Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet [NOOK Book]

Statement of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

We are thirteen indigenous grandmothers who came together for the first time from October 11 through October 17, 2004, in Phoenicia, New York. We gathered from the four directions in the land of the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. We came here from the Amazon rain forest, the Arctic Circle of North America, the great forests of the American Northwest, the vast plains of North America, the highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the mountains of Oaxaca, the desert of the American Southwest, the mountains of Tibet, and the rain forest of central Africa.

Affirming our relations with traditional medicine peoples and communities throughout the world, we have been brought together by a common vision to form a new global alliance.

We are the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. We have united as one. Ours is an alliance of prayer, education, and healing for our Mother Earth—for all Her inhabitants, for all the children, and for the next seven generations.

We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth: the contamination of our air, waters, and soil; the atrocities of war; the global scourge of poverty; the threat of nuclear weapons and waste; the prevailing culture of materialism; the epidemics that threaten the health of Earth's peoples; the exploitation of indigenous medicines; and the destruction of indigenous ways of life.

We, the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, believe that our ancestral ways of prayer, peacemaking, and healing are vitally needed today. We come together to nurture, educate, and train our children. We come together to uphold the practice of our ceremonies and affirm the right to use our plant medicines free of legal restriction. We come together to protect the lands where our people live and upon which our cultures depend, to safeguard the collective heritage of traditional medicines, and to defend the Earth Herself. We believe that the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future.

We join with all those who honor the Creator and all who work and pray for our children, for world peace, and for healing of our Mother Earth.

For all our relations:

Margaret Behan, Cheyenne/Arapaho

Rita Pitka Blumenstein, Yupik

Julieta Casimiro, Mazatec

Aamo Bombo, Tamang

Flordemayo, Mayan

Maria Alice Campos Freire, Brazil

Tsering Dolma Gyaltong, Tibetan

Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance, Oglala Lakota

Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance, Oglala Lakota

Agnes Baker Pilgrim, Takelma Siletz

Mona Polacca, Hopi/Havasupai/Tewa

Clara Shinobu Iura, Brazil

Bernadette Rebienot, Omyèné