Most of us know both the value—and the expense of working to buy ultra-fresh
organic vegetables in such a challenging economy. So how can an apartment
or small house-dwelling person with no yard be able to augment the diet with fresh,
garden-grown organic vegetables?

Yes, I think you know. You can grow them by the pot. If you have a sunny window,
or the ability to set up a few grow-light fixtures above your growing area, you can have a
very nice assortment of kitchen vegetables all year round.

Warm soil temperatures are what signal plant growth. When growing vegetables in pots indoors, you can have warm soils all year round and with sunny windows or grow-light fixtures you can design your own indoor garden. Cabbage, lettuce, green onions, spinach, kale, basil, rosemary and broccoli are some of the easiest to start with. It is also not very difficult to grow a few carrots, onions, beets, radishes and even yams. The depth and width of your pot is what largely determine the number and type of vegetables or roots you can grow.

When growing indoors there are a few things to do for best results. Watering with room-temperature water prevents any plant-shock that can stunt or slow your plant’s growth. Watering with old fish-tank water if you have an aquarium or fish-bowl is also a great idea. This water tends to be alkaline, and filled with decomposing fish foods and by-products which is good fertile water that can assist plants nutritionally.

When growing indoors, high-quality fertilizer becomes very important. Choose blood meal, rabbit droppings, chicken manure and bat guano as first choices. Many times you can find free sources of some of these fertilizers. In general, fertilize your plants once every other week or so, while augmenting their fertilization with regular watering. Most garden vegetables don’t like to stay too wet, and root-rot can set in if the plant soil is not allowed to dry out a bit between watering. Also, when growing indoors, make sure you place rocks, gravel or broken pottery into the very bottom of your pots before adding your soil. This helps the plant roots not become soaked or too-wet and prevents the roots from sitting in pooled-up water, which can cause some rot to occur.

Choosing a nice dark, rich loamy soil is also important. You can dig this from a friend’s garden, find some in places where plants (and worms) are doing very well, or buy it by the bag from your local garden center. The best pots to use are the ones that allow your plant to breath, in a similar way that they can when growing out of doors. This means clay pots, wood pots or the decomposing natural plant containers that many bushes, trees and other outdoor specialty plants arrive in, as these are designed to just be dropped into the soil for a long-term decomposition as the plant grows.

Indoor gardens can be a lot of fun. Enjoy experimenting, and visit www.growingvegetables–inpots.com for other tips and ideas.

The Aztecs also have a story where hummingbird kept the people moving when they were driven from their lands and had to find a new home. Every day, hummingbird would fly out in front, encouraging everyone to keep going, just keep going… days passed, then weeks, then months stretched along until they finally arrived in the new homeland.

Hummingbird is well known for representing the accomplishment of the impossible. This is why hummingbird women are encouraging each other to show support for the healing of our worlds waters  and bringing the attention back to what is sacred by using the fair trade, healthy life and economy- supporting items that serve to fund and promote the work of hummingbird women. The year this work began for the formal council of the 1000 hummingbird ceremony women, a crop circle was perfectly formed of a giant hummingbird in England. If our earth and her forces are not calling us, hummingbird certainly is.

Organic cotton t-shirts with the stunning “Water Woman” standing in reverent silence, simplywaiting for our earth’s recovery,while hummers hover and circle around her head. She is also displayed on solar blue glass bottles through glass etching to help promote the work and science of Dr. Imoto who photographs the living crystalline changes that happen when we pray over our water. She is also featured as the New Dawn woman, standing in the windows of time.  Hosted on colorful fairly traded organic cotton t-shirts with her striking waterfall clothing, our world’s women are being asked by hummingbird to step up and be heard on the issues of water. Even the information tags are printed on recycled dollar bills (cool, huh?). Matching tote bags are also available.

To participate in this dynamic life-affirming campaign, simply view these inspiring items and become familiar with the work hummingbird women are doing on the many levels available to us.  Order online, and visit the hummingbird website at www.1000hummingbirds.concarino.org or go directly to the hummingbird campaign items page:  http://www.1000hummingbirds.concarino.org/?page_id=31 these items can also be viewed at the www.natural-villages.org website at the hummingbird program navigation click.

Have you been having encounters with hummingbird?  Perhaps you are being called to work on behalf of the water, protecting the sacred wombs of the world’s children to come.

We the Hopi still hold the sacred stone tablets and now await the coming of our True White Brother and others seriously ready to work for the Creator’s peace on earth.

Be well, my children, and think good thoughts of peace and togetherness. Peace for all life on earth and peace with one another in our homes, families and countries. We are not so different in the Creator’s eyes. The same great Father Sun shines his love on each of us daily just as Mother Earth prepares the sustenance for our table, do they not?

We are one after all

“We Hopi believe that the human race has passed through three different worlds and life ways since the beginning. At the end of each prior world, human life has been purified or punished by the Great Spirit ‘Massauu’ due mainly to corruption, greed and turning away from the Great Spirit’s teachings. The last great destruction was the flood which destroyed all but a few faithful ones who asked and received a permission from the Great Spirit to live with Him in this new land. The Great Spirit said, ‘It is up to you, if you are willing to live my poor, humble and simple life way. It is hard but if you agree to live according to my teachings and instructions, if you never lose faith in the life I shall give you, you may come and live with me.’ The Hopi and all who were saved from the great flood made a sacred covenant with the Great Spirit at that time.”

If you are interested in learning or helping on any current dragon hearth, outdoor kitchen or cabin project, call 831-425-3393 to check our schedules and get onto our waiting list. As soon as we can we will schedule your time to come. We are happy to trade education for labor when we have projects with fast approaching finish times. Much laughing is definitely expected.

We often work on projects both during the week and on weekends, so do drop in if we are doing a project near you- and see our progress. We will also be playing with wattle and daub at any opportunity. If you are interested in our certification program, call our office and ask for information, or see the Earn and Join pages on our navigation bar. Our earning and learning programs are subject to available projects and property use permissions from host families on location.

When looking at the project pictures, notice we began with prayer and corn meal and sacred tobacco cast in a sacred manner into the very bottom of our foundation trench. Everything we do at natural villages is in honor of our Mother– our creator and nurturer of this earth she gifts us use of. We will honor and hold prayer in any tradition, religion or spiritual system. We encourage all groups to retain this flexibility. We are all children under of the skies the same creative universe. We all honor the consciousness of love.

Your financial support gifts us with profound value. We work to keep our asking for support simple and unpretentious as we respect how deeply you understand our need for funding to keep going. Without your donations, we would not be able to launch our programs or pay qualified builders who have worked very hard for the opportunity to earn a livelihood doing what they love most: giving life, meaning and value to the forming of authentically natural, peace-based communities.

There are donation buttons/clicks and more detailed giving information available at the donation page. We humbly thank you right now, for any help given. We also gift an earth sculpting e-book to anyone who gives a gift of $10 or over.

Natural Villages Presents:

The Sacred Village:

Schedule  days of earth wall building, outdoor earth kitchen of recycled and natural materials…prayerfully sculpted with artists and earth house trainers.

Earn certification toward new green job markets in an environment of GOOD THOUGHTS and PRAYERS FOR the healing of the land, and our hearts…..as we learn how to begin our sacred natural village renaissance:

WHO: Natural Villages and Natural Villagers

WHAT: Learning and camping and playing and praying while building outdoor HEARTH, a natural earth kitchen for almost no cost.

WHEN: Ongoing learning and training. Work trades for knowlege welcomed. Winter programming through April.

WHERE: Camping at Big Basin State Park and working four minutes away, on our site…adjacent to Sempervirens Outdoor School. Hiking, meals included with food donation.

WHY: Because Natural Villages recover our landscape, and our lifestyles. Because environmental healing comes from the return of regional plants, animals and food production within natural house communities.

COST: This hands on learning is a gift to you and to us: But we do need funding to begin building this movement:

-funds to help train, certify and teach natural house building.

-we welcome ALL and we welcome gifts of money,  love, support, materials and networking.

PREPARATION:

WE need more stones for the foundation; work trades and barter available.

* we accomodate learners on a first come, first serve basis! BRING: Food ie; a grain, a vegetable, a fruit, and perhaps some bread; a tent, sleeping gear, your heart, laughter and love.

Become part of this peoples movement towards Sacred Village reality…

www.natural-villages.org is a for SOCIAL profit organization: Tax id# 87-0769918

]]> http://www.natural-villages.org/outdoor-hearth-and-kitchen-building-ongoing-call-to-schedule/feed/ 0 http://www.natural-villages.org/masanobu-fukuoka%e2%80%99s-natural-farming-and-permaculture/ http://www.natural-villages.org/masanobu-fukuoka%e2%80%99s-natural-farming-and-permaculture/#comments Mon, 03 Sep 2007 01:47:47 +0000 admin http://www.natural-villages.org/?p=921 _{Author: Larry Korn}

_Description:

_{Masanobu Fukuoka is a farmer/philosopher who lives on the Island of Shikoku, in southern Japan. His farming technique requires no machines, no chemicals and very little weeding. He does not plow the soil or use prepared compost and yet the condition of the soil in his orchards and fields improve each year. His method creates no pollution and does not require fossil fuels. His method requires less labor than any other, yet the yields in his orchard and fields compare favorably with the most productive Japanese farms which use all the technical know-how of modern science.}

Full Text:

Masanobu Fukuoka is a farmer/philosopher who lives on the Island of Shikoku, in southern Japan. His farming technique requires no machines, no chemicals and very little weeding. He does not plow the soil or use prepared compost and yet the condition of the soil in his orchards and fields improve each year. His method creates no pollution and does not require fossil fuels. His method requires less labor than any other, yet the yields in his orchard and fields compare favorably with the most productive Japanese farms which use all the technical know-how of modern science.

How is this possible? I admit, when I first went to his farm in 1973 I was skeptical. But there was the proof – beautiful grain crops in the fields, healthy orchard trees growing with a ground cover of vegetables, weeds and white clover. Over the two-year period I lived and worked there his techniques and philosophy gradually became clear to me.

I had not heard of permaculture at the time, but I can see now that Fukuoka’s farm is a classic working model of permaculture design. It is remarkable that Fukuoka and Bill Mollison, working independently, on two different continents with entirely different environmental conditions should come up with such similar solutions to the question, “How can people on live this planet sustainably and in harmony with nature.” Both claim that the principles of their system can be adapted to any climatic area.

Perhaps Fukuoka, in his book The One Straw Revolution , has best stated the basic philosophy of permaculture. In brief, it is philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system. –Bill Mollison in Permaculture 2

Mollison and Fukuoka took entirely different routes to get to essentially the same place. Permaculture is a design system which aims to maximize the functional connection of its elements. It integrates raising crops and animals with careful water management. Homes and other structures are designed for maximum energy efficiency. Everything is made to work together and evolve over time to blend harmoniously into a complete and sustainable agricultural system.

The key word here is design. Permaculture is a consciously designed system. The designer carefully uses his/her knowledge, skill and sensitivity to make a plan, then implement it. Fukuoka created natural farming from a completely different perspective.

The idea for natural farming came to Fukuoka when he was about twenty five years old. One morning, as he sat at sunrise on a bluff overlooking Yokohama Bay, a flash of inspiration occurred. He saw that nature was perfect just as it is. Problems arise when people try to improve upon nature and use nature strictly for human benefit. He tried to explain this understanding to others, but when they could not understand he made a decision to return to his family farm. He decided to create a concrete example of his understanding by applying it to agriculture.

But where to begin? Fukuoka had no model to go by. “‘How about trying this? How about trying that?’ That is the usual way of developing agricultural technique. My way was different. ‘How about not doing this, and How about not doing that?’ – this was the path I followed. Now my rice growing is simply sowing seed and spreading straw, but it has taken me more than thirty years to reach this simplicity.”

The basic idea for his rice growing came to him one day when he happened to pass an old field which had been left unused and unplowed for many years. There he saw healthy rice seedlings sprouting through a tangle of grasses and weeds. From that time on he stopped sowing rice seed in the spring and, instead, put the seed out in the fall when it would naturally have fallen to the ground. Instead of plowing to get rid of weeds he learned to control them with a ground cover of white clover and a mulch of barley straw. Once he has tilted the balance slightly in favor of his crops Fukuoka interferes as little as possible with the plant and animal communities in his fields.

This is not to say that Fukuoka did not experiment. For example, he tried more than twenty different ground covers before noticing that white clover was the only one which held back weeds effectively. It also fixes nitrogen so it improves the soil. He tried spreading the straw neatly over the fields but found the rice seeds could not make their way through. In one corner of the field, however, where the straw had scattered every which way, the seedlings emerged. The next year he scattered the straw across the entire field. There were years when his experiments resulted in almost a total crop loss, but in small areas things worked out well. He closely observed what was different in that part of the field and next year the results were better. The point is, he had no preconceived idea of what would work the best. He tried many things and took the direction nature revealed. As far as possible, Fukuoka was trying to take the human intellect out of the decision making process.

His vegetable growing also reflects this idea. He grows vegetables in the spaces between the citrus trees in the orchard. Instead of deciding which vegetables would do well in which locations he mixes all the seeds together and scatters them everywhere. He lets the vegetables find their own location, often in areas he would have least have expected. The vegetables reseed themselves and move around the orchard from year to year. Vegetables grown this way stronger and gradually revert to the form of their semi-wild ancestors.

I mentioned that Fukuoka’s farm is a fine model of permaculture design. In Zone 1, nearest his family home in the village, he and his family maintain a vegetable garden in the traditional Japanese style. Kitchen scraps are dug into the rows, are crops rotated and chickens run freely. This garden is really an extension of the home living area.

Zone 2 is his grain fields. He grows a crop of rice and one of barley every year. Because he returns the straw to the fields and has the ground cover of white clover the soil actually improves each year. The natural balance of insects and a healthy soil keep insect and disease infestations to a minimum. Until Bill Mollison read The One-Straw Revolution he said he had no idea of how to include grain growing in his permaculture designs. All the agricultural models involved plowing the soil, a practice he does not agree with. Now he includes Fukuoka’s no-tillage technique in his teaching.

Zone 3 is the orchard. The main tree crop is Mandarin oranges, but he also grows many other fruit trees, native shrubs and other native and ornamental trees. The upper story is tall trees, many of which fix nitrogen and so improve the soil deep down. The middle story is the citrus and other fruit trees. The ground is covered with a riotous mixture of weeds, vegetables, herbs and white clover. Chickens run freely. This multi-tiered orchard area came about through a natural evolution rather than conscious design. It still contains many of the basic permacultural design features. It has many different plant and species, maximizes surface area, contains solar sunlight “traps” and maintains a natural balance of insect populations.

Author Larry Korn with Fukuoka

Fukuoka invites visitors from Zone 4 anytime. Wild animals and birds come and go freely. The surrounding forest is the source of mushrooms, wild herbs and vegetables. It is also an inspiration. “To get an idea of the perfection and abundance of nature,” Fukuoka says, “take a walk into the forest sometime. There, the animals, tall trees and shrubs are living together in harmony. All of this came about without benefit of human ingenuity or intervention.”

What is remarkable is that Fukuoka’s natural farming and permaculture should resemble each other so closely despite their nearly opposite approaches. Permaculture relies on the human intellect to devise a strategy to live abundantly and sustainably within nature. Fukuoka sees the human intellect as the culprit serving only to separate people from nature. The “one mountain top, many paths” adage seems to apply here.

Natural farming and permaculture share a profound debt to each other. The many examples of permaculture throughout the world show that a natural farming system is truly universal. It can be applied to arid climates as well as humid, temperate Japan. Also, the worldwide permaculture movement is an inspiration to Fukuoka. For many years he worked virtually alone in his work. For most of his life Japan was not receptive to his message. He had to self-publish his books because no publisher would take a chance on someone so far from the mainstream. When his experiments resulted in failure the other villagers would ridicule his work. In the mid-1980′s he came to a Permaculture Convergence in Olympia, Washington and met Bill Mollison. There were nearly one thousand people there. He was overwhelmed and heartened by the number and sincerity of the like-thinking people he met. He thanked Mollison for “creating this network of bright, energetic people working to help save the planet.” “Now,” he said, “for the first time in my life I have hope for the future.”

In turn, permaculture has adopted many things from Fukuoka. Besides the many agricultural techniques, such as continuous no-tillage grain growing and growing vegetables like wild plants, permaculture has also learned an important new approach for devising practical strategies. Most importantly, the philosophy of natural farming has given permaculture a truly spiritual basis lacking in its earlier teachings.

Fukuoka believes that natural farming proceeds from the spiritual health of the individual. He considers the healing of the land and the purification of the human spirit to be one process, and he proposes a way of life and a way of farming in which this process can take place. “Natural farming is not just for growing crops,” he says, “it is for the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Text and images copyright 2003 Larry Korn

Contact information:

Larry Korn
P.O. Box 2384
Berkeley, CA 94702
(510) 530-1194
FAX (510) 530-1194

A Wound That Won’t Heal

Wounded Knee Community Church

This has created a challenging and invigorating clash of cultural perspectives, heart deep relationships, hard experiences and hopeful potentialization. Sustainability education has everything to do with learning how to learn on every level of our being.

In a global climate of world crisis due to changing weather caused by environmental devastation, contributing now to the sea level rises, food crop challenges, all the expected natural breaking down that has been seen coming by natural law practitioners since the beginning of the industrial age…we now actively ponder the wisdom of corporate markets, Dow averages and other economic justifications for those who must amass wealth to feel successful in life. Sustainability education has much more to do with realignment within the balance of our human nature than anything else possibly could.

When we mix the earth with our hands and pray the breath of our love into the intentions we mix into the clay-rich soil, sweating in the sun, getting drenched in the rain, we can begin the dance of social change, we can begin the dance of do unto others as we would have for ourselves. We can begin to respect each other by using the ancient protocol of human behavior ie; thinking only good thoughts about ourselves and each other. We human beings call this RESPECT. It is the goal of every human being; to achieve excellence in this area. This is known as having achieved the goal of being able to remain in a “good” or “god” realized condition. It is a very precious condition we call sacred.

There is no healthier classroom than the diversity of passionate humans clashing their belief in life and love together with generating energy for a new way of global cultural recovery. A return to natural law spirituality in action, as a global community does not preclude any one religious actions over another on any level. Promotion of natural, safe, comfortable earth and air, prana (life-force) and life-giving homes can be built simply and safely by anyone, any age and any size. Many people in wheelchairs or those with thinking disorders find peace and calm while working on cob walls. Children are the most useful for many onsite jobs.

A healthy, happy Cob house building site has food, music, laughter and many hands working to get an average size home up within a few months. In just a summer, with the right size team, a whole house can be completed. A house, that when properly built and maintained, will remain resistant to gale force winds, fire, severe storms, intense heat or cold, for up to 1,000 years. In our minds, learning how to grow our own food, how to support the return of fully food producing, naturally occurring environments so cost effective that a family cottage industry and a well maintained garden are all one needs to survive. This means freedom to choose an art, live beyond the boundaries of imposed stress and blossom once again into a race of divinely inspire beings.

We crave a global culture similar to those in the past whose natural village existences included profound numbers of seasonal festivals, ceremonies of lavish detail and cultivation of much joy in communities working together in communion with life and love.  Most of us know this is possible, and crave it deeply, but have on some level given up hope of ever having.

Because many of us simply don’t want to see another human being too cold, too hungry or uncomfortable in ways others are not subjected to because of birth location, we feel the time is right to promote peace on earth through natural village development.

To us, this is the highest form of delivering love to each other.

Please join us. Please consider donating to this cause.

Pictured above:

This is a 15 hour ceremony festival honoring the Earth as our Mother, the embodiment of natural peace. She is also known as the Queen of our forests. In this ceremony they are honoring the Sun as our father and creator and initiator of our soul’s spiritual journey through the sun, moon and stars. This journey leads to the peace within ourselves as divine beings who live in heaven, in the garden of our Mother, this earth. Her son is known as the Christos, which is the embodiment of all conscious human efforts toward enlightenment. These ceremonies are held in the village of Mapia in the Amazon Basin of Brazil. This photo was taken in the year 2000. To know love, is to know the light. To know the light is to know only good, as darkness cannot enter therein.

Wounded Knee Community Church: The place where wakes and funerals occur.

Our Sustainability building camps are held every summer on village construction sites of hosts who have expressed a welcome to visiting students and other natural idealists. Students and visitors will be expected to be fully prepared to camp with minimum supports beyond cooperative meals and sanitary conditions. Please notify our team and use this site to help you prepare for the experience.

Spiritual sustenance is to have a perspective so gentle and warm, so literally filled with the energy of love, that it feeds your heart, which nourishes your spirit. This is sustaining the soul with love. The souls energy shrinks without love, it becomes separated from love, and, due to this pain, it develops a fear of love and so begins to push love away. Finding fault with others hurts the heart because to love is to support warmth, gentleness and reasons to smile. To be spiritually competent, we must learn how to sustain our ability to hold love steadily in our heart so that it can radiate to others all the time. This, is to be in a condition called sacred, or holy. This divine love is clearly our primary human nourishment. Any energy less than this needs to be purified, or cleaned until it feels like love.

The sustenance of love is what causes children to grow. Without it, we have those who hurt others with their criticisms because pain is all they have known, and they have been told this is love. They have been taught to help improve the other, so this must be love. We cannot improve another. We can only improve ourselves. We are born into a condition of perfect love, love, is whole within us at birth and the humans around us are needed to support this love and the existence of it’s body, while allowing the mind to learn and grow freely, unhindered by stress or tension. When we receive a reflection from another that we are less than earning the immediate smile of their love, a human becomes confused or hurt regardless of age or gender, unless they are already clear in themselves that love is all they are, and the other must need support to return to smiling love. This is to help sustain the heart of the one you love.

Today our world culture imprisons and tortures the wounded hearts who need love to heal this condition. One day, a more compassionate humanity will emerge, and we will support the tender hearts of each other, our humanity. We will treat each human being with respect, by supporting them with a sustainable lifestyle from the beginning. Village and neighborhood communities do offer this lifestyle, if the humans who are in the community know how to offer pure love to each other in doses large enough to sustain peace within this community. If the humans present, understand how to sustain love, which causes everyone to inherently comprehend all the rest of the aspects of sustainability, then our global humanity could indeed rediscover love as the inner fire of itSelf…

Shanti.Salam.Shalom.Paz.Peace.Paix

]]> http://www.natural-villages.org/sustainability/feed/ 1 http://www.natural-villages.org/leola-one-feather/ http://www.natural-villages.org/leola-one-feather/#comments Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:12:00 +0000 admin http://www.natural-villages.org/?p=1140

Leola One Feather and Grandson, Onalsala

This house project is on hold until the family gains more stability or a qualified building crew steps forward to pick up where we were forced to leave off.

Anna Mae is my loving two year old grand-daughter. She was born with Down Syndrome. I have witnessed many miracles in my life of now half a century. This miracle occurred for Anna Mae and happened because I really believe in the Creator. Our Lakota word for Creator is Wakan Tanka. I believe that Wakan Tanka is with me all the time, and because I believe this way, I give in this way, all my thoughts and feelings to Creator. So in this same way, my little family has now grown to a big family. I am thankful every day and count my blessings, because everyone is doing good and I know one day soon, I can stand and make a circle and see all my smiling and laughing family. Eight children and fourteen grandchildren and forever increasing forward on and on earth…Leola One Feather

November 15 2005

Just One Stitch

When Anna Mae was born at Pine Ridge Indian Hospital we were crowded around her Mom, comforting her. We were massaging her legs and back, trying to rub away her anxiety and pain.

My nieces, Dene Black Elk and Davidica Little Spotted Horse were helping my daughter, Oyeptehesanwin, do her breathing. She was so young, only sixteen.

It wasn’t working, something was wrong. I was so glad Davidica found what was wrong. Her blood pressure was dropping. The doctor on call came into the room and checked Oye’s abdomen for positioning of the baby. He told us she would need a c-section. We were all aghast. My daughter was then asking for help. She had worked so hard to have a normal delivery and now I had to sign papers for a serious surgery.

I knew my daughter was strong. She walked at least 20 miles a week, she stayed on her diet, no soft drinks or foods condusive to gestational diabetes.

So away they took her to surgery, all cloaked in blue uniforms, I thought I was in a trance. Ten minutes passed and I heard the cry of Anna Mae. A beautiful girl. I went to stand by the window to look at a miracle once again. She rolled herself into a ball, and rolled back and forth just enjoying her new arrival. Little did we know that there would be problems. The first we discovered was an umbilical cord only 12 inches long. This meant that normal delivery would have pulled Oye’s womb inside out.

Two days rest after the arrival of Anna Mae and I returned to the hospital to see Oyeptehasnawin and Anna Mae. My daughter was sleeping and poor Anna Mae had on UV light shades the nurses had put on for her jaundice.

I went to stand by her, thinking of the effective herbal tea we could be giving her instead of this light, when I noticed she was quivering, I touched her leg, but she wasn’t cold. My heart started to beat…somethings wrong with baby. I called the nurse, Elaine, one of many wonderful women who have come to our reservation giving more of themselves than most folks do at Christmas. Elaines face and persona make you want to bask in her warmth. Elaine came quickly, seeing the seizures I witnessed. The lab people came for blood samples and within an hour she was being prepared to be transferred to Rapid City Regional Hospital.

The IHS (Indian Health Services) doctors had just realized Anna Mae has Down Syndrome along with a hole in her heart, and her lung. The doctors warned us she would have to be operated on, and she really only needs one stitch. ..

It was the beginning of my begging prayers. And then, I knew the mercy of my creator.

I would wake in the middle of the night, and go outside, no matter how cold and pray that Anna Mae would heal. We live in an old trailer house that is so cold sometimes, you can’t possibly walk barefoot or else you get coldness and cramping in the arch. I would come in from the prayer time, and check on my beautiful, happy grand daughter and cover her up. I made her some fully beaded blue moccasins with little leggings attached. The leggings wrapped around her little brown legs and were tied with long buckskin strings.

Children kick covers and get sick, so this kept her feet warm, and when she would awake she will see the small intricate patterns on her moccasins. I believe because I made moccasins for all my children and grandchildren, they will develop an eye for art. Besides that, moccasins are warm and soft and comfortable.

When my grandmothers made me new moccasins I felt like I could glide like the deer and leap about here and there. There is magic in moccasins, and everyone on earth should own a pair (Anna Mae had four pair of beaded moccasins in just her first year, today she is working on her seventh pair).

Just this year (2005), the State of South Dakota took Anna Mae from her Mom and charged her with medical neglect. The Oglala Souix Tribe has laws over this jurisdiction of Lakota children, enrolled members of the tribe. But, the State took her, and put her in foster care. We got her back, two days later, and I arrived at the thought; when State and Federal Agencies are in collusion with Indian Health Services, our children don’t have a chance.

Our only alternative is to stick to spiritual guidance, and call in our Holy Medicine Men and seek intervention. I called Richard Moves Camp and asked for prayers for Anna Mae. The State workers found Anna Mae with me, and wanted to take her, but I wouldn’t allow it because I prayed with every amount of energy her heart would heal and surgery would no longer be necessary.

So the State Social Workers took us to the Rainbow House in Omaha Nebraska and left us. We had no travel money or food, (When was the last time you were forced to travel with no food money?) I had only the baby’s bag. The next morning a hospital shuttle took us to the Children’s Methodist Hospital to prepare for surgery. I began to feel tears well up into my eyes, threatening to spill out involuntarily. I thought of the 500 years our people have been butchered and used as cadavers and experiments for the advancement of science and mankind. I personally have known other Moms whose babies disappeared into medical facilities suspiciously, never to return. And then, I thought, I will run out of here with her. I had two doctors and a calling card, and fourteen diapers and milk in a baby bag and I could get water on the way. I knew I couldn’t let them take her and hurt her, even though they said they would only take one stitch.

I prayed, and remembered my sons Stanley and Noah and how they sun danced and pierced their chests for Anna Mae, so she would heal. Then, a great calm came over me. I felt a breeze next to my face.

The whole while Anna Mae clung to my neck, her little chest pressed against mine. I wanted her heart to beat and be strong. I felt it then, that her heart was fine. Such a tiny little brave hearted warrior woman she is. The surgeon entered the room and asked me if I was Anna Mae’s grandmother. I said “yes”. She said “you don’t want Anna Mae to have this surgery?” I said “No”.

The words rang clear when she said next “Anna Mae’s hole in her heart is closed”. The tears spilled from my eyes again, but this time from happiness.

So I believe creator really hears my prayers and knows how much I love my children and grandchildren. One day they will be grandparents and they will have their moments of prayer for all sick people.

Anna Mae is learning to walk and talk. One day she will speak the Lakota language fluently and we will have good conversations. For now, she sings hand game melodies and we gamble.