Ten Thousand Things
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"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

THIRTEEN INDIGENOUS GRANDMOTHERS win "Courage of Conscience" Award & Seek Vatican Apology for Loss of Heritage

Photo by Marisol Villanueva, courtesy of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers

The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center near Boston, has awarded its "Courage of Conscience" Award to the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.

On July 9, the female elders are seeking an audience with the Pope to ask for an apology and to request the revocation of edicts that contributed to the decimation of indigenous people and cultures worldwide for over 500 years:

"...they will be holding a prayer circle in St. Peter’s Square, accompanied by 9 year-old Davian Joell Stand-Gilpin, great great great great granddaughter of Chief Dull Knife of the Lakota Nation, who will be performing traditional dances in native costume. Included in the Grandmothers’ prayer will be the recitation of the names of all those who have come before them trying to open this dialogue between the Pope and indigenous people around the world. Having received no response from the Vatican to their first letter delivered in 2005, one of the Grandmothers will ascend the staircase to the papal residence to formally present a second letter.

"Despite the Pope’s sudden cancellation of his July 9th public audience, to which they held tickets, the Grandmothers have decided to persevere, despite much hardship, in laying down their prayers at the Vatican...the Grandmothers will let nothing deter them from contributing momentum to this wave of support and healing for the world’s indigenous peoples..."

Their supporters have cited a wave of official apologies in 2008 to bolster their request.

In February, the Australian government apologized to Aborigines for over a century of systematic abuse, specifically the forced removal of 100,000 aboriginal children from their parents for sixty years, from 1910 to 1970. However, Prime Minister Rudd ruled out national compensation (although the state of Tasmania has independently set up restitution, and some individuals have been successful in personal lawsuits). In June, the Canadian government issued an apology to the First Nations for the systemic rapes, beatings, and even deaths suffered by aboriginal children in Canada's residential schools. This apology came two months after Phil Fontaine, chief of Canada's Assembly of First Nations, said, "We find the Tibetan situation compelling," raising the possibility that Canada's First Nations might launch a Tibet-style protest campaign around the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. And, in July, Maori activists won another victory after more than a century of fighting against breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi which established the sovereignty of the British crown in New Zealand, but guaranteed Maori continued use of land and natural resources. The New Zealand government apologized and restored half a million acres of forests as well as paid monetary reparations, following previous settlements and apologies in the 1990's.

The Grandmothers who hail from all over the world, – the Arctic Circle, North, South and Central America, Africa, and Asia - organized themselves as a group in 2004 at Tibet House's Menla Mountain Retreat in upstate New York, to work towards global healing:

"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 come here from the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic circle of North America, the great forest 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 from the rainforest 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, all Her inhabitants, all the children and for the next seven generations to come.

"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 which threaten the health of the Earth's peoples, the exploitation of indigenous medicines, and with 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 peoples 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 to all who work and pray for our children, for world peace, and for the healing of our Mother Earth.

"For all our relations."

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