind Walkers take corn pollen in their mouths to bless their words before they spoke to him.

“The elders talked about positive things, focusing on the positive to make things happen, to bring in good energy so that life will continue. They said to use song, prayer, and dance to focus on positive thought, and to help us go forward on the path to the future in a good way, in a sacred way.”

The full story, Journey Among the Wind Walkers

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Journey Among the Wind Walkers

April 21, 2007 by Steven McFadden

While Leon Secatero was teaching at a conference in early February, he experienced a stroke. He eventually lost consciousness and found himself on the other side.

According to observers, Leon’s stroke began to manifest while he was talking in front of the group at the Travelodge hotel in Ottawa, Ontario. They saw him slow down, and then have difficulty remembering and speaking. Leon later lost consciousness. People at the conference immediately cared for him, arranged medical assistance, and began praying and doing ceremonies.

Strokes happen to people when blood vessels are blocked by clots, which restrict the flow of glucose and oxygen to the brain. Because strokes can impact the brain the way a heart attack impacts the heart, they are sometimes referred to as a brain attacks.

When Leon experienced his stroke and journeyed to the other side, he found himself among an assembly of Wind Walkers–the spirits of the many elders and medicine people he has known over the decades of his life. The Wind Walkers had knowings they wanted to share. Their communications helped illuminate Leon’s understandings about the sacred path leading into the next 500 years…

Leon Secatero is an elder of the Canoncito Band of Navajo, To’Hajiilee, located

west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Years ago he founded the Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth, a group in consonance with the ancient teaching of the Americas concerning the eagle and the condor, and the healing link these noble birds symbolize for peoples of the south and north.

Leon Secatero, author photo 2006.

In early February, 2007 Leon traveled north to the capital city of Canada. He had been invited to speak at a conference on the theme “Respecting Mother Earth Brings Unity,” hosted by Canada’s Indigenous Cooperative on the Environment (ICE).

At the conference, Leon joined with other native wisdom keepers such as Mishomis William Commanda (Algonquin), Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Lakota), and Liliana Madrigal of the Amazon Conservation Team. Together these knowledge holders shared key cultural and environmental teachings – teachings that could be of immediate and enduring value to the industrial-digital culture as it now experiences a shockingly rapid deterioration of earth’s vital support systems.

********

I interviewed Leon for several hours in mid-April here in New Mexico. He told me that while he was unconscious in Ottawa he made a journey to the other side. This is where he encountered the spirits he spoke of as Wind Walkers, a reflection of the close association between wind and spirit in the culture and language of the Navajo (Diné).

Leon told me that when he journeyed to the other side he saw the Wind Walkers sitting in circles. As far out as he could see, the Wind Walkers sat grouped in progressively larger concentric circles. There were clouds of light, like a dome, stretching over all of these circles. Leon saw many recently deceased Navajo elders, as well as the spirits of people who had died years ago. He saw also the spirits of elders and medicine people from all the different cultures and spiritual pathways around the world.

“Many people talk about seeing the other side,” he said. “I know this was the other side. The things I saw on the other side were very beautiful. I saw the glass world, the crystal world, and many different colors of light. The Wind Walkers were able to use this. They used the colors of light – the energy vibrations — to heal.”

“For a while when I talked about sacred things like this,” Leon said, “I used words like ‘revelation’ and ‘prophecy.’ But those words do not represent real indigenous thought. More appropriately, I would speak of ‘a way of being,’ or a ‘knowing’ — the knowing that’s in us. ”

Leon told me he saw the Wind Walkers take corn pollen in their mouths to bless their words before they spoke to him. “The elders talked about positive things, focusing on the positive to make things happen, to bring in good energy so that life will continue. They said to use song, prayer, dance to focus on positive thought, and to help us go forward on the path to the future in a good way, in a sacred way.”

“What I was shown was the way we should be, how we must be to influence the future, and also to influence all the plants, the animals, the waters, the air and the fire. It’s important. I came to a knowing that the only way you can have the power, is through the color and the light of positive thought and energy. Put all your concentration on this, not other things. Put your concentration on the positive. That’s how it’s done.”

For several years Grandfather Leon has been developing a book he has entitled The Sacred Path for the Next 500 Years. When I interviewed him in April he told me, “before I was rushing the book, and in some ways I was encountering blockages because of that rushing. Now I have the key to go beyond the blocks so that the book can be completed and come out through a publisher.”

“All the indigenous knowings, or prophecies that have been passed down talk about a time when the five-fingered ones (human beings) would be so caught in the illusion of separation that they would forget their original instructions. This forgetting has caused terrible suffering for everyone and everything. It is very important for us to reconnect our life and our ways.

“Things are changing, and in the midst of this the most important thing is the sacred path to the next 500 years, creating that path in a sacred manner with positive thoughts and actions. We have experienced negativity on a mass scale. There is social illness; there is great pain and suffering in our world. Those kinds of negativity and social illnesses we do not need to take along this new pathway into the next 500 years. If we do, we only become sicker.

“We can put everything forward that is sacred. You and I have to do it. Our children — and the generations that are coming — are waiting for this gift. So we are going to have to hold hands and go in one direction to give it to them.

“Everything that I saw while I was with the Wind Walkers, and that I see now about what’s going on, everything that’s alive: I see their purpose, their beauty, and their limits. I see nature, the whole universe, so wisely and fully developed to bring us everything that we need for life. I am even more deeply grateful for the way things are in nature, the cosmic order. The ways we are limited, and the ways we are open. I really appreciate the intelligence and purpose of the whole universe. That’s a feeling that has deepened for me since my stroke.

“What is so very important in our lives now — just like water, we need it all the time — is recognition that there is sacredness in every form. When you put all that together you have a process of what I call ‘sacredization,’ a fundamental recognition of the sacredness of all things. That, I feel, is a part of our original instructions as human beings.

“This is the time that we call the Winds of Change,” Leon told me. “It’s important to stabilize our way of being, the way we think, the way we do things. We can do that by deliberately planting positive seeds of culture and relationship and sacredization, seeds that will help carry us to the next 500 years.

“It’s the beginning of the end of the wars, the terrorism that we know. That will be a thing of the past. These are the greatest foundations we can build for our children, so we can really be human beings, and bring this destiny about. We need to cleanse ourselves, heal ourselves, and everything around us, especially our Mother Earth. Our Navajo Blessingway says that: ‘everything is forever.'”

“For the next 500 years the winds of change are blowing,” Leon said. “Many of us have knowings about this. In fact, it’s a knowing we all have, but that most people ignore. They are confused, and they look the other way. But the knowing is there for all of us.”

“We are all asking ourselves ‘what do we do next?’ Our ending time has come, and we are now asking for the best possible way to restructure, reset, and put things back on track that give strength to us. So we have a huge task. We are going to have to come together. This pathway into the next 500 years has to be open, so that we can bring in sacredness. We want to make a beginning, a pathway, a blessingway for this next 500 years. That’s the task that is before all of us right now.”

On his journey among the Wind Walkers Leon recognized the spirit of Grandfather Martin Martinez, a Navajo Medicine Man who passed over just a few months ago in November, 2006 at the age of 96. Leon had known Grandfather Martinez through his life – a friendship of 42 years–and he respected and loved him deeply. Leon had been deeply grieved by grandfather’s death.

“It was back in 1964 when I first met Grandfather Martinez. “I was about 16 then,” Leon told me. “Grandfather Martinez had come to Canoncito, my home community, to be part of a rodeo. He was a calf roper. I remember, he came with his family to the rodeo grounds to camp out. Everybody did that back then.

“Then while they were there camping in Canoncito for a few days,” Leon recalled, “Grandfather Martinez drove over to visit with my grandfather one evening. He was driving a 1948 Ford pickup truck. He asked my grandfather about getting some sheep so they would have meat in their camp. We had 300 – 400 sheep then. He picked one up, put it in the pickup and left. A couple of weeks later Grandfather Martinez visited us again, this time to bring some papers concerning vision and plans for the community. That began a long friendship.

“Even then,” Leon said, “I knew that Grandfather Martinez could see inside me, and that he could see inside other people, too. He knew right away that we were going to be doing things together.”

Grandfather Martin Martinez of Haystack, New Mexico was widely renowned for the many decades over which he sang the Blessingway, the Nightway, and other songs and ceremonies of the Navajo traditions. “He always brought light to every situation,” Leon recalled. “He always had clarity and insight to bring to the challenges we faced.”

In later years, among many collaborations, Grandfather Martinez, his wife Janice, and Leon helped create and facilitate the history-making Sodizin Ceremony, and video documentary. The ceremony took place on the flank of Tsoodzil, the Turquoise Mountain, also known as Mount Taylor in New Mexico. This sacred mountain marks the south direction of the Four Corners of Turtle Island (North America), and is brimming with natural and spiritual forces.

The 2004 Sodizin Ceremony brought together people of all colors and faiths in respect and harmony, giving them an opportunity to assemble as a spiritual and ecological vanguard. “With that ceremony,” Leon told me, “we brought in the colors, the patterns and tones of healing energy, and activated them throughout the world.”

Leon continued telling the story of his journey to the other side. “I was aware of myself in that dimension, as I was with the Wind Walkers in their circles. I felt happy,” he said. “I wanted to stay with them. But I was told I needed to go back. It wasn’t time yet. They all told me to turn around and to go back.

“I told someone on the other side, ‘I have done my job. There are other medicine people that can teach about this 500-year thing, who fully understand. Then I told them my job was to bring people together. But they sent me back to do what needs to be done, to help bring the wholeness.”

“They started to walk away, and I wanted to go with them,” Leon said. “I tried to catch up with them all, to follow them and go with them. But soon I started looking back. and it was as if there had been a shell that I had entered and was coming out from, a beautiful pearl shell.

“They ordered me to go back. The clouds streamed by, and below me I saw thousands of buffalo. They were white buffalo. Their feet drumming the earth made thunder and zig-zag lightning. They told me, ‘I’m your own medicine.'”

“When I was on the other side, one thing that Grandfather Martinez and the other Wind Walkers talked about among themselves, and began to sing, was a Navajo song that goes ‘nil-yah.’ It’s a song that most of our medicine people sing. That song was given to us when time began, and it still heals.

“When a person loses consciousness,” Leon explained, “they put a white blanket over the person, and then they sing that song. The word nil-yah means “it is put there.” The song is about energy or light vibrations that are ‘put there’ into a person’s mind, and how that is done with respect and beauty through the sacred words and song. It’s a song to help re-start the path of life, and its a beautiful understanding of my people.

“Through this song the medicine people are able to recharge a person’s batteries, to help make them ready for more of life. The person who has lost consciousness often responds by waking up, recovering. That’s what happened to me. The medicine people were singing this song. They sang the song for me and I came back to this world.”

The Wind Walkers warned Leon. They said that he would feel sad when he got back to physical life. Some people are happy to go back, they said, but you will feel sad for a while.

“When I came back from the other side and began to re-awaken in this world,” Leon told me, “I felt like a baby being born. For a while, when I heard bad news or good news, I really took it to extremes. But I’m able to control that now. I’m more in balance.”

“The doctors determined that I had a stroke, which affected the right side of my body. That side stopped moving, and my mind became cloudy. I feel that I have been recharged,” Leon said. “Very gradually I came out of clouds and began to see the green world, trees and watersS¹When I got back to the hotel in Ottawa, where the meeting was held, I didn’t know where I was. But the people there helped me, and from there I got home six days later.”

As we talked, Leon told me he wanted very much to express his gratitude to all who have helped him. “Many people young and old, men and women, elders, medicine people, people all around the world, have been very generous to me. They were there for me in my time of need. They were there for me.

“I appreciate their support, prayers, all that they have done. The people in Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and Canadian indigenous people, were so kind and helpful. My heart is filled with gratitude for them. Words are not enough to say, thank you. But I say it, ‘thank you.’

“People have come to my house many times to take care of me, and to bring me healthy food. I came to recognize that when you are sick, it is good and healing even just to look upon the people who come to visit, just to see people who care about you. That has made an impression on me, and I deeply appreciate those who have shown their concern, love, and respect.”

“I have been able to get my health back from their help and support. My right side is stronger; it’s still a bit clumsy but it’s getting there. My memory bank is being brought back together, so I can transmit more fully what I have received.

“So to all the people and all my relatives, all my children, I say ‘Thank you. I am alive. I am again ready to walk with you, to seek the future, to bring in hope, to bring in peace and love. The next phase of our development together belongs to all of us and all the living things, and it will be a beautiful time when we plant seeds wisely for the next 500 years.”
RESOURCES
Indigenous Cooperative on the Environment (ICE) http://www.icenetwork.ca/

Sodizin Ceremony – documentary http://www.friendsoftheindigenouselders.com/Ceremony/Ceremony.html

Medicine Wheel story and Sodizin Ceremony http://www.chiron-communications.com/communique%209-2.html

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