first i'm going to start first by explaining what is it what they call thanksgiving address actually thanksgiving address isn't really the proper way to [Music] say we're talking about uh in the mohawk language um we call it o hondo gali hadeko that's what we call it but many people when they speak english they refer to it come as the thanksgiving address which isn't wrong but it's not exactly where to uh literally uh i think english it's not the actual meaning of it some people call it an opening prayer and that's not around either but it's not exactly right either but the correct way is to say in the mohawk language and if you literally translate that it means that word means in a front of or before. means matters or issues that are important before in the front of matters or issue of importance adequate is what you say before you discuss matters of importance or big issues and so this this kind of speech is a spiritual speech and uh the nashuni people which are the oneidas and onondagas and kyogre contesco say this before any council meeting get a nation meeting or a grand council which is the united uh nations of the iroquois grand council they will say that spiritual speech before they begin their meeting and then when they finish their meetings they will say another they will say almost the same thing intent of closing that it has finished and so they will repeat it except in a tense that is finished at the end and so uh my uncle used to say uh for us younger ones [Music] that are learning about it he would say it's like a sandwich with two bread and you put in the middle so you open up with the creator and then the people do their business and then the next bread is the other bread that makes the sandwich it's stuck closing and so you have to have those in order to have an official meeting and whenever there are social dancers in any of the longhouses of the hood and shoe and load and shiny people try these spiritual words to open up officially and when they are done that speaker will also close it to conclude a social dance if uh parents are going to have a meeting to discuss the school where their children goes they will also do the same spiritual speech to open up their discussion because it involves their children's future and when they finish the community in for the school they will use the same speech to close it so it is not only just used by chiefs or social dancers but its use on any matters that are important matters or issues and that's the way the real illusion of sunni people do and use it now yes this uh things these are spiritual talk is perhaps the most sacred the most important of all the things that the sunni people has and when i think about it it is the same thing this uh speech that we're going to be talking about as when a baby was conceived in a woman and now the baby is wrapped up in the mother's womb being nurtured and everything needed for that baby to grow is in that mother and being given to the little baby that was conceived and so by the time nine months is done he is a human being now in nine months ready to breathe the air of the mother earth and the atmosphere was given everything by the mother and the father for nine months to become a human being so this speech of the guy it's like that baby that was just conceived and for nine months have been taught or being wrapped with the fluids and all the nutrients of the mother and father to become a human in nine months that's what it's equivalent to another way to describe it is if it's cold cold time and you use a pendleton woolen blanket you make yourself warm and comfortable it is the same thing as that speech of the honda guy wade aqua it is that pendleton blanket that comforts you and brings warmth to you so that you can live and so that's what uh this or what people as the thanksgiving address is sort of about it is the foundation of our existence as a human being in the world and i'm going to give you an example uh for a clarification so people will understand that it isn't just a thanksgiving address it is it is almost like enough many lakes it is a big thing and um i will tell you that um just a few words i mentioned in a mohawk language so foreign what that means is at the beginning of time the creator used the dirt from the mother earth and the water from the big water and he molded this water in dirt in a made of dolls the way the creator looks like the way the twins of the night and the day whom we call sawiskala and the two twin brothers one is representing of the day and the other is representative of the night and the creator and the powers of the twin use the dirt and the water of the big water to form the human beings in the form of balls and then he used the fire to cook it like you would put a biscuits dough into the fire or oven to make it cook and that's what he did with this dolls that he made in a fire to make it live or become created and then when he finished he blew in their mouth three times and when he blew in their mouth three times their eyes blinked and their arms moved and their legs moved and they became mobile and they became alive with the three breaths of life and that's why all the lodinoshuni people use three as a sacred number for everything that we do everything we do there's a reputation repetition what do you call it now they repeat it three to three times all the time almost everything what we do that is sacred even when people passes away in our they always say one doesn't go by themselves there will be three when one leaves two others will leave three and uh so if you study the dinosaur people you will see that they repeat three all the time and everything so now when the creator finish and the twins they finish he he stood men and women up that he made from the dirt and the water after blowing in their mouth three times and making them live to be born on this planet earth and then he began to instruct them of what the creator wants the way the creator thinks he put it in there transmitted into their mind that men women and he said oh no that means now you will make more fire and the sparks from your fire will be made what they mean as we call family it means a fire that's our word for family the sparks of the fire goes that's the children that will be born from that woman and that man it means you will produce many spark or many kids and that's the symbolic of our way we talk and so he began to tell us what he thinks the creator he transmitted what he want to know and to do and to believe in he put it in their head and when they make many children many sparks then they will continue those those teachings but what i want to do right now is uh which is the instructions that the creator when he made the humans when he stood up the man and the woman to be on the earth and when they are to make families water to teach their offspring for as long as the sun shines along this river runs lounges or grass grows they will teach this to the next generations so it is extremely important this kind of a top it is the foundation of the human people's existence in the universe that we live and so that same speech became the honda guy for this one what he told that man and that woman the first human beings that's where it came from of creation and creation and it's easy to see that but well at this moment is i'm going to give you an example by using one of my six kids because when one of your children is born if you're a hudanishini people or person that means a real human when your offspring are born give them girls or little boys babies you will repeat this same thing what the creator told the first man and woman at the beginning of this world that she'll never stop i'm gonna do that as if my daughter was born the way all fathers and uncles have to do when their nephews or daughters or sons are born it comes from hondukai so it doesn't go to chiefs meetings or big important meetings but it goes the most to brand new babies that are born within seconds after they wipe the mucus of birth from their nose and their passageway of breathing they don't even clean the blood from their birth and the father holds the baby or the uncle holds the baby but the father is not there then the naturally on the mother's side it will be his duty to do that so i'm going to recite some of this way my oldest daughter was born to give you an example but that is the same speech that the creator gave to the first humans that were made and all the nachony have been doing this since the beginning of humankind never stopped and that's where thanksgiving comes from and so at first the father or the uncle who will hold a brand new baby just seconds after you that baby was wipe the bird's mucus from the mouth and the nose so he can breathe so she can breathe and so now they give me the baby they wrap up and they can keep the baby not bathed yet baby as well so i hold the baby now and i hold it up pull the baby up and i say in my language creator i thank you because you sent my daughter to be born today my creator my wife who carried the baby for nine months and she gave birth and she struggled for the baby to be born but she is in good health and she as well after giving birth and my daughter is also well she made it through the birthing process and she breathes now the air of the earth and her first as the father of my daughter i want to thank you for sending my little daughter to be born and my creator i thank you that you safely you made it safe the birth of my my wife and my daughter thank you creator many thank yous and now my creator i want you to know and my little baby girl i want me i'm your father you have arrived here on the earth from the creator's land and while you are here breathing the air of this earth it's different from where you came from creator sent you here and while you are here on this earth and breathe in this air the women from where you will come have chosen the name and their name will be given to you and i'm now giving it to you the name that came from the woman your mother and all your female relatives they chose this name for you and then you say that name three times to the baby that that will be her name where as long as she lives that's what you say to her then you say my creator i hold my daughter brand new little baby girl strong and healthy thank you i'm my creator i want you to know that the woman relatives of my little daughter have chosen the name are we and that will be the name that she will carry while she walks this earth while she lives on the mother earth and so creator i want you to know my daughter's earth name is hawaii and my creator i want you to help kajit jahawi as she lives and i don't know how many days you have allowed for her that she's going to live on the earth but i know how many days she will be privileged to live on the earth my daughter but and you make sure you tell the creator repeat three times your my daughter's name and you say my creator every day i want you if you will help my daughter to live and to be happy and in peace then when you're finished you say to your daughter i say that the creator sent you here to our family and we're going to take care of you and help you to live but my daughter gajita hawi i want you to never to forget a creator sent you here and i want you to as you live as many days as you will walk the earth earth always remember the power of our creator and that you allow it just love our creator my god and so now creator and my daughter gajie changhawi i have formally introduced you together so that you can begin your relationship and your life and then now you say and now we i ask you to continue to listen i now want you to list this mother earth the creator made you to be the mother of all living things mother earth i want you to know that the creator sent my little daughter and her name by the women they said her name will be now she is born and she will walk upon your sacred body so mother earth i tell you my her earth name is and mother earth as you have helped me and my family and everybody before before me throughout the years since the beginning of time mother earth i ask you also to give everything that my daughter god how we need to live happy in a good life that you will take care of her as you have taken care of me and all my relatives beginning of time all right so now we this mother earth is your mother and my mother the mother of all living things i want you my daughter never to forget your mother the earth i want you to never to forget to respect and to be grateful to your mother earth i want you to love your mother earth as long as you will be living and walking on her body that you will always respect her my daughter jahawi and mother earth i have formally introduced you together to begin your relationship for as long as you have lived and now i face my daughter i asked you to continue to listen and now to the waters that's in the river the waters the china ponds and the lakes and the ocean all these waters and he made them living and he put a spirit in her soul in the water and he told the water that they will run in the rivers and the streams and the ocean waves and every day the waters will quench our thirst and when we are sick the water will be made into medicine to us to drink and be healed and when our body body purification the water will do that for us and so the water is living that's why it moves in the rivers and the waves of the ocean forever and short waters of the world i introduce you today to my brand new little daughter who was just born her name is kajii changhawi and i hope like you did to me and all my relatives of the past that purpose as you have done to me i hope all soy waters that you will help kaji jahawi once you need the food you will be there to cook food repair medicine for her and help her in every way waters of the world my daughter's name is then when you have told the water three times your daughter's name your brand new daughter now you talk to your daughter and you say the creator made the water it is a living entity it has a spirit in the soul like you and i do and i want you when you are thirsty that you will your thirst will be quenched by the waters of the world and when you need to make food for medicine water will be there for you my daughter got you johnny i want you forever never to disrespect the waters of the world i want you to to love the waters of the world as long as you will live and that water will always help you and so we and the waters of the world i have now formally introduced you together to begin your relationship in this world and then you go on now to the garden the three sisters corn and beans and squash and potatoes and turnips and everything else they both are the cuts and vegetables three sisters the corn the beans and the squash and you tell them you say my daughter was born today i carry her and i want you to know her name it's kaji tahawi then again three times you tell everything in the garden it grows what your daughter's name three different times then when you're finished that you tell your daughter someone know the things that grow in the garden that horn the beans in the squash are the three sisters that are the leaders of everything in the garden and from there will be means our sustenance comes from there they are the sustenances of our life the energy givers that makes us live created and made it like that and so we i want you to everything that grows in the gardens the three sisters their leaders you say that three times the name her name to them then you say now everything that grows in a garden i want you to always respect them and honor them and be thankful to them and in our nation and in our long house our fatekeepers and our leaders and grandmothers our elders periodic quickly and festivals for the beans and the corn and the squash and all the things that grows in the garden to make them strong to honor them i want you to be always a part of that i always respect all the gardens of the world so now i have introduced you formerly hawaii and all the garden spirits that grows all over the garden of the world now you can begin your relationship and then you go on next one with the animal world you call it means the animals that are free they're not caged or they're not in the barnyard but they were in the woods in the swamps in the desert in the mountains in the valleys and of all those animals were the the sunni people the deer was stored in eater of all the animals begins small so now you tell the deer who's the leader of the animal world you say to them means my daughter was born and her name the women chose the matrilineal so to the deer in all the animal world i want you to know that is her name my daughter that was just born and whenever my daughter will need help from you as you have helped me and my family through the years that you will also help achieve the hawaii in the same way you say to them three times her name so they will know her then you say when you finish that ears means in all the animals i want you never to abuse the animals and if you need them you only need use them when you need them and never more than that and always honor and respect them and if you need them you will offer tobacco for them and tell them what you need and then they will sacrifice for you as they have for our people and so now we i want to protect the animals and honor them and never forget them and if you do they will always be there to help you in your life and so now we and the deer and the animals i have formally introduced you together so you can begin your relationship in this your world this mother earth and then the next one you talk to by medicines they grows no red willows wild gingers peter tree all kind of things like that and you say to them my daughter was born her name is kajii jahawi and again you tell them their name three times and when you finish you tell ajita with the brand newborn baby that the medicine is there creator put it there in case sickness comes to you or to you in the future if that happens you can go see the medicine the approach in the swamp or in the woods in the forest or in the valleys or by the river's edges and you will leave tobacco for them and you will tell the medicine what kind of sickness brings discomfort to your life and then you will ask them for help and because the creator made them to do that they will gladly go with you you or your sick family and that is the nature of medicine and so medicine of the world i tell you how we my daughter was born and this is her name so when she needs you someday if she needs you someday you will know her her identity and who she is because i have now told you you make sure you tell them three times what her name is and then when you're finished you would tell me the medicine this whenever you need them in the future if you should ever get sick you will go seed them and you will tell them what kind of sick you got why you need them and you will ask them for their help and you will leave tobacco for them and they tell them the creator gave them the power to heal people and that's what we're following what our grandfathers and grandmothers told us want you to always respect all all the many roads in the woods in the swamps along the water's edges wherever you will respect them and if you do this the medicine will always be there to help you when you are in need of their help so now to you in the medicine i have now introduced you formally so now you can begin your relationship as long as the creator said how many days you can live the mother the earth and then you go on next one is to the trees to the maple tree you do the same thing then you go on the next one to the birds to the eagle and you tell them and introduce them and you tell three times your daughter your newborn's name all the way to the thunder to the fourth sacred wind to the old brother son to the grandmother the moon to the stars then to the creator and nothing you don't miss that brings you and gives you a nurture life you introduce your newborn and the relationship that they will have forever and so that's that's uh the original thanksgiving because that's the same spiritual talk that the creator and the twins uh told when they made the first humans out of dirt of them of the earth and put the fire from the sun's life in them and they breathe and they blink their eyes then he put the brains of our creator he transmitted into them forever and never to forget and that's why in every longhouse of the hotenoshoni people we still dance for the medicine we still dance for the trees we'll still dance and sing and feed mother earth with the water and for everything that brings us and give us life uh that's sort of the history of the thanksgiving what they call thanksgiving but it's not really called a thanksgiving it's called honda guys the things you say before you discuss or entertain anything of importance or issues of importance and that's our relationship knowledge what's given according to my uncles and grandparents this what i just shared with you was given to every human at the beginning of the world to the white men to the black men to the other men to the indian people it was given to all of us it's called the original instructions but over the years my uncle says many people forgot the creator and what their relationship become blind to it and they began to use their own head and push the creator and mother earth aside and then they made man-made things called religions and they excluded the mother earth they excluded the creator excluded the thunders they excluded the fire excluded the sun and went on their own and it's in trouble water is now almost hard to find air is not clean anymore what the earth that's been poisoned even the seeds from the food in the garden is contaminated and pretty soon because people forgot all of this they don't stop until it's almost going to be too late and so i don't know if that's why the nasoni and lakota chayan or original people all over the world were attacked and our ways of understanding the universe were attacked and almost completely destroyed and to give you example of that that's why they made residential schools where thousands of our kids were kidnapped from us and then they were made to forget their instructions the way i'm just but a lot of my great grandmothers and grandfathers were stubborn their heads were made like diamond no matter how many colonization came or how many missionaries came they said we're not going to forsake him the creator is teaching what he told us and put it in our head when our great-great-grandma and great-great-grandfather were made from the dirt of mother earth and the waters of every water of the earth so that is the what we call it some people call it thanksgiving some people call it opening prayer or whatever but uh that's what i share with you oh hope people understand now the importance of thanksgiving it's what's going to save us it's what guides us to our supposed to be a behave and how hectic sacredness of life in this universe that we live so i want to say thank you for allowing me the time to explain this because in years before nobody wants to listen to the pagan hidden indian and now you let me talk things thank you so much tommy i appreciate that you've given us that perspective it's a new one for me um i'd like to say hi to everybody my name is john uh i'll be hosting this little series of talks with tommy i hope this is the first one of many that will be coming about on a lot of different subjects that are for me are would be talking about subjects where the integration of white american culture can interact with indian culture and one of the things that we can learn from this from these people who've been living on this part of mother earth now for over 10 000 years living quite quite well in harmony and doing quite well um until we came along and kind of took over and decided we were going to do things our own way i think anybody who's lived through the past five or six years in particular can see that the situation in our world right now is kind of dire i mean um the pollution that exists in the world is quite remarkable um earth is burning up uh like tommy said this i mean it's really hard to find clean water nowadays um so that and if you think about it you know earth air fire and water we can't live without any of these elements for very long i mean stop breathing and see how long you can last stop drinking water maybe you can last two weeks stop eating maybe a couple of months you know and if you if you live in the northern part and if the sun wasn't shining then nothing that we know of would it ever exist so these four beings which are really consciousnesses different levels of consciousness we have to live with them we have to live in harmony with them or else the world we end up creating will not be a very good place to live in so one thing i one intention that i wanted to put out to folks in the course of all of these um talks is that i would really like what we portray to people to be based upon the principles of truth love and compassion because there's a lot of anxiety greed and hate in the world and that really needs to be balanced out by some teachings that are in what i see as original teachings that can help us understand how we can take these all of this stuff that's going on in the world inside and still we have to deal with it but what can we do to keep on re-centering ourselves so that we can make our the lifestyle that we want to create to be more harmonious with mother earth now one of the best people i've ever met that has a really good handle on that is my good friend john stokes here uh i met johnny back in 1985 when i went to tom brown's tracking school and um we hit it off right away and i've been hanging out with him on and off over the years it's been a while since i last saw him but johnny has a one of the few people i've known who has consistently taking these teachings and especially the thanksgiving address and the meaning of that and kept it going and integrating that through all the teachings that he's done uh he runs the tracking process project out of corrales new mexico uh anybody you should check that out it's trackingproject.org um but i'd like to turn it over to johnny now um and if you john if you could talk a little bit about how you've been able to integrate the thanksgiving address into the teachings that you have and how that's actually helped you in your life okay well i need to say first how well tom's looking today mr porter what a honor it is to be here with you and uh john thank you for putting this together this series of talks and i think i'm here because um the thanksgiving or the rwanda caller is the words in the beginning and i'm here because i've been using them as a way of opening every gathering that we do with the tracking project by way of history i'd just like to say that uh what was happening at akuzne uh in the community that tom comes from uh there was a paper called the acquisite notes and one of them came into my hands and i showed it to the aboriginal people in australia that i was teaching at a college and they were dazzled at the consciousness that was being portrayed in that newspaper and they said to me um those guys they know how to say what we feel we don't know how to put it down into words but they do and uh you you need to bring us more of this so i actually arranged a meeting and i went back to the united states for some other purposes and i went to aquazney to meet the mohawk people and that's where i met jake swamp and his wife judy i met ron lafrance and i went to the notes office and i met jeannie shenandoah and made friendships because the mohawk people were also terribly interested in the aboriginal people and ron lafrance said could you bring us some maps of who they are and what's the name of their uh tribes because we can't get a picture of who they are and where they live so i became kind of like a messenger boy taking information back and forth from adelaide australia to akuzne and that was 1970 8 to about 1984 and uh and i began to learn as much as i could about uh uh people and culture and i learned too that there's a global indigenous network and uh indigenous leaders go to these meetings and they talk to each other and they share so um there's a lot of knowledge of each other so a maori could speak to you about what's happening at aqua's name or what's happening in alice springs because they met an elder from that place and so i became a part of a network of something very different from anything i had ever done before i was intrigued with tracking i was intrigued with the science of tracking because the aboriginal people and tom and i have never even had a chance to discuss this they were only waking up to the fact that they had all been taken away that they had all been kidnapped and i would hear a story of a man and he would be there working on a a farm an aboriginal man and he would be digging and he would hear his name and he would look up and there was an old tribal man there an old yeah tribal aboriginal man who would call him over and would tell him who he was and what his real name was and what his skin name was and he'd tell him come with me and so the aboriginal people at the time i was there were claiming their children back and what they asked me was could you help us with our kids can you see what's going on with our children look what's been done to us so i was looking for exercises that would be activities that could be done at a gathering where young aboriginal people could come together and so we began having kids come to my backyard and kids i mean like 25 30 year old kids and we would make boomerangs we would play the didgeridoo and we would we would all get together so i was i was engaged and and uh and tracking was so intriguing because tracking is almost as old as what tom's talking about it's like in the beginning of time philip dear used to say people had to learn how this earth worked what everything was what it did and so they had to pay attention and learn and so they didn't do a ceremony right they had to use their wits and so i thought well tracking will be a great uh activity and the other thing was nobody had any money so we had to find things that were free and things that like dancing and singing and and talking and and tracking and making rope and cordage and so that took me to the tom brown school where i wanted to learn more activities more activities that i could bring back to the elders in australia and that led me to the tracker named jimmy james and he was the last great desert tracker who was you know super famous nationally famous and so i paled around with him i learned more learn more and when i got back to the united states uh the editors of the acquisite notes they said show can you show our kids what you learned from those guys in australia and that was peter bluecloud and uh and some others uh danny thompson lokojo and they took me to the six nations museum and they introduced me to ray fadden and and ray fadden said what are you going to do with the kids let's do it here at the at the museum and i said well i'm going to do shelter building and fire making and all these activities he left and he said okay okay you don't have to convince me he said i already did what you're talking about in the 1930s and he said you see the chiefs and the clan mothers those are my kids those are my campers so in 1984 we did our first mohawk camp and jake and judy and audrey shenandoah and others came to see what we were doing and and it grew and it grew and then i even got to meet tom porter and his family because we were going to uh omega institute for the sacred circle they were doing gatherings and jake swamp and i began to do our thing together which we called tracking the roots of peace and that was the gathering that we brought to your uh community john after we met so what i saw and what i heard and the the the importance of what tom has shared with us that these were the words that were given at the beginning of time and i saw uh that that needed to come into my life and i needed to live by that principle too because i i so much believed in the peacemaker i so much believed in the message of peace and and i wanted to follow that way even though i'm not on cue homeway i was i was wanting those values and uh it seemed the way to begin was at the beginning with the with the owandum kaliwadekwa and so it was that that led me to it john and i began to you know study all the written versions that there were uh transcripts of tom speaking transcripts of jake speaking the book the wisdom keepers has a nice version by uh irving paulus and i would i would learn that and study that and what i what i saw was it it leads to a clarity of mind uh the words they are it's a it's a magical formula and if i made tom uh we we got together one time and and you looked at me and you said mr stokes would you like to know the secret of life and i thought oh my god if if tom porter's sharing the secret of life i want to get get me some so i walked over and tom whispered in my ear thank you and i came to see that that thank you that feeling that stance within the heart of a person is the ground where we should be standing because from there we're in a good way we're aligned with nature align with ourselves and and and from our heart come waves of love that is a food for the world and that's where i think we human beings really um thrive is uh when we're in a good place and we're feeding the world and we're actually useful to the world we're not a pollution and we're not a pain in the behind but we're actually something that's positive and useful and so just to maybe wrap that thought form up uh in 1991 jake swamp had a feeling and he had a a vision and he had many visions and he looked at me one day while we were on molokai and he said it would be good if someone wrote the words of the thanksgiving down in a form that others in the world could learn he said just a simple version uh but he said and then it should be translated into all the languages of the world so that one day in the future when the young people get together and one of them is asked to do the opening they'll do the thanksgiving address and all the others will say that's the same thing i was gonna say and that they would find themselves united and i i really believed in that vision and so i i worked to make it come true but i just want to say i spent a long time putting that little book together because i knew how important it was and i knew how sacred it was and i sure didn't want to mess up but i think we've done a nice thing now and and so i use it in my daily life and i use it to start every class jake said don't never start a class without the thanksgiving words and i and i have not since that time ever and uh and my my partner uh lisa and i when we're not together we call each other on the phone and we take turns saying it to each other so that we can stay right in our mind and then we know what the other one's thinking and we do that every day no matter where uh when we're not together and of course when we are together we can just go in the forest and do it so it's a it's a way of life it's a way of being it's a way of seeing and even the elementary form that we do it it it takes us to that beautiful place that tom is sharing with us yeah one one thing that that uh it it reminds me a lot in a lot of new age teachings a lot of people talk about setting your intention for whatever you want to do whatever project you're creating or whatever and the thanksgiving address is a great way to set an intention of harmony and you know just being being in one with all of that exists around you i think it's a you know by saying it you're creating that intention um and i can think of so many you know i think of uh it's interesting because you first wrote that book you you first published that book in 1993 and that was also the time that uh was founded was in 1993 complete and you know you were off doing your thing and tommy and i were doing our thing and creating donald johan and it just happened to all come together in that same year um i thought that was a pretty little interesting coincidence that i noticed from one that you would mention when you first published that book i remember the first meeting i had with tommy and everybody i mean you know the thanksgiving address was said every other meeting we ever had that was said and in every everything we ever did at conor hallegay that was said and kanojo became this incredible place you know uh there was a youth and elder gathering at ganondo again and pete jemison would bring over different elders to speak and again we were creating a a venue for the young people to come to a place where they could learn their culture and speak their language and dance their dances and and bring the elders together with them and uh tom was there many a time and jake was there many a time and euron miller and all the all the greats yeah many people and um one class tom wanted to teach them how to say at the song and he went around to every one of the kids 65 kids and he went around and stood in front of every person and he had them say it and he had them say it and he had them sad and he had them sad and i said it every time one of the kids said it so i got really good at it by the end of that circle and what tom told us was when you wake up in the morning you should say thank you because it's not a sure thing that you're going to wake up there wasn't such a thing as sleep apnea at that time but people would still pass in their sleep and so he said when you wake up and you just realize you're awake and you're still alive you should say and so when i wake up every morning tom i say that every day and i just would say in for others if you think of the infinite thought forms that you could have every day the infinite directions that your mind could take every day if you say that creator i send you my blessings you you put your mind in the groove in the right place and you don't end up on all the infinite pathways that you have to find your way back to the center you begin um in a good way so that's kind of the way i integrate the things tom and other leaders would bring to the youth and elder gathering as i'm sitting there training the kids i got to listen to all the teachings and i implemented them into my life so it was so useful so thankful yeah yeah it's been really it's been really what i remember the first time i had ever heard the thanksgiving address is tommy when i had come up to aqua sausage to bring those clothes up you know way back i think it was 1986 and i heard you you said it we you brought me to the to the um the social dance that that time when i started the first time i come up and i heard you say it in mohawk which i didn't understand a word of what you said but then you repeated it all in english which was really wonderful and uh and i was just ki i was kind of blown away by it because from the the teachings that i was living in a spiritual community at the time and a lot of the teachings that um from the arts you might say spiritual guides that we were working with were saying that you know we're saying the same basic things we're always talking about showing your appreciation for what exists all around you in particular the earth air fire water the elements all these things so it was a it was another confirmation like that you said it the original teachings we were hearing them from a different source and then when i heard you say that it was like oh wow that was a confirmation of the same teachings i was getting from a different source and for me um one way i like in the course of living you hear all these different things your beliefs and whatever and you'd have take on all these teachings and i think it's important to actually um put them to the test and to see in one way i do it is if i get that confirmation from many different sources that that teaching has the same relevance to other people then it kind of clicks in with me and says yeah that's right because i'm getting it from this source and that source and this source and i think too if you look at any established religion or spiritual belief there is an element of appreciation in the things that they do but not to that extent that that the haudenosaunee people have kept alive and that's something that i i really appreciate that you've been doing tommy in particular and the fact that you're willing to share all of that with us um one of the uh one thing i was wondering um you know uh if you could talk a little bit um again in these talks if you could speak a little bit about the two-row wampum in uh this which is uh something that um is that it's the two-row wampum which is the very first agreement that the haudenosaunee people made with the original dutch settlers and how that agreement has been renewed was renewed many different times with different governments over the years but if you could speak to that because um you might say one thing that i see right happening right now is this really good opportunity in happening in our country right now where everybody is look realizes that things are not working in that we have to find a better way um and right now with um the woman who is johnny she's she's a congressman from your state i can't remember her name who is now head of the interior department so for the first time in the history united states a native american woman is in charge of the governance how are you might say the relationship that interaction between our white government and in native peoples you know in our so if you could speak a little bit about the two-row wampum and the meaning of that because i see this time as a great opportunity to to keep on bringing that alive more and more and how we can actually begin to work together to make that more of a reality well i can probably um talk a little bit about it uh that's what they treaty that was made they referred to it as khashwantha in a cayuga sanako or onondaga language but in onaida language and the mohawk language we understand seneca and on dhakas and cayuga but their dialect is little bit different but we still can understand them in the mohawk i'll refer to that two row wampum and other treaties as uh the goswate top any any treaty and if you literally take that word apart uh again the gospel it means like um anything uh that shines light on an object or that you can see it clear clearly that's what it means the god squad theater so in the native world mostly uh it could be a light it could be a flashlight or it could be anything that sheds light but for us for the nosoni people the sunni people when you say that we don't think of a lamp really or a flashlight although it could be that we think of the sun right away we think of the sun because we call the sun our over than the haswatayta that means he shines the light for the whole world so that's what we call treaties so a treaty is a agreement between two different uh nation of people and it's an agreement of how you make a friendship or a brotherhood or how do you make a family strong basically is about and so when you make your agreement you agree to certain things both sides and then you have to every little while you have to um you have to dust it or polish it because dust will accumulate over years anything you do so you have to keep renewing it so every few years so with most of the treaties that were made with everybody there was an automatic uh time period where you're to renew those and for the nashuni people uh that's what our whole ceremony of cycles is about is that every year we renew everything so we begin with the midwint through the whole year until we end a cycle or circle and then when we finish one cycle which is one year we call it we begin again the new year's our midwinter ceremony which means we will build a new fire we will put wood again in the fire to make it new so our life won't end that's what we call it so um because instead the sunshine so that all the facts is see you can see it so whatever agreements we made will become known or seen easily and be clear between what we made agreements on so that's why we call it radius the goswaterta or ayoga under the seneca um it says gosh which is the same word accepted they say it different the turo wampum was made between the ear of 1610 and 16 20 are thereabouts in between 16 10 and 16 20 are the actual years um somewhere in there and the first one was made with the dutch people that's the first one was the dutch and when the first time this is the way they are tell us over and over in our long houses so since i was a kid i heard them say that over and over that's why i don't forget and uh that's with everything of our teaching it's always repeated every year you hear it again because they renew everything on a yearly basis everything's got to be renewed so that's why when treaties were made with united states or great britain or somebody there's a supposed to be a clause in there where you renew it in fact in some of them it says they use the silver confident chain um three three links of silver chain for its durability and its strength to be lasting but they said that silver tarnishes because of the air and they will tarnish and not be less and so because it tarnishes it means that if we don't attend to each other's agreements and renewed them that it also will tarnish our relationships until now you can't see each other anymore and then trouble will come and so the silver comment chain every every time there's a new administration like in the united states there is i think they have a new new president well it's supposed to be every four years that president is supposed to call our leaders of the ludhinashuni to renew all the agreements that were made by george washington and all other presidents to renew them so that there's no problem uh to come so basically the touro wampum was the first um a european we had other agreements with the lakotas or giveaways before that before united states or european came here but the touro wampum is the first one we meet with european people between 16 10 and 16 20. now first the way our elders tell us in our long house the way i remember they said the european wants to have an agreement dutch and at first the european uh he says in the agreement we are going to be the fathers and the sunni people will be the children in the agreement and so the sunni people said no that's not acceptable because a father can reprimand his children any italians do and we don't want that so then the dutch people said well okay then how about we will be your uncle and then you the little sunni will be our nieces and nephews and our leaders that time said no because there's no difference between an uncle and a father they had they have the same duty to reprimand their nephews the same as a father does to his sons and daughters i want that kind so then the ludena sunni leaders stood up and they said if we are to have an agreement we can be brothers and we will be of the same height we will not be taller and you will not be taller than us but we will be at the same equal height and that's the kind of agreement we will have as brothers so then they said okay and if i will make an example of our relationship it would be like on a river and you the dutch people we see you you have a big ship there's sails on the big water and us indigenous people the nashoni people have a canoe it's smaller than your vessel on the same river and so you will have in your vessel so your people and your way of looking at the world and uh your laws and your names and your language and all that and your law and in our canoe we have our leaders and our way of governance and our beliefs and our language and our people in there and we will go on the same river side by side the ship in the canoe down the river as a brothers and you will never jump in our canoe to steer where our canoe goes and our people will never jump in your ship to steer your ship where it's going to go tomorrow that means that we will never interfere with each other's jurisdiction we will never boss or make authority on each other but we will as we go as brothers into the future and if we do that then that will secure that there will be harmony and peace as long as we do that and then the dutch said well we need to write that down document it and so india says well you can write it down if you want to but we don't do it that way because it can burn up and it can be eroded we use wampum the quahog shell purple and white to record big pledges and promises or agreements and so they made to call the two-row wampum and you'll see it it's got a black background with two white roads on there representing the two canoes the two boats and then the dutch and then the nashon sony people said this is how we record things so it won't burn up it stays it don't it doesn't erode and he said um so the that said okay and so they presented from the europe a pipe and it's got a round thing on it fancy pipe and it's got a chain on it and it's called silver comet chain and he added that on there he said and then every few years we will polish that meaning that if there's any trouble between us we will meet together as brothers and we will rectify any misunderstandings so that peace will prevail between us later on that's when it came that every time united states inherited those agreements and then also the british and the french besides the dutch so in the united states's case every time there's a new president our old leaders said they're supposed to invite our leaders to meet together somewhere to polish and to polish the silver chain so no tarnish will come a misunderstanding in our relationship of peace and so about about that that we will not impose each other's law on each other but there will be two equal brothers in law international and that's what the goswata is about and so what i just told you is the word in rio so now it can be understood that relationship but the united states has never really put washington's time to include or to come uh to continue the shaking of hands and to show the real brother brother uh brother agreement no president has ever done that no no uh but george washington did do that because he needed the help at the time because of the british and all that but he did try to do that and so on and now but after that anymore and so also our leaders just just so what i want to remember is that um whenever we have a new leaders here to put up new leaders because somebody died and they claimed mothers putting only chiefs up they're supposed to notify washington of the new new leadership too and uh i think that we still do that by my letter form but i'm not even sure of that if they do they used to do that according to what i heard the elders talk but there's a lot of things that needs to be fixed too it has not been attended to on both sides yeah but uh yeah these talks might might enable for you know us white folks that are all out here to start thinking about that you know we're all in this together um yeah and we all we have to learn to accept our differences and work together because that's why there's a place where we the the old ways of doing things are not going to save the pro the cr save the problems that we have right now uh what did einstein say is you can't you can't fix a problem by using the same method that's got you there um i really you know there's no technology that's going to get us out of the fix we're in it's going to take much more than just technology and that really starts by changing our hearts and minds so with these talks as we move forward i would really hope that we could help folks get inspired to reignite this and especially with the factions tommy johnny what's the what's the woman's name that that's your congressman that is running the interior deb holland yeah she's from laguna pueblo yeah yeah and probably with her as the secretary of the interior it's a good time to put forward things that need to uh be reinstated yeah might be a good time um a a note if i may uh regarding since our topic is the the the opening the thanksgiving um you know one of the things that happens now with the cultural appropriation and people are so worried that if they do the opening um they're going to be guilty of appropriation and i have to reassure them that when jake and of course you know tom was in on the process of the book and uh how we put it together and and uh it was put out with their uh good wishes and their good graces when somebody gives you something you can't steal it from them because it was given to you as a gift and uh if i remember correctly uh tom i showed you the manuscript that i had put together and there was one entry that you thought was too close to your heart and you asked if we could take it out you weren't really ready to share that with the world yet and so we took it out and uh and that was part of the process was that i put together a version of the words based on all the existing versions that were there and then that was run by a board of mohawk speakers and tom had his say jake had his say look wahoo came to me and he said um you said this in english but we can't even say that in mohawk we don't have words for that so i said it like this and this is how you would translate that into english so i changed my english to match the mohawk so by the time we were done john fadden put his drawings together and then lo quajo did a beautiful mohawk translation so when we put the book out it was a real um team effort and it was sanctioned by mohawk people and so i told people you're not appropriating anything this was offered to you as a as a gift so just to go a little further if i may um i think this what what did with the thanksgiving address taking something so precious and so sacred and so from the beginning of time and offering it to the world even in the most simplistic fashion but that's enough for us that's enough for us people who are not to give us a taste of it to help us understand there's another way of thinking another way of being and even that's enough for us we don't have to give away everything right to share and i just want to note to everybody that um the the the iroquois people have started the process and shared something very sacred to them with all of us because they thought it would be good for us so when we worked with the people of the earth the four people of the sierra nevada de santa marta in colombia we got together with some of the priests and one night and uh and i shared with them the book and it was in spanish and mohawk and uh they took it and they looked at it and they didn't say anything there were five of them and then they held on to it for a week and then they came back and there was a gathering and they said so where's the guy who gave us that little book and i kind of sheepishly raised my hand and they said we want you to know that we read your book and we like it we we believe in it and everything in your book is alive and everything in your book has rights and everything in your book needs to be defended and we and we thank you for that book and i said maybe you guys have something you'd like to share with the world maybe just some small piece of your culture and and that would be helpful to all of us as a human family and i said i would help them you know do that if that was so because one of the wise women the sagas of the of the four peoples had had a dream and it was similar to a dream i had had and i saw all the people of the world coming together and all the cultures of the world were sharing their most precious thing with the rest of the human family for the good of mankind and i i see that's the way to go not to close up but to to open and when and only sharing what you need to not not you don't have to give away the farm just a little taste again just to say thank you to to tom and to the hong kong because they really have started the process you know it's it's admirable johnny could you do you have any of the books there that you could show folks i just happen to have some i uh i also believe if everybody doesn't know uh we should talk about tom's book also uh and give the title to everyone on the program so that they can get that um and in tom's book he mentions that we've got these books in all the different languages and he uses a phrase that i think is so important that the book is a skeleton key to open the spirituality of all the other religions because it's amazing tom when i share this in any country i go the oldest person man or woman will come up to me and say we have something very much like that in our culture they always say that and they said we don't do it enough anymore like even an example in tahiti and i gave it to just the girl who was on the front desk at our at our hotel and she came back to me the next day and she said that little book you gave me is so beautiful she said but we need it in tahitian we don't like to speak french they're the colonizers right so i said do do the translation for me she said you know we cut the we cut the log down to make the va'a to make the canoe but we used to thank the tree but we've forgotten we need to remember that again so the book is just this amazing um door opener so i've got them here here's the um the english was where we started with the in 1993 and we went to the german the vorte des danques and each time we have a translator from the country and you know we go through the process and have lots of different readers and um and we were working with the sami people in sweden and oren was over there with them also and uh so the next one was a guy named yuran he translated it into swedish and that's the tux eggelson and then it was like okay well we live here in new mexico we really ought to have one in spanish so our friend pass who's a a pura picha indian and a dancer of the azteca tradition he translated it into spanish aguero de simientos our girls from japan uh not only translated it into japanese but they started a a a ceremony uh and a festival based on thanksgiving that became very popular in kyoto and then uh our web weaver was from the big cyan islands in the philippines so she wanted to do pogba salamat and then we were working in brazil and a guy translated that palabras and then of course we had to do the french for the tahitians because i fell in love with tahiti and there's 19 countries in africa speak french tom and so i was laughing i said well this is global domination in reverse because we're taking over those countries with um thanksgiving and mohawk um our friend from hawaii wanted to do it and so this is uh mickey did it in hawaiian uh we did it in italian and the last one that we did uh was at the request of uh sandy big tree and the people at onondaga who were hosting a team israel for a lacrosse tournament and they asked if we had one in uh in hebrew and we didn't and so they helped us put one together so this was our our last edition so that's 11 languages nice so and these are all available from uh the tracking projects you know website and you'll find them all over the place because they they sell them in lots of native book stores in the national museum of american indian and and all that lots of languages to go very good well if anybody has any questions if you want to type them into me i'll i'll read them off to any of these folks um or this right now there's a few people on i could even unmute you if you have something you want to say but today i want to thank you tom for doing this and you johnny for taking the time um i know it's something that you know with covet and everybody stuck inside and tommy i know you've been wanting to you haven't been able to travel much and talk to folks the way you used to before that i was hoping that all these talks would give you a chance to to get out to people the things that you really feel are important so well i don't see any questions coming up do you have oh go ahead go ahead can i just say this john i i i want to say to everybody and also to tom i uh i study i study the ho di nosonne i study the peacemaker i study the teachings and and i practice you know the words and and i just keep learning um more and more and more and i just wanted to say this i don't think i've had a chance to tell tom but i work with somebody who's in permaculture his name is joel glansberg and one of the things that we do is we teach a class that's about permaculture and tracking because both sciences deal with patterns and pattern recognition and when the the thanksgiving is done the way i was introduced to it by by uh tom's people when we stand around the fire and when there's a speaker and then when the speaker speaks and we all give our our mana our thoughts to the speaker and then he says toe and throws them up to the creator there's a a model going on that's very um unique and very powerful and and and it was actually tom who put the thought in my mind because he said this is a indigenous laser beam yeah it was a long time ago but laser stands for light amplification through the stimulation of emitted radiation right and tom was explaining to us that when we take our blessings and we pack them pack them pack them pack them so tight layer upon layer upon layer and then throw them up it creates a a force field so one of the patterns of nature is the circle and another pattern is concentric circles which is all the people standing behind us in our relations and the spirits and and then when we throw it up it creates a cylinder and that cylinder has power because it's packed so tight and so it's indigenous science of the highest degree and then it's got a logic to who's going to climb the ladder the people where shall we stand the ladder on the earth and then what do we encounter as we go higher and higher so there's an order to it that actually brings someone's mind it crystallizes it into a form and i just think it's it's some of the highest science that i've encountered in the world is the rwando calibradeco it's remarkable thank you for letting me rhapsodize lisa has a question lisa can you hear do you want us to ask you a question sure um first of all thank you thank you and just so so was brought to tears in hearing that particular version of how thanksgiving address how the words that come before us were are introduced i mean that's just like so of course as a mother and you know my children not having that kind of introduction it just feels like well what do you think can you do when you're older i mean could you like take your children and literally do because i'm like i'm gonna take them like today out there and you know just i mean they have done the thanksgiving address but never in a way that it was about i what what i my mind feels stretched to that it wasn't only just thank you but it's a these are promises and agreements and and the way that you should be engaging and you know the protocol and the right of what what are just kind of given what you were talking about in the wampum i was like it was interesting because i was thinking that's what you're doing in the very beginning the first impression the first track in a baby's mind is is this this is your way that you will engage with everyone and all these people and all of these you know aspects of creation and they should be honored and so yeah can you do it later in life i guess is the question you want me to answer talk that uh reply to that yeah if you could tell me yeah no if your kids are already growing in and you and one did not do that sure then you can set a an appointment or with them their own children if they're already grown up you say i miss doing this i didn't know they were supposed to be doing this and say i would like to do it now and then you explain to them even though they're going can we start over again but make pretend you were a little little little baby yet and we do it and then it'll still grow it'll it'll still find it'll be very meaningful to them even if they're growing it'll even be more meaningful to them beautiful thank you that's never too late to make it good yeah anyone else got a question okay well i would like to thank everybody for coming tonight and thank you johnny and tommy for for doing this and i just thank the universe and the creator for allowing this all to happen i will i have recorded this i will edit it edit it down and i will be putting it out on youtube uh pau tommy paul said he's going to be able to put it out on the ghana johalegae website so it'll be available there and i will be putting it out on my youtube channel which is sakara777 and i will it's s-a-k-a-r-a-777 on you it's on a youtube channel um and i can send that to uh maybe there's a way i can send it to everybody that's on this i'll figure that out because actually this is the first time i've actually used zoom in this way so i'll have to figure out how all this stuff works so but anyway thank us thank you everyone thank you johnny thank you tommy and everyone have a good evening oh no thank you tell me yeah that one no thank you john yep thanks a lot bye-bye