In Honor of Indigenous Women

In Honor of Indigenous Women

Grandmother’s Prayer for Mother Earth

“I am a voice for the voiceless. We are speaking to an unseen world.

Speaking for Mother Earth, trying to stop our spiritual blindness.

We speak for the animal kingdom, for those in the waters, for the ‘four leggeds’ and the one leggeds (trees), the Bengal tiger, the elephant, the creepy crawlers.

I pray that the creator hears us. The creatures have a right to be. The creator gave us instructions about this and how to be a long time ago. He told us ways to take care of ourselves, what to eat and where to live. But now we are unbalanced.

We cut the green off our Mother’s face. We pollute the water, Her blood.

We do clearcut logging on the tops of mountains, when the trees they are the ones that call the wind and rain. Without the ancient trees at the top of our mountains, we are in trouble. The little trees can’t do the same work as the old trees that have been destroyed”

... Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim

 

Grandmothers of the Continents

By Toni Truesdale

"Grand Mothers of the continents

Who crossed now deep waters...

Weren't we all once one?

Ancestors evolve into descendants,

To mix culturally;

Contradicting with bitter irony

The centuries of violence

 Caused by the mode of current biases...

If we could perceive through generations

Past, into what will be;

It would transform pointless superiority,

And embrace all the children yet to be

As our common family."

I am inspired by Native Women to think about big things, our place in the world, a sense of community, responsibility and respect for all living things.

Let us keep all our original instructions and with these find the path to a better world community of peace and understanding. It is the time of women to lead the way.

The Sacred Feminine
(for my daughter and her daughter)

“The Madonna”

by Toni Truesdale

The beautiful dark Madonna comes down to us

Through time, from the beginning.

She has many names: Ana, Tiamat, Isis, Cybele,

Demeter, Sheba, Mary Magdalene,

Mary, mother of Christ,

Maya, mother of Buddha,

Fatima, daughter of Mohammed,

Nana Bakula, Spider Woman, First Woman,

Parvati, Oxum, Corn Maiden, Eurzuli,

Oya, Morrigan, Ishtar,Tara, Gaia, Saule, Amaterasu,

Coatlicue, Nerthus Eve...

She is of the earth and the sky;

She is our mother and our mother’s mother, and so on

To the very first spark of life,

She is always

The Great Mother.

She is us. We are she.

Copyright Toni Truesdale 1976

ToniTruesdale.com

“Basket of Life”

by Toni Truesdale

The Indigenous people of the Americas developed many

Crops for their nutritional value, taste and durability;

Selectively, over hundreds of years.

Before contact, there were at least five hundred kinds of corn.

Varieties also of beans, squash. potatoes, chili and melons were cultivated 

In gardens, often under the harshest of circumstances;

Stone was used as mulch, water directed and hoarded, 

As desert water was directed into dry gardens, waffle, irrigated fields.

In the heights of Peruvian mountains, hundreds of types of produce

Were developed in the experimental terraced gardens, 

Including a rainbow of  potato varieties.

Ancient seeds of beans long thought extinct,  

Found in caches in the arid canyons of Cedar Mesa, have been re-cultivated.  

The diversity of our food returns to become importance,

At the cusp of the disappearance of many varieties of fruits and vegetables;

Seed banks of native plants are now being stored.

So essential were the life-giving crops that many Creation Stories

Refer to the sacred women known as Three Sisters; Corn, Bean and Squash of the Iroquois and the Corn Maiden/Mother of the southwest. 

In a traditional tale from Sky City, a divine sister holds  the “Basket of Life”,

Reminding us to preserve, in the cycle of seasons; 

The rich diversity of our food for future generations. 

In the beginning: Women in Creation

“Tiamat:Creation Story”

By Toni Truesdale

Tiamat. of the darkest sea of Creation.

Tiamat, of the abyss mixing waters;

The Creatrix vessel, the first

Body of heaven and earth

In the Babylonian beginning...

Tiamat, ancestress of the Biblical,

Alpha and Omega. 

Damaged but not destroyed by the patriarchs; 

Before the one in two;

Creator male/female: An/Ana

Whose divine daughter, Inanna, descended back into chaos

To establish sacred marriage rites, 

Of equality in the ancient 

Civilization of the Mesopotamian deltas.

They that revered small clay mothers

Set in every female house.

As Priestesses still spoke to the serpents

Close to the pulse of this sacred earth.

Creator Mother Tiamat’s beating heart,  as

Today we gaze up into to see again,

The beauty of her eyes... 

From Garden to Briar Patch: Ode to Eve

“From Garden to Briar Patch

Ode to Eve: another perspective on original sin”

Words and Image by Toni Truesdale

Poor Adam,

Would have been blind all his life

If it hadn’t been for Eve.

She was the smart one, you see;

She thought it all out

Knowledge was the key!

She listened to the wisdom of snakes

And ate to see….

 

What kind of sin was that?

You may quite rightly ask.

For what kind of deity demands

People be stupid, mute, blind, deaf, still;

And who would want to believe in that kind of supreme authority

That says “Do not question ME!”

(Adam did, Eve had her doubts)

 

Thrown out of the garden, (That Primordial duo),

Is how the story goes,

And into the world,

Where ole Eve gives birth;

Wait, don’t women do that anyway?

What kind of curse it that?

And where would any of us be?

 

Now, all women have been blamed,

(for thinking it appears)

And called imperfect for centuries,

(for seeing it all clear)

Why? Cause we wanted knowledge!

And for this, a male ”god” wrathfully imprisoned us

Psychologically;

(said: we needed to be controlled, wanted to be dominated)

 

And Eve is still cursed for her intelligence

Original sin it is called. But, is it “god” or Men

That so fear the wits of women?

 

In reality,

Like the trickster, Brier Rabbit,

We are born into a thorny world,

For who wants to live cloistered anyway?

And would we rather be free?

To think, to question

And to SEE.

 

So when you see that image of the couple,

Standing meekly by the apple tree,

In their nudity.

Think about it.

Is that what you want to be?

 

The Great Tree of Life

Is far older than any Authority;

Is from what we all are descended,

Our Mothers, Grandmothers, Great Grandmothers, Great, Great and so on…

Mitochondrially….

 

So thank the thoughtful Eve,

She challenged “god” and won,

For the thorny bush is filled with roses,

And that beautiful garden has always been

In all glorious fecundity,

Inside us,

All Women in history.

Dana/Danu: Song of the Tuatha de Danaan

Spirals pecked into rock

Set into massive stone shrines,

Built to last all the ages of humanity.

They signal the constant cycles of seasons;

Newgrange, Knowth, Dowth…

Portals for the Sidhe that

Drift into this world from the Other

At Equinox, vernal and autumnal;

From the chthonic world they were cast

By the Sons of Mil.

 

Waters swell to the surface,

From deep subterranean waters

Within this greening land.

Wells and Grottos mirror the darkening sky,

Just as they did for the eons of

Offerings and prayers

Left with generations of hope.

 

This is the song of Dana/Danu

Stone, water, land

Great Mother of the Tuatha De Danaan

The mysterious, gifted and beautiful

Ancestors of Ireland.

 

Please remember all my work written and painted is copyrighted, Thanks!

Coming: Spirit Women Coloring Book and The Great World Tree by Toni Truesdale

Spirit Woman Story: Skywoman

Spirit Women Stories
"The Woman who fell from the Sky" Iroquois Creation story
There are thousands of stories that explain who the world began, as many as the diverse cultures of the world. There are commonalities in all, water or the abyss, we begin in darkness and water. As human beings emerge usually after the earth is formed and animal wildlife exists, the stories can part in interpretation. The Judeo-Christian belief finds fault the female, even though she brings about modern life. And the Tree of Life common, in so many stories, forgets that the roots are from ancient female lineage. Forgotten also is An/Ana, male and female duality; and Inanna, their sacred daughter.
The most ancient story, predating the garden of Eden, is of Tiamat of the mid-east. She'll follow in another blog because she deserves her own discussion...
The Skywoman story is reflective of the duality myths. But just as the Iroquois (Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Oneida, Cayuga; together they call themselves the Haudenosaunee)  love to expand on the human gift of explaining the world and promoting understanding; their original tales are complex and meaningful.  The Great Tree of Peace is the direct descendant of the "Tree of Life" and remains central to their culture to this day.
Her story, The Skywoman, begins in the skyworld. From this beautiful place, a young woman pregnant with twins,  fell into the abyss to land on the back of the turtle. Her body became the earth;
her twins, nurtured by the divine grandmother, created the world as we know it with their dynamics of oppositional dialectics. They call the world, "Turtle Island".
See this story in "Skywoman" by Joanne Shenandoah and Doug George, illustrated by the wonderful Mohawk artist( and my long time friend), John Fadden.
More Spirit Women Stories and their roles in the Creation of the world follow in new blogs.