Walking with the medicine of Healing Turtle Island

Can we STOP!!!!!! Please, can we just STOP!!!! We have built a thousand times more than enough. Whole forests are getting laid bare and dead daily here and southwest Florida, as across the world. Months later, rows upon rows of fenced in, caged in, cookie cutter homes plop where not long ago Elder Trees stood majestic and alive. House after house, wooden boxes of dead trees. STOP!!!!! We don't need MORE!! Not more houses, not more "inconvenience" stores, not more gas stations, not more businesses, not more of any of the other endless lists of things we're addicted to in the name of more! We need more love. We need more prayer. WE NEED THE NATURE WE ARE INCESSANTLY DESTROYING!!! STOP!!!! STOP!!!! STOP!!!! Can we please STOP!?!?

Reflections from Healing Turtle Island 2019... it is impossible to put into words the depth of gratitude I have for all the countless forces of life that bring the Healing Turtle Island Ceremony to be. The Ancestors, the many Elders, Wena'hamu'gwasit (Sherri Mitchell), the many volunteers, all who come to the ceremony to heal and pray, the land of Nibezun herself and so much more... I am so deeply thankful to you all.
This was the third year of the 21 year ongoing ceremony. This year, we travelled north from South Florida with 20 people. If there was one word to describe the focus that I felt in the ceremony this year, it would be Prophecy. Indigenous elders from many different turtle island nations were invited to the sacred Fire at the heart of the arbor to share the prophecies of their peoples. The prophecies held such a powerful and somber depth of instruction for our collective human family about what we must do know if we wish for our Mother Earth to continue to nurture our next seven generations.
Anishinabe Elder, Jim Dumont, shared the prophecy of the Seventh Fire. I could absolutely feel the spirit of the prophecy in my own life and recognize it in the experience of so many people around me. Jim told us how each Fire represents a time of about 214 years and that by the end of the Sixth Fire, colonialism had peaked in it's process of breaking Indigenous peoples from our Ancestral ways and understandings. He told us how the children of the Seventh Fire, who would begin to be born in the mid to latter 1900's would begin to ask questions that seem simple but are truly powerful... questions like, "who am I?", "who are my peoples?", "what is my culture?", "what is my language?". He said that the four nations of Human Beings... Yellow, Black, Red and White were going to have to begin to put the traditional bundles of their Ancestors back together. The sacred bundles that were given to their peoples by the Creator in the beginning of time, which told them how to live in harmony with the Original Instructions of Life would have to reclaimed and it would be questions like the ones above that would lead the children of the Seventh Fire back along their Ancestral paths to pick up the pieces of those sacred, traditional bundles. So many people today struggle with the cultural emptiness and hollowness of modern colonial life. We have a sense that there is no culture... no real life wisdom in this colonial, consumer, capitalist way of life. As a "mixed" heritage person in this unfolding story, I have been driven by these burning questions of the Seventh Fire from the time I was a boy. I have been on that journey to pick up the broken pieces and re-make my own families bundles on the way back to a sacred life. It is so often difficult and confusing but these questions continue to light the way and Creator continues to illuminate each next step. In the prophecy of the Seventh Fire, I could literally see my own Life. Thank you ever so much Elder Jim for the sacred work of Keeping the prophecy AND for sharing it with us at Healing Turtle Island. I send you all the love and light that I can...

Another beautiful gathering. Reflections coming soon. Please share your reflections with us.

To the WEEPERS!!! All of you!! I PRAISE you!! Heiyaa!!! Heiyo!!! I raise you up!! From all the seven directions... KCI WOLIWON!!! So much gratitude for YOU weepers!! I SEE you!! Thank you for your courage to speak the forgotten language of the wounded heart!! Thank you for your WISDOM to FEEL!! Thank you for your songs and your dances and your naked whailing and your remembering of how to speak the unwritten language of the pure release of past hurt from the heart. You show the path to healing for all who can bare their ears to truly hear your medicine. Show us the way back to the place where the release of hurt energy can be spontaneous so that it may never again linger unhealed to pull us off the path of harmony with Life and all it's instructions! Whail! Sing! Sob! Dance! Laugh! Drum! Scream! Heal! Speak the forgotten language!! Let the tongue of healing speak it's mysterious magic!! Remember the heart with fierce courage!! Where ever you are... who ever you are... when ever you are... I SEE YOU!! I HONOR YOU!! I AM YOU!! And you forever remind me that we are here to do this sacred work TOGETHER!! I LOVE YOU!! Ta'ho msit no'kmaq!!

All your world of un-healed things... all the hurt you carry that lingers in the shadows of your inner world is longing to find it's way back to balance... back to health. Old hurt is stuck hurt. It is frozen. It is coagulated. It is solidified. And yet, it is energy. It needs to move. It wants to move. It longs to move... so that it can come back to harmony with Life. But it needs something in order to do what it longs to do... it needs YOUR WILL. It needs your decision to seek it out... to find it in the shadows... to drag it out of it's isolation. It needs you to bring it out into loving spaces of healing and allow it to reconnect with it's natural forms of movement so that it can heal. DO IT! Reconnect your grief to the motion of your sobbing tears. Reconnect your fear to the motion of your trembling, sweating body. Reconnect your tensions to your belly laughing. Reconnect your anger the loud sounds and stomping feet. Do these things in a good way. It won't be comfortable but every moment of release will free up the stuck energies which have held your life captive. Every moment of release will unleash healing...

What a truly beautiful healing circle for the children of the African Ancestors tonight!! We were all men and two very young brothers brought such POWERFUL medicine to the circle. Sending so many prayers of love and guidance and protection and support and nurturing out to both Dexter and Jose. Thank you both for the beauty and power that you brought to the circle tonight young brothers!! The deep healing that happened for both brother Christian and I had everything to do with the place that each of you had in the circle. And to brother Christian Dessalines... your dedication and courage continues to inspire brother. Much love to you!!

Blessings family and relations!!

We have a new "Healing the Indigenous Seed" circle forming. This one is inspired by our fierce brother Christian Guerrier who walks with the Spirit of Dessalines. Our brother has called for an ongoing circle meant for the children of the African Ancestors to come together and heal the Ancestral wounds of the collision with the colonial way. It is a safe place for black and brown people to come together to mend the broken pieces left by the atrocities of slavery and to reclaim the power and wisdom of the African Ancestors. Brother Christian is invoking the "Sacred Oath" of Ancestral Ayiti as a guiding force for this circle and we are holding it also in the service and spirit of the Healing Turtle Island Ceremony. I am deeply humbled to be asked to bring the altar and guiding principles of our Red Road healing circles to sisters and brothers of the Black Road. This circle is Monday evenings at 7:00 pm in North Miami. If you are interested, please reach out to me, Thomas Keene-Wall, either here on this page or at my page "Thomas Keene-Wall. Hope to see you in the circle!! Aho!! Ayibobo!!

So many blessings and such deep gratitude go out tonight to sisters Felicia, Diana and Celine for a truly powerful healing circle. Each of these sisters showed up in truly courageous ways... ready to heal. And the Spirits obliged!! The Spirits were really moving and much beautiful healing happened. Thank you also to sister Andrea, who guided Diana and Celine to the circle. This is how the power of the healing circle grows... you can FEEL it!!! Thank you to the Ancestors…. thank you to the Spirits of all the directions... look forward to seeing YOU in the circle next week!!!! Aho!!

Thank you again to sister Andrea for a courageous, authentic and very open hearted healing circle. It was truly beautiful. After 5 weeks, the energy is beginning to really come together through our altar for this circle. You can feel it. Tender roots are taking place and we're getting ready to grow. There will be no circle for the next two Wednesdays as I will be with family in Arizona but we will be back together Wednesday, April 3rd. Hope to see you there!!

This week's Healing the Indigenous Seed Circle was another intimate one. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the center of my heart to brother Brian Kwobo for your continued courage to face and heal the body of hurt. This week we focused on what it means to be OF A PLACE... to have Ancestral and cultural connection to a particular place on Mother Earth's body and then to have that connection broken and interrupted. What are the wounds that we carry from that process of disconnection and what wounded patterns of behavior do we act out currently because this has been part of story? It was a strong healing. Again, thank you brother Brian.

Wisdom from the Healing Circle...
There is no part of my own story that I refuse to share with you... because through 50 years of walking the healing path, I realize a simple truth... that if I leave myself alone, with my own shadow, I don't stand a chance. It is from this place of understanding that I am forever grateful for your willingness to bare witness to the healing of my shadow and I am forever willing to journey with you as you heal your own. To all the circles of Life and connection that hold us as we journey... thank you!!

Re-Indigenize... that means that whoever we are and wherever our peoples come from, we've got to heal our way back through our own stories to connect with the Wisdom that our Ancestors carried about how to live in harmony and balance with the Natural Laws of Creation. And because the long story of colonization has so thoroughly disrupted, misplaced and displaced so many of us, we may also need to reconcile our relationship with the place where we find ourselves now. We must honor the land that holds us now. We must open ourselves to learn from the land that holds us now. We must honor the ones who have long loved the land under our feet since before we arrived here. We may need to make amends for what has been done to them as we arrived here. And we may need to ask for their grace in allowing us to re-Indigenize as part of the places where we now are...

"Game of Thrones" and the prophetic nature of storytelling...

In Indigenous Cultures, there is an open, living understanding of the power of storytelling. Stories are understood as a way to pass on information and do not have to be literal for the wisdom to be recognized as REAL. There is also profound wisdom in the recognition of the importance of stories being told "person to person" or people to people. In this way, stories become a living embodiment of the significance of CONNECTION in communication. Human beings internalize understandings more wholly and deeply when those understandings are shared through warm, caring, sacred person to person communication. This is part of why storytelling is one of the building blocks of real human community. Stories are seen and honored as ways of passing on that which is both REAL and SIGNIFICANT. Some stories are openly recognized as prophetic. They tell of important issues that humanity is wrestling with and of the future consequences of those issues. It is recognized that our stories of prophecy are incredibly important and must be taken seriously because future life depends on what we do or do not learn from these stories.

Our modern, global societies of empire and hierarchy thrive on degrees of separation and so from books to television to the internet to movies we are distanced from the storytellers. Modern society discredits storytelling as fiction and fantasy. Stories, like everything else are turned into products for consumption and with the amount of wounding that we all carry, we tell many stories through our mediums that are not much more than regurgitated, unhealed hurt. Yet the ancient, natural wisdom of storytelling remains a powerful impulse that runs through even our modern mediums of sharing stories.

When stories come along that everyone feels compelled to experience, we would be wise to pay deep attention to the prophetic power of the story that is trying to speak to our collective Human Spirit. We might ask ourselves, "what is the power of this story that is trying to teach us something about ourselves and about life?" It's been interesting to me through the years to notice how the modern "society" discredits the true power the stories that touch the core of who we are.

When I was a boy, the first "Star Wars" movie came. I knew, even at the age of 8 years old, that this was a prophetic human story. I watched, over the years, how the media credited the mass appeal of "Star Wars" to all the new technology used to "tell" the story. "Special effects this, special effects that"... all the while, the media was avoiding the true power of the story. I can remember knowing inside... "it's the Force, silly!!!" The whole of global, hierarchical, monotheistic religious illusion had been jolted by the storytelling of a living, vibrant, inter-dependent, interconnected, Life Force... from which all life flowed... complete with both light and shadow aspects and forever seeking balance. More than 40 years later the stories continue and "the Force" calls us back to an understanding of something much older than the religious structures of modern societies. It aint the special effects!
The same discrediting happened with the James Cameron's "Avatar" story as well as the original "Matrix" story.

Currently, there is a story being told called "The Game of Thrones" which has hooked into our collective consciousness. I find this story to be both incredibly powerful and prophetic. It is one of those stories that has the power to bring us to a new level of reflection of ourselves IF we are paying attention and it is warning us about the future at the same time.

It is one of the most honest modern stories that I've seen in that it makes no illusion about the absolute violence and sickness that is both the history as well as the present time of the "Game of Thrones". The Game of Thrones is the society of empire, hierarchy and colonial conquest. The violence is difficult to witness in the story AS IT SHOULD BE. It does not glamourize the sickness of the society. Families are crushed... nothing is sacred... masculine and feminine are in horrific imbalance with each other… and despair is perpetual as humanity relentlessly wounds itself in the game of conquest. It is an honest reflection of the way of life that has now been cast across our planet. It is no metaphor at all. It is REAL, told in the form of story. Truth that we refuse to face and deal with in this very moment.

It is prophetic in that it tells the story of the relentless conflict of the "game of thrones" as the outgrowth of a much deeper and older story of Spiritual conflict. It is the story of humanity stepping out of balance with the Forces of the Natural world. There are mystical characters in the story who fully understand that it is the Spiritual conflict which must be resolved and they are trying to get the rest of humanity to see that if we don't deal with the forces which have been unleashed due to our own sickness, then there will be no one left to play any "game of thrones". It is prophetic to me that the spirits which have been unleashed are called white walkers... the frozen souls of the past who bring an unrelenting WINTER with them. We are currently unleashing forces in Mother Earth that she has spent eons bringing into a sacred balance so that WE COULD BE HERE, ALIVE, TODAY. In our lust for the "Game of Thrones", we are undoing in the blink of an eye all her eons of creating a balance for us. What "winter" is coming for us? We might want to pay closer attention to some of the stories we tell...

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Eden Jumper, Joseph Alexander Londono-Morales, Ter Malcolm and Jayden Kitsune for a beautiful Healing the Indigenous Seed Medicine Story Circle!!! Everyone welcomed the Ancestors in a good way and we continues the journey of opening our hearts to path of healing. What came from people's hearts was very humbling... again, thank you to you all!! We hope to SEE you again in the circle... it is our continued sharing that gives the circle it's beauty and power!!

The journey of Weeping Owl as it relates to the Medicine Story Healing Circle...

We live in a modern society that has very deep confusion within it about how humans release experiences of hurt and pain. Most of modern society conditions us heavily from the time we are children to block, numb, avoid, sedate, ignore, medicate, deny, and internalize our experiences of hurt and pain. When pain is internalized in these ways, it is locked into place by the isolation deep within us. Hurt and pain are forms of energy and like all energies, they are meant to move. Thankfully, Creator has gifted us with natural processes in our bodies that are meant to allow the experiences of hurt to MOVE and as they move we experience what we might call healing. It is really a return to a harmonious state. If you can't remember what these processes are, spend some time watching very young ones when they experience moments of hurt or distress. Their bodies naturally do what we are intended to do. They cry and sweat and tremble and make loud noises and even release from their bellies when things are intense. But this society teaches us to shut these forms of release down and in the process, the experience of hurt finds places to hide and stagnate in the shadows within us. As the internalized hurt gathers in the shadows within, over time, all manner of imbalance enters our behaviors, our relations, our bodies and our spirits. It literally brings us out of balance with the Divine instructions of how to live life.

This is where we ask Owl to share her medicine with us. We gather TOGETHER in our sacred healing circles and ask her to join us. Grandmother Owl is a FIERCE hunter through the shadows of night. She has eyes that are made to SEE in the darkness and she brings sure death (transformation) to that which she sets her eyes on. We ask her to take flight with us through the shadows of our own darkness to hunt for all the old, stuck hurt energy that has gathered within us. And when she helps us to find those places, we bring the healing power of Weeping to that old hurt. We soften our hearts and bring love to those places so the healing tears of weeping can flow. Then the hurt can move again and be released. Every time we can do this, we come a bit more back to a balance with life itself. Our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our relations, our spirits all come a bit more back to the harmony that is meant for them.

Grandmother Owl, I give thanks to you always for your wisdom about how to hunt through my own shadow. I thank you for your guidance. I offer my courage again and again to fly with you into those places so that I will not remain stuck in old hurt. And I promise always to do my best to walk with your medicine in a good way. I love you and I am always thankful... Ta'ho

Thank you sister Andrea for a beautiful healing circle this week!! Hope to see you with us again in the future.

We had our first "Healing the Indigenous Seed" medicine story circle. So much gratitude to Nicole, Esther, L B and Wendy for the way each of you brought your whole heart to the circle. So much gratitude to the love of all the Ancestors who surrounded us. So much gratitude to Grandmother Water for her powers of healing. It was beautiful and humbling to sit with all of you. Let's spread the word and build the power of this circle each week... Sending so much love to you all. We invite you to join us next Wednesday, February 20th, 5:30 pm at the U.U. church Fort Lauderdale. And thank you to the U.U. church for welcoming our circle to those lands...

The sacred healing circle has held it’s place in the heart of Indigenous communities for countless generations. Elders have long carried the wisdom of gathering the people daily to pray and to release all the things which effect us in a way that pulls us out of balance and harmony with life. They know that this is how the people stay healthy... mentally, emotionally, spiritually and even physically. For some two thousand years now, the sickness of colonialism has been invading communities the world over and breaking the ways of the healing circles. It has spread through intense violence. This violence has been an experience which has left us all in dire need of the medicine of the healing circle but the process of colonization has robbed us of the very medicine that we need to heal the wounds of the violence. It has been an incredibly vicious cycle and profoundly damaging to us all. The wounds that we carry from this long story are now inter-generational. Our Ancestors are literally whispering into the ears of our souls that they need us to remember and practice the old ways of healing.
In 2017, a 21 year, ongoing annual Ceremony was brought to life on the sacred land of Nibezun, in Passadumkeag, Maine. The Ceremony is named “Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island”. It was born from the dreams of a Penahwubskek Grandmother named Wena Hamu Kwasset. She had carried the dream of this ceremony for more than 30 years before her elders instructed her that the ceremony was ready to be brought to life. The Healing Turtle Island Ceremony is a recognition that we are all deeply wounded by the sickness of colonization. Both colonizers and colonized are carrying these wounds. It is also a recognition that we need to commit to 21 years of healing these wounds if we wish to come back to harmony as a human family and as family with all the rest of Creation.
Here in South Florida, there is an inter-tribal community named Red Door Sanctuary. We are a community of people from all four roads of the human family... Yellow, Black, Red and White. We practice the ways of the Indigenous Red Path. The Elders of our community are Tony Stone Hawk, Nanticoke Lenape and Wanye Morning Eagle, Saulteaux Cree. My name is Thomas Keene-Wall and I am mixed heritage, Mi’kmaq, Celtic and Slavic. Red Door Sanctuary is a community of prayer, healing and reclamation of the Indigenous awareness that exists for all of us somewhere back through the path of our past stories. This journey of healing back through our own stories requires each of us, at some point to confront the hurt of colonialism. Two years ago we were called to the Healing Turtle Island Ceremony in Maine. Once we realized exactly what we had been called to, we knew that we had to create ongoing healing circles here in South Florida so that we could continue the work of the larger ceremony and help people here to connect with it. For this reason, we are holding ongoing healing circles here for all who feel the call to do this sacred work. As we reclaim the Way of the Healing Circle, we pray that you will join us with an open heart and with the courage to take the journey of healing together. Ta’ho msit no’kmaq!!

Thank you such much family and relations for liking this page. I am going to use this page to keep people informed about the work of our ongoing healing circles. Please feel free to help spread the word!! Sending you oceans of love, depths of healing and bundles of hugs!!