“You can adopt a highway, so why not adopt a grandmother?” jokes Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim, the chair of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. At age 87, Grandma Aggie is the oldest member of the Takelma Siletz Tribe in Oregon, and she’s just back home from a council meeting in Japan, hosted by Grandma Clara Shinobu Iura. After knee surgery, Aggie will head to Anchorage in May for a gathering hosted by Grandma Rita Pitka Blumenstein, and then she’ll be off to Brazilia in October for a gathering hosted by Grandma Maria Freire. And so the grandmas have been gathering — and growing in adoptees — since their first gathering in New York in 2004.
The grandmothers are not rich jet-setters — quite the contrary. They are down-to-earth medicine women, shamans, and curanderos. They travel by donations. They work with prayer and ceremony, with plant medicines, and some with spirit-opening entheogens like ayahuasca, peyote, and mushrooms. They could tell horror stories of hunger and deprivation on reservations, of land and languages stolen, of children lost. Instead, they spread blessings and caring for the earth as they gently work for justice. They have petitioned the Pope in St. Peter’s Square and have consulted with the Dalai Lama. Perhaps best of all, they have inspired thousands of other grandparents and elders to create new councils. As Grandma Aggie says, the job of the grandmother is to span humanity’s greatest distance: “the 14 inches from our heads to our hearts.”
| spiritualityhealth.com/articles/our-grandmothers-photo-album |
Grandmother Mona, a Hopi/Havasupai/Tewa elder, has a Master of Social Work degree. She serves on several United Nations' committees on Indigenous people's issues and is a featured author, speaker and educator on Indigenous people's human rights, aging, mental health, addiction and violence. She is also the president/CEO and faculty of the Turtle Island Project, a non-profit program that promotes a vision of wellness by providing transcultural training to individuals, families and healthcare professionals. "Indigenous people have come through a time of great struggle, a time of darkness. The way I look at it is like the nature of a butterfly. In the cocoon, a place of darkness, the creature breaks down into a fluid and then a change, a transformation, takes place. When it is ready and in its own time, it begins to move and develop a form that stretches and breaks away from this cocoon and emerges into this world, into life, as a beautiful creature. We grandmothers, we have emerged from that darkness, see this beauty, see each other and reach out to the world with open arms, with love, hope, compassion, faith and charity." http://indigenouswisdomsummit.com/library/8681/462
The article provides a generalization for the 13 grandmothers. It needs expansion.
-could use some more pictures. maybe thats just me though. i like pictures
-whats one of the things they helped changed or brought to public attention?
-more about what they do and how they go about doing it
Flordemayo is one of the thirteen grandmothers, she was born in Nicaragua "under the sign for the seed, in Mayan astrology". She has the ability to heal spirits, she also has the ability to see color, light, and sound in ways a normal person could not. With that ability she can see into an individual's ora and find any imperfections whether they be physical, spiritual, or emotional.
Review of 13 grandmothers: Overall the article is decent. It is short sweet and straight to the point. However, I am disappointed on how broad the subject mater is in this article. It just gives an outline of who the grandmas are and their the representatives. It would be nice to have each member of the council have their own page. Also it would be nice to know what recent accomplishments they made and more recognition of said accomplishments. It seems that there would be more in depth information on this assemble of women. Any time a group of people from different walks of life and different countries get together with a same common goal, only good can come from the meeting. It would be interesting to hear the whole story on what happened at the Vatican.
Review of resources: Its good that many resources where used however they are mostly 4-10 years old. Surly these grandmothers are more active. The article even states that they meet every six months. Surly they have more recent recorded information.
Improvement: The article does site the 13 grandmothers home page: (About Us page at International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers website, accessed June 8, 2013.) However the only information pulled was from the about section and was last accessed in 2013. When i went to the web site, 2017, their is a whole media/ blog section on the website with tons of research links. Sadly the most recent enter was in 2014. On a positive note, I did find a documentary by Carole Hart that was released in 2009 that might be worth a watch with possible reliable information.
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