SEEDS OF WISDOM BLOG
Experiencing Elder Wisdom in Toronto
By Judy Mann I attended the Voices of Wisdom event, held in near Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 24 and 25, 2016. The event featured the Elders Kahontakwas Diane Longboat, Mohawk Elder, and Wanbdi Wakita, a Dakota Elder. Both of these Elders are spiritual...
Feeling the Heart of the World at Voices of Wisdom
By Gwen Broz Listening to Kahontakwas, Diane Longboat, and Taoyewakanwi (Her Ways Are Sacred), Charlene O’Rourke, at the Voices of Wisdom at the Blue Deer Center June 11-12 was like a waking dream for me. As Diane began speaking, she was both speaking and listening to...
Reviving A River, Reviving A Lost Culture
This story appeared originally in Vikalp Sangam, an India-based storytelling site on alternatives emerging from the grassroots and social movements. Story and photos by Rucha Chitnis “A River is Like Our Mother” “The Elders used to call Myntdu River their mother,”...
Concentric Circles Sharing Fire at the Centre
by Elyse Portal Voices of Wisdom, in Asheville NC, completed one circle and initiated another. Before I knew anything about the Sacred Fire Community or Foundation, I knew Wanbdi Wakita. The circle began about 15 years ago, in the heat of Wanbdi’s Purification...
Wanbdi Wakita, the calling of a Holy Man
By Pahan Pte San Win and Elyse Portal Wanbdi Wakita was a presenter at our Voices of Wisdom event that took place in Asheville, North Carolina on May 21st and 22nd, 2016. Wanbdi Wakita, whose name translates into English as Looking Eagle, was born at home with the...
Words from the Mamos. Insights from the Black Line Journey 2015
The Indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Martha in Colombia have a mission of utmost importance: to bring healing and balance to the earth for the benefit of all of humanity through their spiritual work of offerings and ceremony. They consider their land...
Maasai youth go on a life changing journey back to tradition
By Cindy Fogle The Maasai youth, whose people reside and travel along the border between Kenya and Tanzania, sit in the crosshairs of modernization. Like many Indigenous youth they face immense pressure by outside forces attempting to instill in them that their ways...
From Extinction to Existence: The Wôpanâak Language
Dormant for 150 years, a lost Indigenous language is brought back to life by a Native woman, setting into motion a cultural revitalization process. This blog is part of a series of Sacred Fire Foundation on the importance of resourcing Indigenous-led groups that are...
Building Reciprocal Relationship with the Earth
Five Indigenous Elders Share their Wisdom Blog by Rucha Chitnis The wisdom of the past is the seed of the future. This sums up a key nugget of the philosophy of Sacred Fire Foundation that is guided by the knowledge that ancestral wisdom is key to solve many of the...
Nurturing the “Inner Tech”: What We Can Learn from Traditional Cultures
By Lawrence I. Messerman Featured photo by Rick Harrow Recently, traditional wisdom received some high-level acknowledgement in an area where it rarely gets much credibility. That’s because the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to three people including China’s...
Reviving Native Languages, Reviving a Vital Lifeline for Cultural Survival
By Rucha Chitnis This is part one of our series on the role of philanthropy to preserve endangered native languages by resourcing Indigenous-led groups that are on the frontlines striving for cultural survival. Language extinction can lead to cultural annihilation....
What I Learned from the Elders at Ancient Wisdom Rising
By Larry Messerman The 2015 Ancient Wisdom Rising (AWR) gathering is over, but I will continue to savor the rich experience of being with over 180 kindred spirits for two days as we enjoyed the wisdom of several prominent Elders from around the world. There were so...
Reclaiming the Sacredness of Water
Blog by Rucha Chitnis Photo by Rucha Chitnis "When the spring is dry, that's a sign of an unhealthy world." — Chief Sisk "I come from a long line of teachers of rivers, who did not live in big cities and traffic," shared Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual and tribal leader...
Voices of Wisdom
By Scott Sheerin What’s so rare as a day in June? The birds in North Carolina sang the song of the world as Marcy Vaughn asked us to breathe in and then allow our outbreath to form sacred syllables of the Bön tradition of Tibet. With each outbreath the connection...
6 Reasons to Join Ancient Wisdom Rising
It can be said that human beings are a continuum. We are pieces, stories, visions and reflections of those who walked this Earth long before us. The Ancient Wisdom Rising gathering is an effort to preserve the living continuity of ancient wisdom through dialogue,...
Shifting from Savior Complex to Indigenous-Led Solutions
Neva Morrison, Director of Grantmaking of Sacred Fire Foundation, in conversation with Rucha Chitnis Neva Morrison, of Cherokee and Skokomish ancestry, joined Sacred Fire Foundation earlier this year as its director of grantmaking. Neva's role as an advocate for...
Our Story: Preserving Ancient Wisdom for Future Generations
Sacred Fire Foundation loves metaphors of seeds. A seed has ancestral wisdom of the past, it firmly roots you in the present and it holds the key to the future--to survive and thrive. Sacred Fire Foundation believes that...
