Mashpee Wampanoag

Mashpee Wampanoag photo album 

Photography by Kathy Sharp Frisbee ©2005

This photo essay of the 2005 Mashpee Wampanoag Pow Wow held July 2, 3 and 4 on Cape Cod is presented in appreciation and gratitude for the Mashpee Wampanoag Nation and the more than 500 additional American Indian nations, that comprise this continent’s ancient and enduring first heritage.

In holding firm to their sacred spiritual inheritance of living close to nature, of preserving traditional storytelling as a way of teaching and intellectualizing, of maintaining their language and family nourishing life ways, they are role models weaving past, present and future dynamics in their own unique way to persevere and progress in the state of the world today.

In sharing their traditions and cultural values through the music, song, dance, art and deep faith The Creator has inspired in them throughout antiquity, the Mashpee Wampanoag - along with other tribes represented at this annual gathering, and tribes at thousands of pow wows across this land every year - enrich people of all cultures in the universal human family.

Kathy Sharp Frisbee, photographer

 

Native American Mashpee Wampanoag elder Cometah

L O V E

"This is even more poignant because of the author. I have learned over the years the best comics are philosophers. That is the single element that separates ordinary comedians from the great ones."

-Gregory E. Woods

As I began to love myself - Charlie Chaplin


As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is "AUTHENTICITY".


As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
as I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call it "RESPECT".


As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it "Maturity".

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call it "SELF-CONFIDENCE".


As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness,
things I love to do and that make my heart cheer,
and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm.
Today I call it "SIMPLICITY".


As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything
that is no good for my health - food, people, things, situations,
and everything the drew me down and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is "LOVE OF ONESELF".


As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is "MODESTY".

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past
and worry about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening.
Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it. "FULFILLMENT".

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection "WISDOM OF THE HEART".


We no longer need to fear arguments,
confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born.
Today I know THAT IS "LIFE"!

NASA SPACE PROGRAM

"The Wampanoag Nation has the true, powerful and painful story of the spirit of the Pilgrims, Europeans, and the consciousness known as the White Man in its infancy of spiritual development that has grown in small increments the past four centuries. Space travel, to me, is the Western paradigm of death, destruction, and division applied to interplanetary travel, war, conquest over people, and control of resources.  Why in God's name would Creation allow, or at the low end of the spectrum, why should any of us on Earth allow the space program to advance to the level of travel knowing the paradigms of yesterday live in the hearts and minds of today's White Man?" - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories, 2009

KEEPER OF THE DRUM I AM

"Out of an African sense of time and space a woman's voice has arisen. A woman's song in a time requiring the woman's voice to translate woman's song to the People's ears is nigh among the Wind People. The Earth People, taught not to hear with Clarity, need to listen to our children becoming adults, and see our adult children as adults. They, as all generations past, walk their elders, and their old to their graves, and build from our ashes a nourishment for the next generation to live as a People.


Out of the Mother's Land Nneka sings her songs, and our time and the children of her generation are saying. . . listen to the Heartbeat.

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Nneka Egbuna, Nigerian-German singer, has herstory.

KeeperofStories: ELDER WISDOM FROM GREENLAND

TARAJI P. HENSON, actress

Tyra Banks in August 2009

SACRED WORDS

photo of Anne Hathaway sitting between ancient trees

“The voice and demands of the Sacred Feminine hasn't reached the depth of Unconscious Man within the Sons she has birthed.” – Gregory E. Woods

Angelina Jolie

angela bassett's powerful built

The power and presence of an Angela Bassett assists her desire to become an accomplished actress on stage and screen.  Raw talent is not enough to become successful in her business or any business for that matter.  What is needed is the extra stuff you have control over and  mastery over each element, and skill must happen.  Her drive had to be relentless, and being in relentless pursuit of a goal is a force of nature that cannot compromise itself, doubt, procrastinate, or submit to fears. - Gregory E. Woods

ELDER WISDOM FROM GREENLAND

Angaangaq, Elder, Sirmiq Aattuq Wisdom Keeper teaches that ‘the greatest distance in the existence of man is not from here to there nor from there to here. Nay, the greatest distance in the existence of man is from his mind to his heart. Unless he conquers this distance he can never learn to soar like an eagle, and realize the immensity within.’

JAH RASTAFAR I

The heart of an African in the African Diaspora.

BLACK POWER

"I remember when that saying evoked a deep feeling within both Black and White Americans and stirred hope in the battle cries of African freedom fighters on the African continent." - Gregory E. Woods

BLACK PRIDE

"Black Pride, Black Power by definition strength color, and state of being, but what does it say to the truths we hold as a person." - Dawn Wolf

CREATION STORY: EVE THEN ADAM

Believing in this discovery or revelation is not the same as living it, or allowing it to live deep within oneself. The teaching has to live in every part of one's self. If a man or a woman were to receive this bold assertion that Adam did not come first it pushes the man and the woman into a dangerous place of discovery. Belief, being and knowing are different creatures. Twenty plus centuries believing in the Adamic birth process cannot be removed so easily. It requires an act, an act of power. What does a new idea, or belief look like in your bodies; in your etheric, or casual body? It changes appearances as it makes its ascension towards our higher selves.

Beliefs are energy forms. If you don’t change those forms into another body and merge with it it is just talk. The landscape of transition, and the landscape of creation stories are vast. There are cavernous paths beneath the surface, and dark forbidden places inhabited by what we really believe. Those caves and the creatures that live within them touch, play with and nourish the roots of our elemental forces. Above in the higher places of consciousness are the Goddess and the God seeking balance within all the spheres of our lives. What a man can accept from the Goddess identifies the man’s place in the creation story he embodies. What man can see the Goddess within himself, his wife, his women, his daughter, and the prostitute? Merging with the Goddess, with a new creation story alters perceptions, and relationships, and accepting the notion of Eve birthing human life requires more than revelation and surprise. It is beyond intellectual understanding. It is an upheaval.  -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

THANKSGIVING DAY

The true Thanksgiving story should be the starting point for a deeper telling of the spirit of a people who have kept the spirit of the first Thanksgiving alive, active, and engaged in the taking of, and the killing of my People. This spirit is woven into the fabric of American consciousness with such incredible skill today millions upon millions of Americans challenged cannot see it. It was in Vietnam. It snaked through American foreign policy in Central America during the 1980’s, America’s opium trade in Afganistan, and the uranium mines on native lands in the southwest United States. The laws of the land sing its testimony, and last but not least the invasion of Iraq holds this dark energy as its core value. We cannot escape this truth. We live with it.


How boycotting Thanksgiving will help raise the awareness upon an indifferent, affluent, and fat satisfied populace is beyond me. Myth, and legend are primal needs within the souls of people and nations, and the soul of this nation feeds from its mother’s breast. Her milk stirs loyalty, and contentment. White Americans, and Black Americans are rubbing their bellies, and picking their teeth after dinners across the land. Their eyes roll into the back of their heads. Sleep dulls the senses around a table of well-fed people laughing, and shouting at television sets with either movies, CNN, or a football game on. Mothers, and daughters talk excitedly about getting up at three o’clock in the morning to stand in long lines to catch Black Friday specials. Their children run off to listen to their Ipods, play video games, or talk on their $3oo cellphones, or Twitter mindlessly with the typical dumb look acquired from long hours on phones.

Information runs non-stop today. Most don’t hear my ancestors cries, teachings, or sense their presence. Our songs are in the air but today’s America hears airplanes, and the pop music of Lady GaGa, or Beyoncé Knowles is in the air, and in their ears. Barely stopping for long deep reflection people tend to do as they were taught: look, pause, and move on; get it done, do it now, work, work, work. Americans are trained to concentrate thought into seven minute intervals interrupted with three to four minutes of mental playtime while TV commercials run their course. As musicians we notice and talk about how audiences behave as the end of a show approaches. A noticable, and distracting movement ripples through audiences as people get up and leave while we are deep into our music.

“Where are they going? The music hasn’t even stopped!”

They are leaving to be first in line to get ahead of the crowd going home. Onstage we have advantage looking into people’s eyes, and watching their energies shifting within them and around the club, the stadium, or whatever stage we are on. There is often a sudden and internal cutting off and quick robotic turns for the exit doors as the last notes run into the chambers of the soul, and fly upward into the heavens past the airplanes. It’s weird but we try to get us it. I have not gotten use to it because it means something. An insight lives below the surface and it has everything to do with the questions raised by the whole question of boycotting Thanksgiving Day in solidarity with Native Americans.

NATIVE-AMERICAN BABY NAMES

NATIVE AMERICAN NAMES

native american woman - Gentle Spirit Kaijick Manitou

EARTH MEDICINE

Facebook Alexandra Cousteau:

Aboriginal Art - Heart of My People

"'Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment inthe history of the planet.'
Carl Sagan

“Human nature will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”
Leonardo da Vinci

'The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.'
Wendell Berry"

Alexandra Cousteau

PERCEPTION

"The question of light in what we see shapes what elements we see when we gaze, look, see, or acknowledge." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

PETA, HEAL THE EARTH OUR GRANDMOTHER

ANIMAL RIGHTS

"What we have become without ceremony. Look what has happened without the correct, and proper relationship with our relatives. We can fight this fight intellectually, and through politics, or we can move ourselves into a relationship with our Grandmother Earth, learn her medicines, and incorporate every part of our being out of the need to fight all the time, and heal; first our relationships, then our minds, then see the Earth’s essence and align with her spirits. Fighting constantly in a mode of thought, and behavior that we learned from the European will not, and cannot bring peace or healing or reconciliation. The energy they taught our ancestors is destructive by nature. Its creative process is the genius, and the genesis of a conquering legacy that can only devour, and later dream of being better, but cannot get better.

Mother’s energy protects. She invites help and consoles her children. She understands all of the subtle mysteries of the womb that births a process of giving, teaching, and listening to the Lodges of Infinity not seen by the probing worm of man’s lust, our desire to own, and inability to relate to wombs we come from. Unraveling this paradigm cannot happen with the original energy that created it. That is an impossibility.


So I ask, as a man, what is the Woman’s Song we need to learn from the Medicine of the Grandmothers, the dark resting Wombs of our Mothers, and the Breasts of our Children’s Mothers? These are my words. I am a Keeper of Stories. These are my concerns. I am Gregory E. Woods, Dawn Wolf."

LIGHT BEINGS IN ENDTIMES

tattoo bird by London based graphic artist edit magyar

“The Souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of Lights; Each takes a Taper, often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls are rare fortune, are detained longer and have time to grab a handful of Tapers, which they weave into a Torch. These are the Torch-Bearers of humanity, its Poets, Seers, and Saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, towards the Light. They are the lawgivers and the Saviors, the Light-Bringers, Way-Showers and Truth-Tellers, and without them, Humanity would Loose its way in the Dark...” ~ Plato

THANKSGIVING DAY

I am an African-American man. I am an Absaroka Muskogee Indian. I am a Keeper of Stories, and a Keeper of the Drum. The two responsibilities are related to each other, and have power in the telling today the day before Thanksgiving Day! Nothing offensive in here, but the Native story about Thanksgiving has to be told. The story is one of betrayals, and the murder celebration the immigrants held! But that story will not be told here. This story will be told:


I know a little about Turkey medicine. My friend Pam is an Eastern Band Cherokee. She taught Turkey medicine to me one day in the mountains of Virginia. I knew medicine was coming my way on the trip to the mountains. I was looking for it the whole ride up to the mountains. Just as we got to her property a large turkey walked out of the woods and collapsed dead. We stopped the car, and walked to his body, and left tobacco offerings with our prayers.

"What do we do with him?" Pam asked. "Take him to the house and listen." I said.

During the following ceremony Turkey’s spirit, in return, allowed us to take the wings, tail feathers, and the necklace the Turkey wore. We buried the Turkey in the northern part of the Medicine Wheel we had earlier built on the land. The necklace Turkey wore was given to me. Pam explained that hunters have another name for it, but she learned from watching their ceremonies the necklace under their beaks is a Medicine necklace with its own powers. Turkey’s are Keepers of Ceremony!

Pam would travel alone into the mountains and sit. She can become a ghost in the forest. Turkeys would land unaware of her and perform ceremonial dances as the sun set. She said one had to be completely still. Turkey People are very sensitive to movements subtle or not. Turkeys have a deep sense of ceremony. Deep in their dances they are balanced and attuned to the subtle elements at work around them. It is a natural teaching for the People, and by People, since we are talking about the colonial times; I am talking about Turtle Island’s indigenous people's relationship with living things, and our Grandmother Earth.

The immigrants remain, to this day, outside of these things for the most part and continually legislate and make laws from a framework that is disconnected from the subtle elements that move, engage, and try, in this day and age, to balance everything. Their paradigms have taught billions of people for the last few centuries their ways, and we all participate in the process of disrespecting our Earth, shortening our time on Earth, and neglecting our spiritual responsibilities to each other. These are my words.

Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories
nov. 25, 2009

 

VIOLET FLAME PRAYER

"All of this is pretty accurate. However, without precise practices we still won't overcome the patterns that have become centered in the mind."

Here is the first prayer and meditation:

"I am the light. I love the light. I serve the light. I live in the light. I am supplied, illuminated, sustained and protected by the light. I bless the light."

See your entire body surrounded by a bright light; see a bright light in your heart center. This is to be done upon wakening and before sleeping. One of God's truest nature is light. This can be found in many modalities and in Biblical scripture the Lord said "let there be light."  Christ said, "as long as I am in the world I am the light."  Lastly, I will give you more information as I received it. But here is how this unfolded in brief.

One year ago almost exactly. I took the Ayahausca the second time. The first time I saw the nature of all connectedness. You already know this from your Sacred Teachings, so I don't have to go into it. The second Ayahausca, I asked to know what God looks like if there was some external being called God. The Ayahausca spirit told me that God was the light. I was shown a tremendous light, I could not look at it directly as it was too bright. So it was dimmed to me in the vision. I came away somewhat disappointed for at that time I did not accept truly the significance of what I had seen.

One year later, almost. I go to Brazil and meet Wesley, and MILA. Mila gives me the Prayer of the Violet Flame. this is a purification prayer and a prayer of the light. I come home and share this would a practitioner of St. Germain's another Atiba. Her name is Dr. Atiba Vheir. She says to me that she knows this prayer and gives me the book Unveiled Mysteries. This book explains much of the background of one of God's true nature and appearance as LIGHT. The theory of Visualization is one of the mind out picturing as God/Light. Thus the nature of the inner and outer eye.

Step 1
Make a clear precise plan of action

Step 2
Write it down, and look at it every opportunity.
It is not be shared with anyone.

Step 3.
Visualize the plan as it is in finished completed stage.

It is not to be spoken out loud, it is not be shared.

There is much more material for the intellectual mind to be convinced, Dawn Wolf. But I tell you that my life is so changed. St. Germain goes on to say that until we practice this regularly we have no real control over the emotions and thoughts. The feeling part of us help to complete the manifestation. Thought without feeling has no way of manifesting because it does not have the energy in motion; e-motion necessary for the physical manifestation. The idea of perfection has to do with there being only the ONE. We perceive it as light and darkness. but darkness is the absence of light. One of the two principles of the Revealing Way, which I wrote over 7 years ago in 2002, is that there is only one power. The second part of my writing had to do with the Light sound idea. Which is Quan Yin. However, I had not gotten the missing pieces, which include the true nature of how to use this God power as light or how we can be used by this power. I have a hunch or intuition that the sound portion is much more related to the feeling aspect. But since I am a new initiate of the teaching I have much more to learn.

Lastly, the last tune on my CD with Nazeeha was called Children of the Light. There are no accidents.
We will talk as if there is time. I won't talk about manifestation for I think I will be breaking one of the laws of this practice. But I will say that I have now an extraordinary sense of a new found power of this God/Light. The purification practice is working and is so awesome. This light is ordering my whole life and opportunities abound. We shall share soon. Peace Atiba

MICHELLE OBAMA: MATURITY, POWER & GRACE

Michelle Obama goes glam for state dinner
(with a dress by little-known designer Naeem Khan)
by Jennifer Romolini, Shine staff,

Looking glamorous in an elegant strapless gown by Indian-American designer Naeem Khan, Michelle Obama welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Mrs. Gursharan Kaur to the White House Tuesday night and ushered in the Obama administration's first official state dinner.


Though she's become known for her (sometimes controversial) high-fashion risk-taking, tonight Mrs.Obama chose a dress with a classic floor-length cut in a subdued gold fabric and paired it with a light shawl. Her makeup was kept to a minimum and her hair done in a dignified updo. The entire ensemble seemed traditionally feminine and sophisticated, reminiscent of the first lady's more conservative predecessors.

But there were a few Michelle-style flourishes, including a pair of elaborate chandelier earrings and a stack of glittering gold-and-diamond bangles piled high on her left arm. Her choice of Khan as designer is also characteristic of this first lady, who often favors little-known artisans over big names. Khan has been on the fashion scene since 2003, and has outfitted youthful celebrities such as Beyoncé, Carrie Underwood, and Jennifer Lopez. He has also dressed dignitaries like Queen Noor and designed the costumes for the 2006 movie "Dreamgirls."

(read more)

Michelle Obama's designer Naeem Khan (photo: Getty)

Turns out Naeem Khan is not an unknown.  Average Americans are out of the loop.  He is an international sensation out of India.

BEAUTY, CHILDHOOD & MATURITY 2

Chandler's children - Judah, Jon2, Juelie, Joel & Josh

CHANDLERS’ CHILDREN ALL GROWN UP

You five cannot know how deep my feelings and my love for you flows. I remember, and see your entrance into the world, and remember a great deal about your childhood, and now this! You are growing into yourselves. I hope and pray you find your places: the exact place you were born into, and be that person, make that stance, and give the gift to the world you were given for the rest of us. -Uncle Greg

AN AFRICAN INDIAN WOMAN'S POWERS

BEAUTY, CHILDHOOD & MATURITY

MOTHER’S SONG

Andrae Dews! Thinking of the childhood you had and the impact of its harshness, and its joys none of us could tell you who you would become. You have become a number of people at the same time each one lived at various depths. Young life works the same way multiple worlds operate. Each operates and turns on its own axis in relation to the others. The complexity of life is its simplicity, and the way simplicity can lay itself upon the roles you play as model, mother, businesswoman, sales person, friend, vision maker, lover, etc. draws the levels of achievement, and possibilities around you. Your daughter is where you once were watching your parents design a life around and for you as best they could.

I am very proud of you and your achievements. I am impressed with the way you handle the gift of your beauty. You are handling your beauty, at the core of your being, the way your mother handled hers at your age. She kept it in line with her sense of spirituality, and the vows she took in her life to live by. You started from that teaching, and evolved; developing it into a commodity for an industry dedicated to the sale of beauty, and product. It takes a philosophical, and practical approach to handle beauty as a woman, and as a mother wisdom dictates how you teach your daughter. What is her name?

Stay in touch with my Vania, and my other children. I look forward to talking to you and seeing you soon. Where is your brother? I really need to see him. – Uncle Greg

HEALING OF THE SACRED LODGES

FOUR DIRECTIONS

In the old Medicine Wheel teachings the Circle is divided into four quadrants; four Lodges. These directions have their sacred colors, teachings, elements, powers, animal-teachers, and colors. The various tribes have different colors in the each direction. The colors have less importance than the teachings and where each of us stand on the wheel our life needs to be in at the moment.


The points between the major lodges are the places of the movers and shakers. These are the places of action, the doing. The work taught in the North, East, South and West lodges are the concepts. Between the four lie the actions to move from one lodge (direction) to the next. In the middle, of course, is Spirit; the core of one's being. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

BARBARA EDEN: A CLASSIC BEAUTY, A CLASS ACT

Barbara Eden's classic images

I DREAM OF JEANIE

Barbara Eden was the most woman on TV in the 1960's. You could not find anyone not mesmerized by her character on the show ‘I Dream of Jeanie’. The nation watched TV as a collective whole, and everyone was party to the same stimuli feeling connections with strangers through the medium of television. The reporting of news had a different standard mostly because the generation that gave us the news came from a higher standard of primary education that stimulated more of the intellect. Math, Writing, English and Play were important primal elements to one's education.

The hippie movement was a rebellion against the rigid demand of White America to insist on playing a stoic role for men, and for women a dutiful housewife who was first a virgin, not given to sexual liaisons before marriage, and modest in appearance, and behavior. The disconnect for the young whites of the 1950’s & 1960’s spurred a rebellion from the Beatniks to the hippies, and America was never to be the same.

In those days people expected news reports to connect the dots, and took great personal stock in being able to see the relationships to things. A strong work ethic came from Eastern European immigrants, Negro field hands, and an assortment of people who saw themselves as part of a nation under a banner of superiority. The images of white people as the best of our lot was under attack among Black folks, but Barbara Eden had the knack for killing those notions for half of an hour, and everyone sat down enjoying the show imaging life with a Jeanie, or if you were a man, have a Jeanie who was Barbara Eden at your beck and call. – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

FATHERS, MURDER & CIVIL RIGHTS

Why did Jamar Pinkney Sr. kill his son?

I think the crack epidemic, and deeper reasons lay behind the spiritual, and cultural decline of Black Americans, and it evolves from our failure to define power, and negotiate with and for power in the decades before 1970. I also hold the Black American community responsible for not re-evaluating the paradigms, belief systems, and teachings of the Black Church to discover and unearth the fundamental source of our dysfunction. We, as a community do not have that kind of collective wisdom, courage, or insight. Our strategy to be equal, by law, with White Americans came to a head and we died a death. Our lives, and our actions tell the story of our overwhelming desire to be accepted by White Americans, and to be more like our White folks.

Millions of Africans back home on the African continent thought the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement was going to jump across the Atlantic Ocean and African-Americans were going to physically, and emotionally, and spiritually, and intellectually be part of a larger movement to advance the causes in the African liberation movements, and for Mankind an effort towards reconciliation and World Peace would find its course, and set its rhythms. Our narrow view, and goals has birthed generations of dysfunction, rage, murder, alienation, greed, and a particular type of selfishness as we become more and more white and less and less African.

Our failure to become more African, to re-acquaint ourselves with our indigenous spirituality, and forever present determination not to view Christianity as an African religion has been the death of spirit, and the author of our new story that has birthed children, by our example, despised and neglected. Our disdain for our children is evident in our practice. Even White people can’t deal with their own dichotomies; their own contradictions sicken them. Their shit stinks so bad they are running by the thousands to the sweatlodge, the religions of people they have conquered, and have created a movement of self-discovery, and many of them are working hard to re-create themselves, and heal the Earth in the same process. They just don’t know how to ask for forgiveness.

But Black Americans? I can barely use the term African-American for our collective consciousness that both shuns, and despises the essence of Africa. So I often take the liberty to call us Black Americans because of our propensity to serve the need to become as white as possible. We don’t remove our children from an education system designed for their failure. We won’t, as parents, find alternative approaches to education, and parenting, and mentoring is out of our equations. The old storyteller of our stories, the historians, the true teachers cannot find their proper place, and we don’t initiate our children into adulthood. We just hope and pray and avoid the key issues of our existence. – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

AMERICAN SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

“We claim our rights rather than understanding our responsibilities” – Maxwell Perira Kamath I.P.S, the then Jt. Commissioner of Delhi Traffic Police told in a function. We always claim our rights to know the information against doctors, police officers and other people. In the meantime we fail to understand our responsibilities like helping a road accident victim by giving a first aid and making arrangements to take the victim immediately to the hospital. Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has already issued a circular about Need to build confidence in public for helping road accident victims.

PUDUMAI BALAKRISHNAN IS A BLOGGER I DISCOVERED ON MINERVA’S BLOG TODAY. THAT QUOTE BRINGS TO THE FOREFRONT A FUNDAMENTAL FLAW IN AMERICAN THOUGHT AROUND RIGHTS, AND FREEDOM. –DAWN WOLF, KEEPER OF STORIES

a gentle reflection

FATHERS OF NIGERIA: abacha praise singers

"The stories of abacha praise singers has a familiar ring to its discords. I have lived in Africa. I traveled in and out of Nigeria when the blood of the Biafrian war was damp on the ground.  Years have passed and both the country Nigeria, and I have grown, and changed.  But in the core of governments like Nigeria a seed of vile corruption has birthed unimaginable evil, and thousands and thousands of people have died from its bites, and the beauty and power of  Ancestors have fallen into a deep ponderous silence.  Africa has an enormous amount of resources and its people have internalized the worst of Europeans's spirit and become Christians and Muslims. 

A lot of African people come to the United States looking down on African-Americans with contempt and supremacy.  They claim an allegiance and attachment to their particular indigenous roots, but posture like French or British aristocracy.  The same elements that have corrupted their spirit-mind corrupted our spirit-mind in America.  The wisdom to connect through our ancestors escapes our new methodology.  We, as Africans, want to separate ourselves into groups within a People.  We have lost our one connection that ties us together, and decided it is better to have a horizontal relationship with the Creator, and disconnect from the vertical relationship that ties to the Mysterious Relationship that distinguished us for centuries upon centuries in the Land of the Blacks (Bilad as Sudan).  Walking as if our steps are prayers, listening with our ears attuned to the unseen voices that know us, looking at the world seeing into worlds, and possessing an eye in league with the Bowl of Perception set between the invisible and the visible worlds, and speaking with power into the Bowl of Perception, the Void of the Unknown, and the Tenets of Strength, and Family Structure are the missing elements within the African of today. 

So I ask, "Who are we alive?"" - Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories

Saint Abacha? R.I.P. Lamidi Adedibu

You probably learned of the news just like I did the other day that retired generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar, who all ruled Nigeria while in uniform, not only absolved their late “brother-in-arms”, Sanni Abacha, of corruption, but also poured encomiums on him on the 10th anniversary of his demise. And if you are at least 30 years old, you probably are angry that your sensibilities were insulted by your former rulers since you are old enough to remember a little bit about Sanni Abacha.

For the benefit of readers who might have missed the “three musketeers”’ comments, let me re-cap some.

Buhari: “All the allegations leveled against the personality of the late Gen. Sanni Abacha will remain allegations. It is 10 years now. Things should be over by now."

Babangida: "It is not true that he looted public treasury, I knew who Abacha was because I was close to him."

Abubakar: “It is quite unfortunate and unfair to accuse the family of the late Sanni Abacha of looting public funds...” By Abiodun Ladepo

FATHER HOLDING HIS SON

FATHER KILLS HIS SON

Enraged Michigan dad Jamar Pinkney Sr. shot son, 15, over alleged sex abuse of toddler

SARAH PALIN

Sarah Palin is a beauty under seige whose political savvy is a joke in diplomatic circles because her skill level is too low, and among thinking people disappointing because she, at the least, does not have much intellectual curiousity.  It is very disappointing the way the Republican Party tries to raise her above the level she has earned.  The Republican Party, conservatives, and the Churches that support this kind of dickering around haven't the consciousness to see that there is change looming above their heads, and the Church as it is now is in its death throes.  The time of the Church is passing away as the Picean era fades into the stages of our human evolution advancing to new beginnings in the Aquarian Age, the end of a 26,000 year cycle, as the Ojibwa Peace Shield teaches. The Mayans, the Christians, the Hopi all speak as does other indigenous prophecies tell of these times. 

The Bible seen through the eyes of the initiated sees the old stories of a Hebrew people evolving their consciousness from ancient times 'til now.  Living is a deep act of power.  In relationship with power is crucial to being able to see what is really happening in these times.  Fixation of the static non-movement of belief confined to containers (the Church, the Mosque, the Temple, etc.) and a firm commitment to conserving movement forward into a new world for the sake of appearing ready to fight for God is empty. -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

absolute beauty of TYRA BANKS

TYRA BANKS

'The ones who open doors and cross bridges first are often, in time, forgotten by those who lacked the courage to be first.  Dismissed they are by lesser souls who need so desperately to appear to be bold risk takers.  Lesser souls can become mean sometimes lacking in grace, and bereft of style they brag where they should not boast, and declare when they should be studying the path laid out by the Pathfinder who is far ahead on another quest a lesser soul dare not dream." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Women of the Niger Delta protesting oil companies

The Curse of Nakedness


Women in Nigeria Threaten to Bare it All to Better Their Communities

A woman's body is both revered and feared in cultural traditions from East to West. It is immortalized as "pin-up girl" and simultaneously mystified as mother. A community of women in Nigeria, however, proved that a woman's body is enough to bring one of the largest oil companies to the bargaining table. When their words were not being heard, they made themselves be seen...by threatening to strip naked in public. 

In June 2002, hundreds of Nigerian women, mothers and grandmothers ages 20 to 90 took a stand to protest the oil companies that have taken control of their communities. They overran the largest oil producing facility in Nigeria's south-western Niger Delta.

Unarmed, they held 700 workers hostage for more than a week and blocked production of half a million barrels of oil a day. Their most effective weapon: a deeply rooted cultural threat known as the "Curse of Nakedness."

"The stripping off of clothes particularly by married and elderly women is a way of shaming men -- some of whom believe that if they see the naked bodies they will go mad or suffer some great harm. The curse extends not just to local men but also to any foreigner who it is believed would become impotent at the sight of "the naked mother," says Sokari Ekine, the International Coordinator of the Niger Delta Women...

The Story

Sokari Ekine, the International Coordinator of the Niger Delta Women for Justice and author of Black Looks Blog, contributed to reporting.