Sherry: A confluence of recent events, including the
Womens’ March in January, and the suffering of the children at the southern
border, had Annell Livingston, Barbara Mackenzie and myself talking about the
need for Grandmother Wisdom, or Wise Woman Wisdom, in these times.
Long ago, a matriarchal culture lived peacefully on
the earth. Patriarchy (and its warring “us and them” perspective, not to
mention the emphasis on profit over planet), has been terribly damaging to
Mother Earth and all her creatures. We
are the only species who destroys our own habitat, along with that of other creatures. It is mind-boggling. I
wonder when survival will finally come before “economic interests”, and am
reminded of this quote, from the documentary Awake: A Dream of Standing Rock :
“In prophecy, it is said in times of terrible
trouble, first, the young will rise. Behind them will be the mothers and
grandmothers. And after that, the warriors will rise.”
We are seeing this now. The young are rising, women
are rising, and indigenous people are rising and speaking truth to power. Grandmothers, with our lived history and life wisdom, are rising.
Annell Livingston, of Somethings I Think About,
lives in Taos, New Mexico, under the
gaze of Taos Mountain. Annell, you live among a very ancient culture, the
native people of the Pueblo. Do you feel
its history in the land around you? Will you share your thoughts about
Grandmother Wisdom with us?
Annell: Much
has been written about The Wisdom of Women, or Grandmother Wisdom. Women are taking their place in society,
equal to men. And women have something
to say. In the past, women have
been voiceless or mute, unheard.
Now women are speaking, and are
speaking for all creatures living on the earth, and for the earth itself. We speak for the “other,” those who are
different, those of color, children, and small things. We are in a time of reclaiming of
ourselves.
We are awaking in a time of our own making. A place of darkness. This is a place of “outcasts,” and we know
ourselves to have been the “outcast”. No
longer afraid of aging, or of dying. No
longer afraid of who we are. No longer
afraid of our own bodies. No longer
afraid of our power. We wrap ourselves
in our power, and wear it proudly. For all to see. We laugh out loud. As Virginia Woolf said, “a room of her own.” A room where we can be free to be, no longer
told we are not good enough. No longer
afraid of what “he” might say, instead we are finding our way.
Sherry: This reminds me of the article “Kali
Takes America”, when Vera de Chalambert wrote, right after the 2016
election: “Make no mistake, it is really Holy Darkness that has won this
election….the Dark Mother….oracle of holy change….brought down our house in a
shocking blow; all illusions stripped in a single night. We are not who we
thought we were. Now we must get ready to stand in her fires of transmutation.”
Annell: We are still learning who we are, and who
she was… and who she was, back in time to the beginning. This is the “Wisdom of the Grandmothers”
painted on the walls of the cave. As we
run our hands over the stone walls, we find what is now, and who we have
become. The follower becomes the
followed, moon in the sky, what we have been seeking, is ourselves. We see what has been painted over,
erased.
We are finding our way with the help of the
Grandmothers; we are one with all that is, the endless possibility of form,
taking new shape at the speed of light.
The new space is filled with the presence of
mothers, and everyone is a daughter.
Shaped by the movements of white-haired women and ringing with the
laughter of old lady friends. A place
filled with the love of women for women and the play of little girls.
Starlight in darkness, lit up with her
thoughts. She is the maker, the builder,
the doer, the finder. We claim this
space for our own. In the past we have
been invisible, called a witch, tortured, burned at the stake, a time governed
by fire. We have been prohibited from
practicing medicine. She knows her time
has come; it is now that she listens and is heard, no longer alone. The Age of her Resonance.
My only qualification to speak is that I am a woman,
old enough to be a Grandmother. I live
in Taos, New Mexico, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I live on the mesa west of the village of
Taos, above Taos Valley. I can see Taos
Pueblo from my back window and hear the drums beat as they drift over the sage
brush. Taos Pueblo is at the foot of
sacred Taos Mountain. The Mother
Mountain.
Taos Pueblo is one of the oldest continuously
occupied communities, over a thousand years old. And the people of Taos Pueblo honor their
traditions. It is known for being one of
the most private, secretive, and conservative pueblos. (There are eight Pueblos
in Northern New Mexico.) The people
almost never speak of their religious customs to outsiders, and because their
language has never been written down, much of the culture remains unknown to
the rest of the world. Taos Pueblo has
been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Taos Pueblo is a reservation of 95,000 acres, and
about 4,500 people live in the area. The
people of Taos Pueblo speak a variation of the Tanoan language.
Sherry: I am
fascinated by your desert landscape, with its ancient history. I would love to
share the poem you wrote that began our conversation about Grandmother Wisdom,
if I may:
A Woman Gives the Full Moon Names
Native tribes have names
For the full moon
To mark the passing of time
A woman could give the full moon
Names to mark the passing of her life
Beginning with the time of birth moon
Little girl moon
School begins moon
Time of the young woman moon
Time of marriage moon
Time of children moon
Time of the full woman moon
Time of old age moon
Time of death moon
The circle
Of the moon complete
Sherry: We are in the time of Wise Woman Moon, time
for grandmothers to arise and share their earth wisdom, ignored and dismissed
by the patriarchy for far too long. Thank you, Annell.
I came across this quote by Sharon Blackie, author of If Women Rose Rooted. It speaks to the rising of the Divine Feminine, and our herstory:
"If women remember that once upon a time we sang with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own path through the dark forest, while creating a community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted, like trees.......well, then, women might indeed save, not just ourselves, but the world." Truth.
Barbara Mackenzie, of signed….bkm, is one of our
very first Poets United members from our beginnings in 2010. She lives in northern California and is 1/8 Sioux.
Barbara, I know your culture reveres your elders. I resonate deeply with your beliefs
and traditions, and admire how your people live with reverence for Mother
Earth.
Barbara: I did watch a lot of Standing Rock and was deeply moved by the experience. I know, however, man has and is always
capable of cruelty to other humans - it does not matter the color of skin. Each race should be proud of their own.
My mother was Native American when it was not cool
to be so - she was only 1/4 but carried the skin and hair; she paid a
deep price for it. We are all gifts, no matter the color, and embracing our
heritage is important. Not all Natives love the Earth or its promises - I
have seen this. They too are human - we are all children of this great
mother, and must do what we can to protect her.
You are right; it will be up to the young now to
save her - our generation and economy has left her a mess, though we did bring attention to the issue -
like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
So much more to do. A population that is a burden for her, a free
and entitled generation that do not even know where their food comes from.
The earth will win out. She always has. We may be gone. She may have enough of us.
Maybe the few words we write while here will make a difference- maybe we
can be a voice for her.
Sherry: This is what I fervently hope, Barbara. So
many of my poems are pleas for awareness and action. We do what we can.
Would you talk to us about Grandmother Wisdom, about
prophecy….anything you wish to share with us from the wealth of your cultural
traditions. We are all ears!
Barbara: My Great Grandmother Elizabeth was full
Dakota Sioux, she was orphaned in the Minnesota Uprising in 1862 in New Ulm,
Minnesota. And so the story was passed on from generation to
generation, from grandmother to grandmother. Grandmothers are
keepers of the stories, and ensure their wisdom moves forward with each
generation.
It was passed to me by my non-native grandmother who married one of Elizabeth’s
sons - she guarded it and passed it to all her children and
grandchildren. She told how Elizabeth and her sister were in the tall
grass, hiding, after their parents were killed. A brave came by and picked her
up on horseback - she never saw her sister again.
She was left in
South Dakota near Fort Sisseton and there she would live out her days, have her
children, and pass the blood of the Native American to her offspring.
But all grandmothers pass a piece of their soul with each generation,
either through blood or story. And it is in these stories that we find our own
wisdom and shelter.
Sherry: That is an amazing history - or herstory! I recently learned that the egg that determined who
we would be was formed inside our mother’s fetus while she was in our
grandmother’s womb! Our beginning starts with them, not only our mothers.
Perhaps this is another reason that our bonds with our grandmothers are so
strong.
Barbara: The current ways of the world are not their
ways - they knew the earth; they held the sky in their hearts. My
story-telling grandmother was born in a log cabin, born Swedish and Norwegian,
the first of 12 children. Her father would be the one who brought all 12
children into this world. He was not a doctor but a farmer, who knew the gift
of life as the deer knows her fawn.
She would grow, others born, and stayed with her
grandmother as the family moved west to Sisseton for land. She
would join them a few years later and become the mother of 11, after she
married my 1/2 Native grandfather. She would become the greatest
influence to me and my brothers and sisters - her patience and eternal beauty
was as earthly and whole as the earth.
She believed in all people,
and the gift of her stories and her love were her legacy until her death after
99 years. She touched more souls and lived through more hardship
then one should be able to bear, but she loved life, nature and her children.
Sherry: I love “they held the sky in their hearts".
It sounds like your grandmother left many gifts to your family.
Barbara: Grandmothers are messengers, they are
goddesses, carrying the light that is past for the world. Let us learn from
their bloodlines the way of the earth, for she is our first mother and we have
been put in charge to protect her. She has many things to teach us,
about ourselves and those around us. From her we are born and unto her we
will again rest.
Sherry: Barbara, thank you for writing a poem
especially for this chat. Let’s share it with our readers:
"Dignity"
Statue of A Sioux Woman
in South Dakota
Artist: Dale Lamphere
Wisdom
of Grandmothers
We collect wisdom in shards
And nettles
Dropped by winged women from the sky
We gather wisdom like souls that gather on the backs
of the great whales (centered and secure)
We (woman) harvest wisdom one seed,
one kernel at a time
We trash the harvest throw it to the sky gods for blessing
and health
We knead her and bake her we eat of her body
As a grandmother wears her offspring in each line on her face,
so too we wear Wisdom
Climb to the moon she says cling to her as the fetus to the fertile womb(man)-
she will give you strength she will show you
your given path
be it wood or water -
be it desert or stone
Listen close (your ear) for the cry of the whale
Listen closer still (stillness)
for the call of the winged woman - she is Wisdom
the guardian of the gate
Call out to her at the water’s reflection and she will reveal
her face
Round and full
Filled with the giving
Sherry: “Listen… for the cry of the whale”… I can
see the winged woman’s face, round and full with the giving. What a glorious
poem this is! Thank you so much, Barbara, for all you have shared with us here, and for this incomparably beautiful poem.
Let me leave you with my anguished wolf howls, and
my insistence that our consciousness and our way of being on this earth can yet
transform. Because it must. And there is no “other”. There is only you and me,
human beings, alive on Planet Earth.
GRANDMOTHERS
WITH WOLF HOWLS IN OUR HEARTS
Listen to the song of the ancients,
Grandmothers and Grandfathers from the Old Ways.
For we are the seventh generation,
the white buffalo calf has been born,
and the time of prophecy is at hand.
On the wind, I can hear Grandmother weeping.
She is calling to us to stand for the water, the air,
the forest, the earth and all its creatures.
What world will we leave to the children
seven generations from now?
The Black Snake slithers across the land.
Oil spills into rivers.
Mother Earth's womb is torn asunder by fracking.
Whales choke on plastic in a dying ocean
and the two poles are melting, week by week.
A madman sits in the throne of power
with money as his only god.
All protection is being stripped away;
men with dead eyes stalk the halls of government,
claiming truth is false news
and outrageous lies are truth.
In our hearts, Wild Woman stirs in protest.
This is our earth, the home that we love.
You cannot threaten our children's future
without incurring our wrath.
The Grandmothers' blood runs through our veins.
Our backbones grew strong in birthing.
Our hearts know truth.
We will never believe your lies.
When it comes to our children,
we have no choice but to fight.
We are gathering in front of
the White House walls
in peace, but with hearts like banshees.
We are standing by the sides of rivers
and sacred burial grounds.
We cannot turn away, for our beloveds are buried here
and our children - and yours! - need
this water to drink.
You have dotted the landscape of our nightmares
with strip mines and oil derricks and fracking.
Everywhere are nuclear power plants
that threaten our combined existence.
And now you rattle the sabers of war
and cast eyes on our fresh-cheeked children?
No! It is Enough.
We have lived men’s ways for millennia,
and look what a mess we're in.
The Grandmothers and the Mothers
and the dancing Maidens
and the strong little rainbow children are rising
with fire in our eyes and transformation in our hearts -
with compassion even for you men in the halls of power,
wounded and empty, whose dead eyes proclaim
you have never felt truly loved.
Here is a secret: even a billion trillion dollars
will not ease that wound.
Instead, hug your sad-eyed sons and smile
- not like crocodiles - at your unhappy
wives.
Trade in your gold walls for a chance to be real,
and let the rest of us live in peace.
This war is a holy war of light over darkness
and truth over lies.
You have might, but we have Right
on our side,
and wolf howls in our hearts
that will never be silent
until social justice is
the rule of the land.
As humans, we have been less than we were meant to
be. But we can rise. Our Grandmother Spirits, that have survived so much, and
learned to fly, know this. We are rising, as a morning bird seeks higher
ground.
My friends, we must never stop dreaming and
believing. But we also need – most urgently – to act, to vote, to march, to
contact our elected officials and insist they address climate change, to speak
up for social justice, and to protest all that is wrong. We must actively
strive for change.
There is much we can do: protect forests, plant
trees, oppose projects that damage the earth, stand with the oppressed, and be
a voice for those who cannot speak. And we can write our poems, hoping they
send some good, caring energy out into the world and touch some minds and
hearts along the way.
Thank you so much, Annell and Barbara, for this
timely and important conversation, and for sharing your thoughts and poems with
us. I feel inspired and hopeful, and I hope our readers do as well.
Do come back, friends, and see who we talk to next.
Who knows? It might be you!
For those interested in reading further on this
topic:
