Tsering Dolma Gyaltong
Tibetan
“The mother’s hand is the first step of teaching, and then comes the teaching in school. Even from His Holiness, the main key speech is that the mother is the most important person in a child’s life. The mother is the first teacher in the child’s life because they need to teach the child love and compassion. They teach them the real values of being a human being. His Holiness says if we want global peace, it’s in the hands of the human beings. And who develops the human beings? The mother nurtures the child’s mind, how he thinks and believes and the values in his life.”
Clara Shinobu Iura
Brazilian/Japanese
“I know I’m here on Earth to evolve, to be able to indoctrinate myself, so I can be closer and closer to God’s truth. All of us have a way of having this contact, of giving testimony of the divine truth. All of my sister grannies also had these experiences in some other way. They’re here to give testimony of the reality and the truth of the Great Spirit. We’re all witnesses of this truth, and we’re here to be able to pass this possibility on to all humanity. As long as you truly surrender yourself to God without thinking of receiving anything, you are surrendered, you are open, you are ready to search for and receive this wisdom, this knowledge that comes through the spirit.”
Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance
Oglala Lakota
“Have courage, for without it we have no justice, without justice we have no freedom, and without freedom we have no peace.”
Julieta Casimiro
Mazatec
“When I work, I find myself always using invocation. I do it through songs and prayers to God, Mother Earth, the rivers, the mountains, and of course, to all the angels and saints. I do it in my mother tongue, Mazatec, and in Spanish as well. I also do it with my thoughts, my feelings. This is how I work to do good. I turn myself into a channel for the patients; I am watching everything that is happening to them in order to help them through my own strength and knowledge.”
Rita Pitka Blumenstein
Yup’ik
“Thirteen Grandmothers. Thirteen planets. Thirteen white tail feathers of the eagle. Thirteen full moons in our year. The world will become one. The world will become one when you learn to believe. One Creator, one perfectly balanced tail feather of the bald eagle.”
Aama Bombo
Tamang
“I am Tamang, and Tamang people are all of Tibetan origin. A long time ago our ancestors fled from Tibet and stayed in Besi, a small village nestled in the foothills of the Himalaya. We are Bhote. After our ancestors stayed in Besi, we became Tamang. To be more specific, ta means horse and mag means rider. So our ancestors came to Besi riding horses. We are the oldest tribe of Nepal. If it hadn’t been for that migration, we would still be Tibetans.”
Margaret Behan
Cheyenne/Arapaho
“Water is so essential to us, and the water bird showed us where it was. The water and the morning star go together, they’re symbols of the Native American Church. For the Cheyenne, we call ourselves the Morning Star people, the beginning of the new day, the beginning of time.”
Flordemayo
Mayan
“In the Mayan tradition, if you agree to study with a teacher, you are together until either you die or the teacher dies, and it doesn’t stop there, because it continues even after death. We take our teachers very seriously. We don’t separate ourselves from our teachers. We might have our differences, and even go through a period where maybe we are not seeing things in the same way. We might even go through a period where we don’t see each other, because we are in the process of praying about it all.”
Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance
Oglala Lakota
“When we pray we have to be truthful to ourselves. We have to have a conscience. If there is something in there that we’re not bringing out or if we’re praying with hate in our mind, you know that prayer is not good. We have to clean our closets before we pray.”
Bernadette Rebienot
Omyene
“For us Africans, there are many forces in nature. Most of the time they are invisible, they are forces that command nature. The plants, the trees, the birds, the stones, these are the things we see. We can touch them. But there are other forces of nature that we do not see with our human eyes. In these invisible forces, there are spirits.”
Maria Alice Campos Freire
Brazilian
”Being a medium is not only about your physical body (as a vessel) but also about your consciousness. It’s about being a mediator between different planes, different realities: between the light and the darkness; between the material plane and the spiritual plane; between the past and the present time; between different planes of various dimensions.”
Mona Polacca
Hopi/Havasupai/Tewa
“The Grandmothers’ work is to revive the concept that we are all related and to extend a basic consciousness about our self and our relationships. That’s our work. Through prayer, ceremony, and spiritual practices, through the earth-based medicines.”
Agnes Baker Pilgrim
Takelma/Siletz
“As humans we need to do a better job. Our job is to keep on doing good, not only for those who are alive on the planet but also for the seven generations ahead.'“