Copyright © 2000 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

We at Dreamkeepers.net are launching an online publishing web site this fall/winter devoted to "Living Multimedia Books" by, for, about and with Native American and Aboriginal Spiritual Elders of the Indigenous World. Our new preview site is the merest whisper of what the full site will be in the months and years ahead.

The vision and purpose of Dreamkeepers.net is summed up in these words by Australian Aboriginal Dreamkeeper, Lilla Watson:

CREED OF THE DREAMKEEPERS

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time... But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." --Lilla Watson

Our first three "Living Multimedia Books" to be featured this winter will be:

+ TURN & FACE THE WIND: A Message to Humanity, by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Great Sioux Nation

+ RECIPES FOR LIVING: A Cherokee Grandmother's Wisdom, Remembrances & Cooking Secrets, by Momfeather Erickson

+ A revised and enhanced online edition of my own book, DREAMKEEPERS: A Spirit-Journey into Aboriginal Australia.

Each book is "living" in that new materials will continually be added (where appropriate) by the author, along with comments from readers, message-boards for each book, direct contact between readers and Elders/authors, and much much more... all worked into an international web site community (each Elder/author has their own "site within the site"). One of our mottoes is: "WE PUBLISH EXPERIENCES" offering readers a "TOTAL BOOK EXPERIENCE".

All books and all other online features on dreamkeepers.net will be available for your U.S. $29.95, a one-year Founding Membership, which extends from date of membership to March 1, 2002. With your full-access Founding Membership, you will be able to view each of the books as often as you like, so you can read them chapter-by-chapter, at your leisure, even LISTEN to them being read while watching the play of accompanying visuals or, if you like, just leaning back in your chair and listening to the musically enhanced narration with your eyes closed.

There's really no need to download the text at all (though you can if you wish). Among the many, many enhanced features of our "Living Multimedia Books" will be photo galleries, art work, music, audio, video, readings by the authors or other narrators, live and archived chats with Elders etc., etc., features that no paper book can contain. And this includes not only our first three books, but all others we'll be adding to dreamkeepers.net in the future.

An extensive Front Page to dreamkeepers.net will be filled with an ever-changing array of information, notices, readers comments and contributions, messages from the Elders, poems, stories, and feature articles...all aimed at "bringing the Elders to the world and the world to the Elders".

Join us! Grow with us! Become a Founding Member of dreamkeepers.net! Check out our fast-growing Preview site.

Founding Members will be able to renew for a second year at the same low price. We also hope to have modestly priced hardback and/or paperback editions of the texts, available for those who want hard copies to read off line.

For more information contact pam@dreamkeepers.net. (Special arrangements for schools, groups and organizations.) Visit Dreamkeepers.net

WHO IS AN "ELDER"?

Some thoughts on Dreamkeepers.net from Harvey Arden

I'm often asked how I "choose" the Elders, the Dreamkeepers, the Wisdomkeepers I have featured in my books and now on Dreamkeepers.net. As a white man raised and educated in an urban society, it's not in my power to choose who is an indigenous Elder and who is not.  There is no position of "Elder" in American society at large. We have "Senior Citizens", of which I am now proud to be one, but no "Elders" in the sense of spiritual Elders respected and revered by their People, and given a central role in their Nation's ceremonial life and political decision-making.

When I first began this work in 1981, while still a staff writer for National Geographic Magazine, I had the idea of writing an article about Native American "Medicine Men", a common misnomer. But I soon found out, as I traveled among Indian communities-and I've visited more than a hundred since then, that what I should be looking for was not "Medicine" (better translated as "Power") but "Wisdom", another indefinable term, yet one that totally changed the focus of my search. I myself wanted no "Power" nor "powers" of any kind, but I did crave with all my soul this indefinable "Wisdom" that many Elders have generously shared with me and which I have tried, in turn, to share with as many others as possible in an age when that ancient yet thoroughly modern "Wisdom" may be the saving "Power" for all of humankind.

Early on in my travels, I had the great good fortune to meet Lakota (Sioux) Elder Mathew King, 'Chief Noble Red Man' and he explained the indigenous concept of Elder to me: "In our Way", Mathew told me, "the Elders give spiritual direction to the People.  The wisdom of thousands of years flows through their lips. In our way, when we grow old, we become Elders." And he spoke those words with a radiant pride. Then he looked at me, shaking his head sadly, and said: "In your way, Harvey, in white man's way, when you grow old, well, you just grow old..."

Another wonderful Elder, Onondaga Chief Louie Farmer, told me this: "You want to know who's a real 'Medicine Man'? Well, I'll tell you, he's the one who doesn't say 'I'm a medicine man.' He doesn't ask you to come to him. You've got to go and ask him. And you'll always find he's there among his own People. He doesn't go off to the city and open an office. Once a medicine man leaves his own territory, he loses most of his power.  All the sacred plants he knows are where he comes from.  He doesn't know the plants of other places. The Creator gave him his gift so he could help his own People, not somebody else. The people he's supposed to help are where he's from. So he stays home and helps them.  That's who a real medicine man is."

And when Tadodaho Leon Shenandoah of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy was asked: "Leon, what's the greatest power?" Leon closed his eyes, swayed slightly in his chair, deep in meditation, and finally looked up and said softly: "I myself have no power. Real power comes only from the Creator. It's in Creator's hands. But if you're asking me about strength, not power, then I can say that the greatest strength is gentleness."

Yes, the greatest strength is gentleness, and that's a quality I find in all the Elders whom I call Dreamkeepers and Wisdomkeepers.

Also, they all seem to be infused with a quality of "goodness." Mat King told me: "There's only goodness in God, in Wakan Tanka. And that same goodness is in us all. You can feel it in yourself, can't you, Harvey?  You know when you feel good inside. Well, learn to love the goodness in yourself. Then, and this is the most important thing, reach deep inside yourself, grab the goodness you find there and, then, put that goodness out into the world!"

For my books, all five of them now, I have taken the philosophy that I meet whom I meet.  One person can meet only so many people, so many Elders. We rarely choose whom we meet. Often, it seems like they choose us.  So, yes, again, I meet whom I meet, and write of whom I write, and I make no claims beyond that. If those persons seem like Dreamkeepers or Wisdomkeepers to me, I refer to them as such, but I am making no formal acknowledgement of their role within their own local or over-all indigenous society. Their own People must do that.

I have tried not to ask these Elders a lot of leading questions, but have simply asked them to share whatever it is they care to share with the world. Rarely do they speak to me of "medicine"--of herbs, formulas, remedies, "secrets", etc.  That kind of knowledge is too easily misused by outsiders. Nor do we dwell on "ceremony", which is to be shared by outsiders only when personally invited, and then only in the company of those to whom that ceremony belongs. What these Elders do share, along with their wit and memories--and, yes, even, occasionally, their prophecies, is that indefinable yet clearly recognizable thing called "Wisdom".

How do I recognize that "Wisdom"? I'm not at all sure that I can, and I'm certain there have been many times when I've missed it completely.  What I do recognize, at least at times--is an undeniable Poetry of words, thought, deeds and presence, offered in a sharing way in a spirit of gentleness, humbleness, and goodness of heart--a simple, clear, highly practical and life-enhancing Message about what I've come to think of as "the art of being human."

Every older person in indigenous communities is hopefully an Elder within their own family. Some are Elders to their Clans, their Tribes, their Nations, even, at times, to the World. I envision the time not too far off when there will be scores, even hundreds of Elders on Dreamkeepers.net, Elders of many kinds, local, regional, national and global.

We need them all, the little granny making corn soup up at Akwesasne or the dramatic spokesman-Elder and Ceremonial Chief addressing the United Nations... they all have their place on Dreamkeepers.net, as do those non-Elders and, yes, even non-'indigenous' people, whom we at Dreamkeepers.net take to be of good heart and who have a luminous message of love (sometimes tough love, to be sure) and wisdom and poetry and spiritual power to share with the rest of us in this darkly shadowed modern world.

It's not up to me, or to any one person or group of people, to "choose" them. In a very real sense, they "choose" us. We at Dreamkeepers.net are transmitters and enablers, nothing more, but nothing less.

To all our members and visitors, please take part and help us. We ourselves literally CAN'T, and are NOT SUPPOSED to choose, "who" will be part of Dreamkeepers.net. The Elders themselves, and the People who revere them, will do that. Not every Elder and/or author we present here will please everyone. Each brings different gifts, and not all of those gifts are for all of us. But we at Dreamkeepers.net want to include, not exclude. There's much too much exclusion in this world. We want to honor the sacredness in all people. We begin with "Living Books" by and about American Indian and Australian Aboriginal Elders, and there will be many, many others from both of those great human traditions on Dreamkeepers.net.  We will also be working in the months and years ahead to include Elders from the entire indigenous world--Alaskan Inuit Elders; Canadian First Peoples' Elders; Elders from Mexico, Central and South America; Maori Elders of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Saami Elders from Finland, Ainu Elders from Japan, Hawaiian and South Pacific Elders, African Elders, Siberian Elders, Tibetan and other Asian Elders, and many others, as well as, occasional presentations by authors who seem to us compatible in spirit with the Dreamkeepers Project. Self-appointed "shamans," sellers of indigenous ceremony, "plastic" medicine men and women, sorcerors, and vendors of "powers" will need to find their audiences elsewhere.

The task is enormous, and we expect generous assistance and sponsorship from many, many people; individuals, private groups, public organizations, Native Peoples, universities, state, provincial and national governments around the world, non-governmental groups, and so forth. We envision them building their own web sites with their own resources within the international portal of Dreamkeepers.net, bringing their own revered Elders to the World, and the World to the Elders. Please join us! Help make the history of your own times! We welcome you to Dreamkeepers.net.

Harvey Arden, is the author of 'Wisdomkeepers', 'Dreamkeepers' 'Noble Red Man', 'Travels In A Stone Canoe' and editor of 'Leonard Peltier's Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance'.