A Gift of Seven Generations: Who / how do we want to be?

When I was 18 and then again at 19, I went to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with my church on a service learning trip. Both trips I visited Wounded Knee and listened to its histories by elders. Their truths shattered myths told in history books. For one, our country is not the "Leader of the Free World" because there is nothing "free" about the United States of America or our origins.

The shattering of myth creates a void. How we react and respond to that void has deep consequences for our being, for our relatives (human and more-than-human), for the entire cosmos. I am grateful to Oglala Lakota elders for not just shattering myth but also gifting me with a way to understand / experience / make meaning of space and time.

Seven generations forward and seven generations back.

This gift has been and continues to be my guide. Its sage wisdom encouraged my coming out just a few months after my first trip (and continues encouraging my queerness.) Its wide perspective helps me find my (queer) ancestors and descendants across space and time. Its complex simplicity reminds me who / how to be here and now.

Some of the ways I want to be here and now so as to honor my ancestors seven generations ago and continue cultivating seeds so that my descendants seven generations into the future live in harmony with cosmic truths (not man's) are:

• Practice disengaging from / disrupting / abolishing / transforming / healing all Man-Made Structures / Systems / Ways-of-Being.

• Observe contradictions / discomforts / discord / conflicts / biases.

• Notice connections / interdependencies / roots / relations / patterns / stories / myths.

• Sense that which is larger / quantum / cosmic / ancient / ancestral / microscopic / beyond-human-understanding.

• Harmonize with waves / vibrations / narratives / memories / dreams of the more-than-human-realm.

• Tend connections / interdependencies / roots / relations / patterns / stories / myths that aid Us-All in healing here and now.

I recently posted a short video art update to Instagram talking about this as well. So check it out below.

And...who / how do you want / need / desire to be here and now in ways that honor the gift of, "Seven generations forward and seven generations back"?