RED HEARTS

Grandfather Bear-Tata Oso, an Apache- Mexika Medicine Man said the following words while leading a Sweat Lodge, Inipi, or Temascal Ceremony.“I am proud to call myself an Indio (Indian). I am an Indian. I am a Red Man, Yo soy Indio, Yo soy Hombre Rojo”.

These words were spoken in the Ceremony on the Aguaje de La Tuna Kumyaii Indian Reservation near Tecate B.C., Mexico, at the Spring EquinoxCeremon

y in March 2012.

There were about 30 people in the sweat lodge including men, women and children. The leader of the sweat lodge, Grandfather Bear-Tata Oso, said the following: “There are some that think the word Indio (Indian) is a bad word and that we should call ourselves Native Americans or other words. This is not true,

“A mi la palabra Indio quiere decir “En Dios.” “To me, the word Indio means “in God.”

There are some in here that are Indios (Indians) and have Red Hearts. There are some in here that are Indios (Indians) that have White Hearts. There are some White People in here that have Red Hearts. There are White people with White Hearts; however, none of them are with us. What do we mean by that? Creator created 4 colors or races of man. These are the 4 colors of maiz (corn) : red, white, yellow and black. The color of the skin makes no difference because we are all created equal by Creator.

The Lakota say “Mitakuye Oyasin” (all my relations). We are all one in the eyes of the Great Mystery, Creator, Wantan Tanka, and Ometeotl. We are all a small part of Creator. The color of the skin is meaningless. The color of the Heart is a different thing.

The Indio (Indian) with a Red Heart remembers that he or she belongs to the Earth and the Earth does not belong to them. The Indio remembers that he was placed and on Earth to care for the Earth, her water, air, the skin or surface including the rocks, the mountains and the mineral resources of Earth, the plants, the animals, the birds, the fish and the creepy crawly ones that are all part of Mother Earth and each other.

The Way of the Red Heart is the way of peace. It is a way of caring for and respecting all our Brothers and Sisters on Earth. The people with Red Hearts also respect all the elements of Mother Earth: air, water, fire and the earth herself.

The Way of the White Heart is the way of greed, the destruction of Earth for short-term gain and war. It is a way of materialism.

The White Heart says “I own that piece of property, that car, that home, whatever.” Those with White Hearts say that they own the air space, water, and land. They say “We can build large, high fences to keep the Indio and anyone we do not like out. We are superior to them.”

The Indio with a Red Heart says “Creator owns that piece of property. It is mine to care for.” There is a very marked lack of possessiveness among those with the Red Heart.

The White Heart teaches that one should distrust or even despise anyone with a different color of skin, different language, different culture or different religion (particularly non-Christian religions) and immigrants.

The Red Heart realizes that We Are All One and that we are all a small part of the Creator of the Universe. We are not separate.
The people of the Red heart live in a hoop, a circle. No one stands in front of them, no one stands behind them, and no one stands above or below them. All are one and equal.

“The time has come,” say the Elders of the Red Men, “to release the teachings of Red Road (La Via Roja) to all people. We need to teach all about the Red Heart of love, compassion, peace, trust, caring for all people”.

This is extremely important at this time since the rising of the Fifth Sun – The Return of Light is occurring now. The New Sun is gradually arising and shining on Earth at this time. This is the year The Return of Light. In order to enter the Fifth World or the Fifth Sun, we must cultivate the Red Heart. It is our choice. The time is now to decide.

The Via Roja the Red Road is the ONLY way to survive the troubles that we on Earth face at this time.

Many Indios or Red Men have forgotten who they are and why they are on Earth. They have developed White Hearts. Their hearts are filled with greed, jealousy, envy and materialism. Many Red Men are discovering who they really are and why they are on Earth at this time. They are becoming Beings of Light.

Many White, Black and Yellow people are also discovering the Red Way. They are learning that they have Red Hearts and are letting their lights shine.

This is not a Religion. This is a Spiritual Teaching. The Red Road has Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and members of many other religions as participants.

Many indigenous groups in all parts of the world follow the Red Road and have for generations. This is not to say that indigenous cultures cannot be greedy, patriarchal or warlike peoples. Some are.

The Red road does not require that you participate in Native American Ceremonies or wear Indian cloths. It is a way of the heart. As soon as enough lights shine, darkness will disappear from Earth.

The Light we have been awaiting for so long is returning! A glorious World is emerging!

We are the people we have been waiting for!
We are the people we have been expecting! 

a gift from Silvia Mamani 

SPIRITUAL & POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Russell Means & Leonard Crow Dog at Wounded Knee

“Political activism and spirituality are relatives, and for the sake of survival it made no sense to pretend and adopt the white man's ideas and practices of separation to remain sovereign. That would have been a trap, a cultural trap that would have crippled any of our gains. Even though there are many literary pieces interpreting the spiritual and practical outlook of Native peoples Western sense of order and separation keeps most Americans out of relationship with these webs that hold Life together and the dances of each part of Life moving uniquely.


A lot of scorn is heaped upon people, and a People who see activism, and Spirit, church and state, conception and Life, etc. as one. In American culture the circular view of living with everything is absurd and at best cute in a movie like Lion King. The circular view of living with everything is fundamental to the survival of the many sovereign nations. Merging is another survival tool as viable as a Western education, a peyote ceremony, the Pipe, and an economic plan for ones’ nation…” –Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Leonard Crow Dog in sweatlodge by Richard Erdoes

The Boys Who turned to Geese

Long ago, when animals were people, there was a little boy whose mother and
stepfather wouldn't give him anything to eat, though they had plenty for
themselves. So the boy went off to find his own food and met another boy who
was also abandoned.

Raccoon came along, felt sorry for the two boys, and
helped them dig roots to eat.

In the next few days, five more hungry
abandoned boys came by, and they all went to stay with Raccoon in the
temescal (sweathouse). Finally they decided to go north and take Raccoon
with them. So they sprinkled themselves with goose down and sang songs. For
three days they went around the temescal, singing and rising higher and
higher off the ground.

But Raccoon couldn't fly even though he was covered
with goose down. All the mothers came to see the boys and begged them to
come down, but they refused. They all turned into geese and flew away to the
north, to become the seven stars we call the Pleiades.  And when geese cry,
they sound just like a little boy.- Chumash nation in California

From the Archives of Blue Panther

"The coldness of a mother, her rejection can turn the warmth and naturalness of her child's ability to love into a coldness that is brilliant and distant or dull and distant. Either one is cold."

- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

ceremony in the mountains

http://www.abramscreek.com/

SWEATLODGE CEREMONY 2006

This sweat lodge ceremony changed me and kept me the same.

The Mouse that took the Sweat Lodge down

Heart Song Stone Man, Mother Duck, Bruce and Beaver Woman arrived to greet Lakota Hazie in the mountains one day. Lakota Hazie had come to share her medicine and teach them how to build a sweat lodge for these times. While they dug holes, removed rocks and cut saplings Hawk and Vulture came to visit. Spider and Ant people came to share in the laughter with their insights; their input. Beaver Woman built the Fire Circle. Edward, the Priest came from the city and built a Turtle altar and the Medicine Wheel Lakota Hazie built the lodge upon drew powers to the site.

People came to sweat. In the months to follow the lodge cover stayed on after all of the ceremonies. The lodge was taking on a life force. As the season changed into fall Bear visited the Lodge three times ripping the covering. The short story he told us we did not understand. On the fourth visit he tore it down.

When Heart Song Stone Man cleared the cloths and broken wood mice scattered in many directions and chewed acorns and mummified mouse limbs fell to the ground. Some mice ran back to their homes in the blankets others tried to bury themselves as others ran into the woods All were driven out and away from the circle. When the circle had been cleared Mouse walked into the Circle with a story of his relationship with Bear and Heart Song Stone Man’s inability to hear their story. When Mouse finished his story Heart Song Stone Man realized the Bear was teaching through story and sign the importance of removing the covering between sweats and not providing false hope of a home for Mouse and his people.

It was the Mouse people. Bear could not find the mice in the folds of blankets. Neither his songs, or stories or strength could get the Keepers of the Lodge to remove the coverings! The taunting songs of the mice were ignored by the Keepers so Bear tore the lodge down.

Heart Song Stone Man left a gift with Mouse and was given the vision of the next lodge and never left the covering on after a sweat again.

~ Gregory E. Woods

Keeper of Stories Keeper of Sacred Medicine Wheels

path to sweatlodge @ Wolf Run

SWEATLODGE IN OUR ANCIENT TIMES

Blue Jay and Sweat-House – Thompson Indians

Blue Jay is related to Sweathouse. He was the greatest joker of the ancients, and was always poking fun at the people. If any one made fun of him, or imitated him, his mouth became twisted. He was the originator of the twisted-mouth disease, and introduced it into the world. Before that persons with twisted mouths were unknown.


Blue Jay and Sweathouse lived among the people, and slept in a corner of the house. Sweathouse took the form of the bent stick of a sweathouse, and slept by day. At night he changed into an old man, and wandered about, while Blue Jay slept in his place. The people did not know that Sweathouse was a man. Finally the people became tired of Blue Jay's mockery, and fearful of his magic, and made up their minds to desert him. They kept away for four years, living in a different place each summer and each winter. At the end of that time Blue Jay was still alive, and continued to live in the same place. Then they agreed to leave for food, and settled in another country.


At last a Transformer came along and transformed Blue Jay, saying, "Henceforth you will be a bird, and a chatterer and mocker forever, able to talk incessantly, and to imitate the cries of the eagle and other birds and animals." This is the reason why the blue jay is able, at this present day, to imitate the cries of all kinds of birds and animals. Then he transformed Sweathouse, saying, "You, old man, will be the spirit of the sweathouse, and, until the world ends, people, by sweat-bathing, and praying to you, will lose their lice, and become healthy, clean, successful, and rich. You will be very powerful, and able to help the people, and grant their prayers."


Taken from: Myths and Tales from Nicola Valley and Fraser River collected by
James Alexander Teit, 1911 and is now in the public domain.

SWEATLODGE DEATHS, TRADITION & PROFITS pt.2

I don’t see the light of wisdom in the saga of the sweatlodge deaths a couple weeks ago in Arizona. I just saw CBS anchor, Harry Smith, interview Dr. Barbara Bunn, of Texas, who survived James Arthur Ray’s sweatlodge ceremony. It was a short interview but it was packed with pain, and revelation. Her telling dove into the viewer’s minds on different levels. A doctor, a blond, a solid individual with a rugged beauty struggling to fashion her words to convey the bewildering experience into a framed image of the contradictions of a ceremony gone awry. Her struggle to control her emotions and be as articulate as possible fell away recollecting how distant and uncaring the pourer was then and now. She said, “He abandoned us!” That interview was over an hour ago, and my own emotions are struggling within me trying to grasp the picture of an ancient ceremony gone to hell.


Dr. Bunn was Kirby Brown’s roommate. Ms. Brown died in the lodge, in a ceremony where people were not allowed to leave when the door was closed. Dr. Bunn said on the 5th round someone was unconscious.


"I can't get her to move. I can't get her to wake up," Bunn recalls hearing from two sides of the 415-square-foot sweat lodge. Ray's response: "Leave her alone, she'll be dealt with in the next round."


Her early morning interview describes a man, after the 6th round, whose eye blood vessels had burst. She saw people trying to resuscitate people for as long as fifteen minutes. She paired people up to sustain life, and created a system to keep people conscious by calling their names, and making sure no one was left alone feeling abandon. At this point she became more than a doctor. She became a mother insuring that the sense of abandonment dissipated into hope of living. How many of the survivors lived because a mother’s spirit resurrected the urge to live, and not wallow in the hopelessness of being abandon in the panic of darkness, and extreme heat?


At some point a discussion, and then action must begin among Wisdom Keepers, and others of similar kilt about the spirit, the mentality, and the consciousness of the Conqueror’s spirit dominate in white males. It is part of the spiritual responsibility of women, I sense, white women, in particular, to become deeply engaged in this work. It is fundamental to the change we need as a nation, as people, The world suffers from this aura. This paradigm dominated Mr. Ray’s lodge ceremony, and the abandonment Dr. Bunn painfully described is an attribute of white male entitlement, and the privilege of this paradigm. This paradigm rests in the bosom of conquering species, men, and brokers of power.


I am a man. I understand this paradigm. What man born in these times does not understand that this belief-system we are taught is a right to rule and dominate? But this paradigm is parceled out differently in American culture. Privilege goes to white men, and opportunity goes to other men, and hope of being a man to others. It was parceled out different to Black men. Until African-Americans were given full citizenship in the late 1960’s the right to protect our families hung on the whim of a white man’s or a white mob’s inclination. Native-American men were parceled out a different kind of male dominant medicine. It hinged on the brink of joblessness, and a deep sense of owning land with no ability to become a man who provides for his people as a warrior, a farmer, or a landowner. Chinese men were not allowed to have their families in the country as they built railroads. In place of wife and family prostitutes were sent to them after hard backbreaking work. And nowadays Chinese, Japanese, and Korean men operate from a different sense of privilege through economics, business and money. And this story goes on.


Being a man requires thought, and introspection. It, like patriotism, cannot be accepted superficially. So profound a state of being is manhood that it requires initiation, ceremony, and training from within the inner terrain of being to the outward touching of the world. Men, like me, need to perform as men, as Elders who understand, in depth their masculinity, their powers, their role, and relationship to Earth, Spirit, woman, family, children and the sacred spaces of the Wombs they come from and enter in a lifetime of being a man.


It is not an easy task being a man for ordinary men a mere breathe from a primal state of being a boy. But without our intervention how will women feel confident enough to enter into their powers, their medicine into the development of boys into men, and men into Men? It is a fearful thing for women to enter into this arena without the preparatory work of men like myself to pave the way into the core beliefs of men, and their creation stories. Without the balance of mother’s energies, mother’s words, and her own struggle against this structure the birth of a boy into a man is crippled, stunted by an ill constructed birth canal.


These are my words, my thoughts.

~Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

http://keeperofstories.blogspot.com/2009/10/sweat-lodge-deaths-tradition-profits.html

sweatlodge deaths, tradition & profits 2

Investigators are looking into two deaths that occurred in a spiritual retreat near Sedona, Ariz. The cause of death is unknown. By JOHN DOUGHERTY

Published: October 11, 2009


SEDONA, Ariz. — Tucked into stunning red rock formations and canyons punctuated with splashes of green junipers, this town of about 11,500 has long been a high-end golf and tennis resort, the choice location for second homes of the well-to-do and a favorite destination for hikers, rock climbers, cyclists and sightseers.


It has also become world-renowned as a New Age metaphysical center, attracting seekers and followers of an assortment of spiritual pathways, many of whom believe healing energy is released from “vortexes” that are said to be scattered among the rock formations.
Scores of self-proclaimed mystics, healers, channelers of past life experiences (and aliens), sacred touch massage therapists, wind whisperers and vision quest guides offer their services, often for a hefty price. Many of these spiritual pathways are based somewhat loosely around Native American traditions, including the ceremonial sweat lodge.
But the deaths of two people in a sweat lodge last week at Angel Valley, a New Age spiritual retreat about six miles south of West Sedona, is causing more soul-searching among New Age practitioners and concern among town leaders.


“We are severely impacted by the fact that this happened,” said Sedona’s mayor, Rob Adams.

“We need to get to the bottom of what happened.”


Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee, died on Thursday after collapsing inside the Angel Valley sweat lodge. Three other people were airlifted in critical condition to Flagstaff Medical Center.


“The people in the field will take a close look at their operations, absolutely,” said Marcus, an intuitive counselor — a kind of spiritual guide — who goes by only his first name. “This is ridiculous, it shouldn’t have happened.”


At least seven other people have died in ceremonial sweat lodges since 1993 in the United States, England and Australia, according to news accounts compiled by Alton Carroll, an adjunct professor of history at San Antonio College who also moderates the Web site Newagefraud.org.
James Arthur Ray, a self-help expert from Carlsbad, Calif., led what was billed as five-day “spiritual warrior” experience at Angel Valley, which concluded with a tightly packed sweat lodge ceremony. Participants paid about $9,000 each for the weeklong retreat, which included seminars, a 36-hour fast and solo experiences in the forest.


The authorities say that at any one time 55 to 65 people were packed for a two-hour period into a 415-square foot structure that was 53 inches high at the center and 30 inches high on the perimeter. Mr. Ray’s employees built the wood-frame lodge, which was wrapped in blankets and plastic tarps. Hot rocks were brought into the lodge and doused with water. Mr. Ray, who conducted the ceremony, left the area on Thursday after declining to give a statement to the police.


Sheriff Steve Waugh of Yavapai County said a death investigation would continue for several weeks. Mr. Ray, the Angel Valley owners, Michael and Amayra Hamilton, and all the participants are part of the investigation, the sheriff said. The results from autopsies that were conducted Friday have not been released and results from toxicology tests are not expected for several weeks.


Dr. Carroll, who is partly of Mescalero Apache descent, said the Angel Valley sweat lodge was the “best example I have seen, sadly, in a long time of why it is extremely dangerous to conduct sweat lodge ceremonies without proper training.”


Katherine Lash, a co-owner of Spiritquest Retreat in Sedona and a veteran of more than 100 sweat lodge ceremonies, said she had never heard of a sweat being conducted with as many people as were involved in the Angel Valley event. “In my experience it has been very rare to have more than 20 people,” she said.
Limiting the number of people inside a sweat lodge is critical because the person leading the event is supposed to carefully monitor the mental and physical condition of each participant, experts said.


“It’s important to know who is responsible for your spiritual and physical safety in that lodge,” said Vernon Foster, a member of the Klamath-Modoc tribe who regularly leads ceremonial sweat lodge events in central Arizona.
Mr. Foster said native people would use only natural materials in the construction of a sweat lodge. “We would never use plastic to cover our lodges,” he said. “The lodge has to breathe, that steam has to go someplace.”


Sheriff’s office investigators are conducting tests to determine whether any toxins were released during the ceremony. The authorities said sandalwood “was thrown on the rocks to give the effect of incense.” A 2007 study by the National University of Singapore on the effects of smoke emitted by sandalwood incense published in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials found that “continuous and prolonged exposure to incense smoke is of concern.”
Ms. Brown, said friends in Cabo San Lucas, Mex., where she lived and worked as a interior house painter, was in excellent physical condition and regularly practiced yoga and enjoyed surfing.


“She was very beautiful and a very, very exceptional and unique person,” said Todd Clouser, a musician from Boston who met Ms. Brown three years ago.
Mr. Clouser said he was not surprised that Ms. Brown would attend a sweat lodge. “It was totally up her alley,” he said.


Mayor Adams said that Sedona believed that people should be free to follow their spiritual path and that metaphysical services would continue to be an important part of the area’s economy. But, he said he shared concerns of some Native Americans who complain that non-natives are, at times, exploiting their sacred ceremonial practices for profit.


“If it is simply to make money, then that’s another issue,” he said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/us/12lodge.html?_r=1


Tamra Brennan
Founder/Director
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