Indigenous Ways of Living and Loving

Service Description

For thousands of years before the arrival of people from Europe, Indigenous North Americans lived and thrived. The wisdom they share can be an incredible tool for all communities to follow. This course follows one as a case study. By considering the Anasazi Foundation, and the seven paths they follow to grow and transform, your own community can discover how looking around at the world around can be a way to forge a new direction. Their work follows the path of Good Buffalo Eagle, "...an ancient Native American tribesman who rejects his family and community and walks off into the desert. During his journey, he discovers the seven paths of the Anasazi way, each path teaching a lesson symbolized by an element of the natural world: light, wind, water, stone, plants, animals, and finally the unity of all beings with the Creator, the path of We. By walking these paths, he discovers the roots of his conflict and the way toward reconciliation." The "Anasazi Foundation is a nonprofit 501©(3) wilderness therapy program headquartered in Mesa, Arizona. Anasazi Foundation gives young people an opportunity, through a primitive living experience and a philosophy that invites healing at the hands of nature, to effect a change of heart--a change in one's whole way of walking in the world. Many of the unique and life-changing teachings at Anasazi Foundation were inspired by two of its co-founders: Ezekiel C. Sanchez (a Totonac Indian whose given name is Good Buffalo Eagle) and his wife, Pauline Martin Sanchez (a Navajo native whose given name is Gentle White Dove). For more than thirty years these teachings have helped families turn their hearts to one another, begin anew, and walk in harmony in the wilderness of the world." This workshop will introduce their work, and the work of other organizations with a similar focus, offering a roadmap on how to identify a need in the wider world or your local community. Once those needs are identified, it will describe how to start planning how to focus and help meet those needs. It will focus more on those faith communities and organizations in rural and less-urban settings, including the work of a small church in my hometown that has had incredible growth by looking into their history to identify a commitment in the future.

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