Founder of A New Vision of Living
Dr. Tom Pinkson
Unlock the transformational power of the Medicine Wheel as a portal to expanded consciousness — integrating shamanic tools and psychedelic states to tune in to your soul’s deeper knowing, heal personal and collective trauma, and catalyze your innate power to shift your world from fear to love.
Feeling uncertain, anxious, isolated, or powerless?
What if you’re far more powerful and supported than you realize — an essential part of an intelligent, interconnected universe?
Dr. Tom Pinkson, psychologist, plant and vision quest guide, teaches that by embracing psychedelic and ancient shamanic tools, you can awaken your inner potential, heal personal and collective wounds, and step into your true purpose as a channel for the transformative energies needed for this planet.
You’re invited to embark on a 7-week journey to become what Dr. Tom calls a “Wisdom Warrior” — a conscious agent of transformation walking in harmony with all of life.
Each week, you’ll work with time-honored tools — including the profound wisdom of the seven directions of the Medicine Wheel to help you navigate your life’s journey — along with power animals, ceremonial practices, shamanic rituals, medicine songs, psychedelic power plants, and more..
A pioneering plant medicine guide, Indigenous bridge builder, and Vision Quest leader with more than 55 years of experience, Tom completed an 11-year apprenticeship with the Huichol people which culminated in his being named a mara’akame (shaman).
He’s dedicated his life to helping others navigate challenging times through ceremonies and initiatory rites of passage. For 50 years, he’s led Vision Quests throughout the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the desert near Joshua Tree, and in various places of power around the world.
Now he’s ready to be your guide on this journey toward a more purposeful, fulfilling life. You’ll activate expanded states of consciousness to access wisdom guidance — so you can meet life’s challenges with power, inner peace, and infinite unconditional love and light.
In this 7-week online video course, you’ll:
- Align your energy with your highest intentions through weekly shamanic practices — including crafting an Intention Arrow and experiencing a Fire Ceremony
- Identify and release limiting emotions and beliefs through breathwork, meditation, visualization, and ancient rituals
- Embrace impermanence to deepen wisdom, integrity, and spiritual warriorship
- Live from your Higher Self (Aumakua) to cultivate love over fear
- Use Aikido, Qigong, and non-violent communication principles to create inner democracy, transform your Inner Adversary, and move from surviving to thriving
- Understand how to work with psychedelic power plants, ancestors, and dreams responsibly, with inner humility and gratitude for spiritual empowerment
- Explore the Three As — Alaha, Aloha, and Alegria — key principles for aligning with your highest self and balancing your soul traits
- Plant the seed of your ideal win-win world and integrate lifelong practices with a guided visioning and ceremony
- Light a candle each day to honor the sun, setting an intention to consciously connect with your life force
- Learn medicine songs for healing, empowerment, and attuning to ancestral and spiritual wisdom
- Integrate everything you learn into a sustainable practice to heal the Sacred Hoop of Life — a symbol of wholeness, balance, and the interconnectedness of all beings — and embody the path of the Wisdom Warrior, one who walks in harmony with life, carrying the light of transformation for themself and the world
- And much more...
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
In this 7-week transformational course, Tom will guide you through the skills and competencies you’ll need to explore psychedelic and shamanic tools for empowering your awakening and life purpose.
Join the Livestream — or Stream Later to Watch at Your Convenience
You’ll connect with Tom and experience his teachings through livestreaming video via any connected device. This connection is easy to use and will enhance the impact of Tom’s transmissions. Can’t make it live? After each class, you can stream the video and audio recordings to enjoy anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Weekly Sessions Thursdays at 9:00am Pacific
This course will feature LIVE teachings, interactive sessions, experiential practices, and Q&A with Tom. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to unlock the transformational power of the Medicine Wheel as a portal to expanded consciousness.
Module 1: East - Illuminate & Empower Your True Intentions to Activate Embedded Evolutionary Codes for Wisdom & Guidance (April 10)
Are you ready to step into greater clarity and purpose by aligning your energy with your highest intentions?
As Tom puts it, it’s time to “polish up your stardust!”
Learn how to make conscious choices about how you receive and direct energy — starting with the breath. By refining your awareness, align more effectively with your intentions and prepare for the path ahead.
Engage in a simple yet powerful daily practice, lighting a candle to consciously connect with the life force energy of the sun. Rooted in the wisdom of the Medicine Wheel, this practice honors the East, where each new day begins, transforming darkness into light.
With the eagle as your guide, awaken from the sleep state, craft a clear intention statement, and create a shamanic Intention Arrow — a sacred tool for focusing your energy and activating embedded wisdom codes.
Through a fire ceremony, infuse your intention with the universe’s creative power, opening the way for transformation and illumination.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- 2 powerful “medicine” songs to support your awakening
- A daily practice to polish up your stardust and connect with the sun’s life force
- The process of identifying your true nature and life purpose
- How to differentiate between the asleep state and the “Wake Up” state
- The art of crafting an intention statement and creating a shamanic Intention Arrow (you’ll need a stick at least 12 inches long, 2 or more feathers, a candle, and colored yarn for this module)
- A Fire Ceremony to activate evolutionary wisdom codes, guiding you toward your highest potential
Module 2: South - Release Suffering & Reactivity Patterns So You Can Open to Trust and Love's Healing Flow (April 17)
Tom will guide you to surrender into faith and trust, freeing yourself from the patterns that create suffering.
Working with the medicine of the South invites you to explore your emotions with the guidance of the mouse — an animal close to the ground, attuned to the Earth’s heartbeat, navigating the world through its capacity for deep feeling.
By identifying the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs that cause suffering, learn to release what no longer serves you and receive the pure life force energy of each breath.
Through visualization, meditation, and breathwork, open to love’s healing flow — cutting the energetic cords of limiting emotions and transforming reactivity into conscious choice.
Experience Tom’s meaningful adaptation of the Plains Indian warfare tradition of Counting Coup, creating your own coup stick to use in ceremony to help shift yourself out of reactivity and welcome in new, empowered patterns.
*Learn more about Tom’s right-relationship practices and his teachers and mentors in the FAQs.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- How to catch and transform thought and behavior patterns that create suffering
- Shifting from reactivity to conscious response using an adaptation of the Plains Indian Counting Coup tradition, and making your own coup stick you’ll use in ceremony — bring a 12-18 inches long stick about as wide as your finger, at least 2 feathers, and colored yarn to wrap around the stick (plus scissors or a knife)
- A powerful medicine song to support your letting-go process
- A guided visualization and breath meditation to open to love’s healing flow
- Befriending the reptilian brain, shadow self, and Inner Adversary — to free yourself from their hold during a guided ceremony
Module 3: West - Befriend Mortality as an Ally to Deepen Your Sense of Integrity, Peace & Empowerment (April 24)
With the bear serving as your power animal, look within and embrace mortality as a guide to deeper presence and more meaningful living.
Just as the bear hibernates in the winter and emerges in the spring with new life, you can also enter what Tom calls the “looks within place” and emerge with new life. Harness the power of the bear to go within and face darkness, shadow, fear, unconsciousness, and mortality as you access your inner resources.
In the medicine of the West — the direction of introspection and inner transformation — explore the relationship between wisdom and spiritual warriorship.
True wisdom goes beyond knowledge — it arises from an intimate and transformative interaction with Spirit, guiding you through life’s most difficult challenges with grace and clarity.
Learn to befriend mortality as an ally, allowing its presence to deepen your integrity, authenticity, and connection to your heart and soul. As you recognize impermanence, uncover what is eternal, creating a profound sense of peace and empowerment in your life.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- The essence of wisdom — including how it differs from knowledge and how to cultivate it
- The qualities of the Spiritual Warrior and how to embody them in daily life
- Practices to transform fear of mortality into a source of strength and clarity
- A medicine song to empower your journey
Module 4: North - Connect With Your Aumakua (Highest Self) to Live From Love Instead of Fear (May 1)
Are you ready to recognize and embody the divine sparks within you, living from a place of wisdom, love, and expanded awareness?
In the wisdom of the North, explore the Three As — Alaha, Aloha and Alegria — key principles for aligning with your highest self and balancing your soul traits.
By identifying these sparks of identity and working with them consciously, cultivate deeper health, wellness, and awareness, raising your energetic bandwidth to live more fully in the present moment.
Through the Thymus Pump exercise, activate gratitude and strengthen the physiological functions that your deeper wisdom is guiding every moment of every day.
As you open your heart chakra, become a vessel for divine light, allowing it to flow through you into your relationships and the world around you.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- How to live from the Three As to foster wisdom and connection
- Embracing the buffalo as your animal guide as you explore the wisdom of the North, following the buffalo’s example of giving all it has to serve others with wisdom instead of ego
- How to identify and balance your soul traits for greater harmony
- A guided practice to connect with your Aumakua (highest self) for wisdom and empowerment
- Techniques to recognize and embody the divine sparks of your inner light
- The Thymus Pump exercise to activate gratitude and deepen your connection to inner wisdom
Module 5: Below - Ground & Connect With Earth to Transform Your Inner Adversary & Make Healthier, Conscious Choices (May 8)
Deepening your previous work in Module 2, Tom will help you alchemize your energy, using life’s challenges as opportunities for growth and empowerment.
Connect with the Earth, learning to ground, center, and expand your energy to navigate fear, anxiety, and uncertainty with greater presence.
Work with your Inner Adversary — the part of you that triggers negativity and feeds upon it — so you can transform reactive patterns into conscious choices.
Through practices drawn from Aikido, Qigong, attitudinal healing, and non-violent communication, develop tools to work skillfully with personal needs.
Consciously use triggered reactivity states and create inner democracy — a balanced state where all parts of yourself work in harmony. By embracing the unknown with openness, come to realize that every experience can enrich and empower you.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- Principles and practices of attitudinal healing to shift limiting perspectives
- Guided Aikido and Qigong techniques to cultivate a flow state
- How to create inner democracy, bringing balance to your inner world
- Skills to identify and work skillfully with your personal needs
- How to transform life’s challenges into vehicles for creative empowerment
Module 6: Above - Honor the Feminine and Deepen Your Connection to the Sacred With Psychedelic Power Plants, Ancestors & Gratitude (May 15)
As you connect with the powers of Above, cultivate humility, responsibility, and gratitude as you deepen your relationship with sacred plants, feminine wisdom, and ancestral guidance.
With support from ancestor spirits of the Upper World and the expansive wisdom of the sky, open the doorway to higher consciousness, honoring the sacred gifts of power plants and the feminine.
Explore the qualities of feminine power — humility, responsibility, and gratitude — as tools for growth, empowerment, and guidance. Through respectful relationships with sacred plant allies, ancestral wisdom, and dreamwork, strengthen your connection to the divine feminine and the sacred web of life.
Through ceremonial work with a sacred power plant (this could even be tea or coffee), attune to the wisdom of the natural world. Create and empower an ancestor altar, offering nourishment and gratitude to the spirits who walk with you.
Honor Tom’s principle he often shares with his students — “Grace grows where gratitude flows.”
In this module, you’ll explore:
- The teachings of Great Grandmother Growth, Takutsi Nakaway
- How to create and empower an ancestor altar for spiritual connection
- A medicine song for ancestor attunement to deepen your relationship with lineage wisdom
- Skills for working with your dreams as a gateway to guidance and insight
- The sacred relationship between plants, gratitude, and spiritual empowerment
Module 7: Center - Create & Activate Your Vision Of A "Win-Win World" (May 22)
This culmination of your journey empowers you to live with intention, co-create a world rooted in love, wisdom, and connection, and contribute to the healing of the Sacred Hoop of Life — a symbol of wholeness, balance, and the interconnectedness of all beings.
You may feel disempowered, believing you can’t make a difference — yet both Indigenous wisdom and modern physics teach us we are all connected in an infinite energy field, and every action ripples outward.
Gather the energy you’ve cultivated throughout this journey in Walking Your Heart Path to Completion, serving a greater purpose in alignment with who you truly are beyond the conclusion of the course.
Through guided visioning and group ceremony, identify the kind of world you want to create, plant the seed of that vision within yourself, and empower it to expand into the world.
Tom will share tools to sustain a lifelong daily practice, ensuring that you continue to embody and grow the consciousness, love, and wisdom you wish to see in the world.
Use the light of the candle you initiated in the first module to open direct connection to the center of the Medicine Wheel and yourself. In a closing ceremony, integrate the work of each module, birthing your intentions into reality.
In this module, you’ll explore:
- The Four Legs of Grandchildren Guidance — wisdom for future generations
- A medicine song for building a loving, supportive community
- A ceremony to grow the seed of your win-win world for all
- The power of daily practice to walk your heart path with integrity and purpose
- Stepping into your full power, aligning with Spirit to help shape a better world
- A medicine song to support your ongoing practice
The Medicine Wheel Wisdom Bonus Offering
In addition to Tom’s transformative 7-week online course, you’ll receive this special bonus offering to complement the course and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
The Tao of the Wisdom Warrior
Video Dialogue With Tom Pinkson and Dennis McKenna
Experience an intimate conversation with Tom and ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, brother of renowned psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna. Tom and Dennis share insights from their lifelong exploration of psychedelics and shamanic practices while emphasizing interconnectedness and unity. This is a unique glimpse into the wisdom gained through these pioneers in the healing power of psychedelics and spiritual medicine teachings.
Fireside Wisdom Story From Vision Quest
Video Teaching From Dr. Tom Pinkson
Experience the captivating Indigenous wisdom story of Jumping Mouse, shared by Tom in a rare, private video recording from his 50th year of leading Vision Quest. This sharing by sacred fire in the Mojave Desert is an exclusive narration never before heard outside the intimate group of individuals on the quest and serves as a powerful reminder to embrace your full potential. Uncover the transformative lessons of this ancient tale, revealing timeless insights and inspiration.
Psychedelics, Death & Dying: Exercising the Surrender Muscle
Article by Dr. Tom Pinkson
Delve into Tom’s personal anecdotes, including his work with terminally ill children and a life-altering encounter with the “God Molecule” alongside Terence McKenna. Discover how these experiences have shaped Pinkson’s understanding of sacred medicines and Indigenous wisdom. This fascinating article provides a unique perspective on the transformative power of psychedelics as a guide and healing spirit.
Right Relationship With Sacred Power Plants
Article by Dr. Tom Pinkson
Uncover the potential of peyote, ayahuasca, and psilocybin mushrooms with Tom’s manual and deepen your understanding of these powerful entheogens. Discover how these plants, when engaged with ritual respect and reciprocity, can catalyze religious experiences and personal transformation. This insightful guide explores their healing potential while addressing essential topics such as low addiction risk and toxicity, offering a thoughtful approach to harnessing their potential in a skillful and responsible manner.
A Visual Language
Digital Booklet From Dr. Tom Pinkson
This visually stimulating booklet features drawings and images from Tom’s time in ceremony with the Indigenous Huichol people. Tom draws from more than 20 years of experience and wisdom he garnered from this Indigenous group from Central America. It’s available in only limited numbers for pre-orders of Tom’s latest book, Psychedelic Shaman: A Wisdom Warrior’s Guide to Transformation.
What Graduates of Tom ’s Courses Are Saying...
I found Tom Pinkson to be a genuine, inspirational, and knowledgeable teacher. I truly enjoyed his class and found myself looking forward to putting into practice the wisdom and guidance that he shared with us.
Mesa, Arizona
Tom is one of those rare people who offer their gifts to us in a very humble and profound way. Listening to him, I felt that a light was lit inside my heart, only to recognize later, that the light was there all along.
Toronto, Canada
This course gave me more tools and insight to go deeper into my shamanic practice. I prefer to take courses in person, and this was the first one I’ve taken online. I found The Shift Network extremely easy and thoughtful to work with. I felt a connection with Tom. I will now consider taking other courses online. Thank you for a good experience.
East Hampton, Connecticut
This is a “must-do” course for anyone who is over 50 and who values connection with nature. Tom’s style is calming and simultaneously assuring. He will take you on a journey during which you will develop an alternate and honoring relationship with your own aging. Tom’s course offers a real opportunity for welcoming your self to your wisdom years.
Cape Town, South Africa
As part of the course with Tom Pinkson, we were invited to create an ancestral altar. My father passed into Spirit in 2012, and in considering this altar, I realized it would take time to find the right photos. I asked to be shown the right photos. The next morning, a “glitch” in my new computer presented me with a wonderful photo of my father. It was arguably the nicest photo of my father, and I didn’t even know this photo existed. As I looked at the photo on my screen, I couldn’t help but chat with him — he felt so close. I am so grateful for the experience. Everything in its right time, right place, right presence.
Tasmania, Australia
Join the Global Community
Medicine Wheel Wisdom offers some of the most transformational online teachings available, within a thriving global community of learning and practice.
Join fellow students and practitioners to support and inspire each other as you integrate the teachings and practices Dr. Tom Pinkson will share in this powerful program.
You’ll join an international community on the leading edge of manifesting a world grounded in the principles of cooperation, harmony, and reverence for all of life.
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions With Dr. Tom Pinkson
Experience a unique opportunity to be mentored by and learn from psychologist, plant and vision quest guide Dr. Tom Pinkson, founder of A New Vision of Living — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a livestreaming video option and will lead you to activate expanded states of consciousness to access wisdom guidance — so you can meet life’s challenges with power, inner peace, and infinite unconditional love and light. Course sessions are on Thursdays at 9:00am Pacific.
Seven Video Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the video will be available for you to stream in a high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Audio Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to stream. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Transcripts of Class Sessions
You’ll also receive the entire class transcription after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Seven 30-Minute Interactive Group Practice Sessions
With live class attendance, there will be a 30-minute optional interactive practice session directly following each class. You’ll be placed in an intimate group with several other participants on the Zoom call to interact, share, and do additional practices to help you further integrate the weekly lessons. Practice sessions are not recorded for playback; if you’re unable to attend the live sessions, the Facebook online community group allows you to connect with each other and find alternative times to interact.
Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
Online Community
Our exclusive Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can continue the discussion about your course materials and interact with your fellow students to take your exploration to an even deeper level.
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Online Course, Medicine Wheel Wisdom
We feel honored that Dr. Tom Pinkson has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive LIVE online course. This is a unique opportunity to interact directly with the founder of A New Vision of Living, and psychologist and plant and vision quest guide whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.
If you’re serious about integrating shamanic tools and psychedelic states to deepen self-awareness, heal personal and collective trauma, and awaken your innate power to shift the world from fear to love, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and our world to take this one-of-a-kind program.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your own evolution, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
Your Satisfaction Is 100% Guaranteed!
Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed! If you don’t absolutely LOVE Medicine Wheel Wisdom — or don’t feel that it meets your needs — please submit your refund request form on or before April 24, 2025 and we’ll happily issue qualifying customers a refund.
More Praise for Dr. Tom Pinkson
Tom is an authentic wisdom elder, reminding leaders to stay connected to nature and follow a heart path to success.
Founder, Jones Snowboards and POW (Protect Our Winters)
Tom Pinkson helps us reconnect with the teachings of our Indigenous ancestors. His is healing earth wisdom for our fractured civilization — and inspiration to honor the creative forces inherent in the land, the plants, the animals, and the people.
Psychologist, researcher, and author of Green Psychology
Traditional native healer and spiritual teacher
Tom Pinkson is one of those rare individuals who walks his talk — whose life is built on helping others, loving and forgiving, and a determination to trust and listen to the inner voice within him.
Author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear
About Dr. Tom Pinkson
EDIT
Tom Pinkson’s path of exploration can be traced back to the death of his father when he was four years. Seeking deeper truth about the mysteries of life and death, he sought out and found numerous shamanic “medicine” teachers who initiated him into totally different realms than those from which he had come.
His journeys took him to the far reaches of the Amazon jungle, to the Andes mountains, and to an 11-year apprenticeship with a group of Huichol Indian shamans in the Sierra Madre of north central Mexico.
During this time, Tom also earned three college degrees, including a PhD in psychology. His doctoral dissertation, “A Quest for Vision,” described his successful work with heroin addicts in the early 1970s using a wilderness treatment program that included mountain climbing, river running, snow camping, ski touring, and vision quests in the High Sierra.
The quests continue to this day, more than four decades later, with people coming from all over the U.S. to join him on powerful experiences of solitude and adventure in the back country of Yosemite.
From working with drug addicts, he went on to help start the second hospice program in the United States, offering support services to the terminally ill. From there, he was invited to join Dr. Jerry Jampolsky at the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, to work with children facing life-threatening illness, which he did for 32 years.
Tom went on to create his “Recognition rites honoring elders" along with a CD recording using music and song to open hearts and minds to the wisdom of deep being.
Walking in two worlds, the shamanic world of Indigenous spirituality, and the Western world of a psychologist, teacher, sacred storyteller, and ceremonial and retreat leader, Tom serves as a bridge-builder, bringing what he calls “the teachings of the elders” into practical applications within the modern, urban setting.
From major corporations to pediatric oncology units within prestigious cancer treatment centers, from the academic world to rites-of-passage work with children, adolescents, and adults, the dying process, and subsequent work of grief, mourning, and rebirth, Tom’s work has enriched countless lives.
His many books include The Psychedelic Shaman: The Wisdom Warrior's Path to Transformation... The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times... Fruitful Aging: Finding the Gold In The Golden Years... and Do They Celebrate Christmas in Heaven?: Spiritual Rite of Passage Teachings From Children with Life-Threatening Illness.
Tom is the founder and director of Wakan, a nonprofit spiritually based community which offers a variety of programs and services that help people find and remember what is sacred in their lives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s a virtual course?
Can I still benefit from the course if I miss the live classes?
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Are there scholarships available for this training?
Please note: Scholarship applications must be submitted before the refund deadline, as we are unable to accept applications after that point.
What’s your refund policy?
If you’re within the refund period, the deadline to receive a full refund is April 24, 2025. To request a refund, please complete this refund request form and submit your request. Qualifying refunds will be processed within five business days, and you’ll receive an email confirming the refund.
We’d also love the opportunity to address and resolve your concerns directly. If there’s anything we can assist with, please get in touch with us at support@theshiftnetwork.com — we’re here to help!
Please note: Refund requests are not accepted after the deadline or for courses purchased with scholarship awards.
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From Dr. Tom Pinkson on Cultural Appropriation
I have spent a lifetime exploring deeper reality, deeper meaning, deeper being. Towards that end, I traveled around the world seeking out spiritual elders and Indigenous medicine people who still practiced the traditional, life-honoring ways passed on to them by their ancestors. Above, I am on pilgrimage with the Huichol people with whom I completed a 13-year apprenticeship culminating in my being named a Mara’akame (shaman), a term I still use with humility, respect, and great reverence and gratitude.
From my Indigenous teachers and mentors, I learned that right-relationship means that taking without giving back in equal measure is cultural theft, appropriation, and a continuation of colonialist exploitation. What is called for in giving back has to do with developing an ally relationship in which there is mutual respect and exchange. This entails understanding how the ideology of colonialist, white supremacy results in discriminatory, racist policies that are embedded in social, educational, economic, and health institutions that privilege Caucasians and oppress people of color.
I was taught about sacred reciprocity, how to give before taking. I learned to meaningfully help address issues of concern, which have included a range of offerings from being willing to make a commitment to apprenticeship for a set number of years, to bringing food, clothing, medical supplies, and financial support; to chopping wood and anything else I could to do help prepare for ceremonies. Over the 60+ years I have been doing this work, I was called to learn about, and get involved with, programs addressing treaty violation, sovereignty, and social justice issues. I learned not to use certain words and ceremonial tools until I had been granted the right to do so; I learned that I needed to support demonstrations for justice however I could. Sometimes the contribution was transporting Elders to and from ceremonies, to stores, to medical appointments, or to banks to help with financial matters. Sometimes it was helping to raise funds for whatever was most needed by the people.
The point is to create a respectful ally relationship where there is a balance between giving and taking, the exact opposite of how Eurocentric culturally-conditioned Caucasians have typically interacted with Native People, starting with violently taking their lives and their land and displacing them to reservations (usually on the worst land around), as well as taking aspects of their spirituality and culture for personal benefit without giving anything back in exchange.
GIVING BACK: What I am able to share with you is because of the sharing and passing on of knowledge that was shared with me. Please consider supporting:
- the Huichols of the Sierra Madre mountainsin Mexico, who played a critical role in my spiritual journey. The Huichol are a small tribe of approximately 35,000 living in central western Mexico near Ixtlan in the Sierra Madre Mountains. They are said to be the last tribe in North America to have maintained their pre-Columbian traditions. Huichol mara’akame (shamans) and healers practice today as they have for generations. Please help them build a water well to meet basic survival needs, and live out the dream of my “grandmother” Guadalupe de la Cruz, a visionary matriarch who hoped to create a vibrant community space where people could gather, where her family could carry on the rich traditions of the Wixarika people, and where ceremonies could be held to honor their heritage.
- and/or the Noke Kôi of the Peruvian Amazon, with whom I have recently been blessed to connect. Unlike many other tribes that were influenced by the "Yaras" (White people), the Noke Koi still preserve their traditional ways and only a few speak Portuguese – their native tongue is Nokevana and it is spoken by everyone in the tribe. They work with different plant medicines and are widely known as the original people of Kambô, which is used for healing various illnesses among their people.
With deepest gratitude for all of the Indigenous peoples who have been, and those who still are, carriers of wisdom teachings, reminding us of European descent how to be in right relationship with and as part of Nature; how to live in balance, as part of an interconnected one; whose cultural heritage and deep connection to and with Nature have inspired and enlightened me in countless ways; and whose sharing I committed to carrying on and strive to uphold every day.
