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The Earth Medicine Alliance, a new non-profit dedicated to educating people on how to mend their relationships with the natural world and its other-than-human inhabitants, will be hosting its first annual conference at the Universalist Center at 1187 Franklin St. in San Francisco on November 6^th. The day-long event will be followed on November 7th by a variety of outdoor ceremonies on public land in and around San Francisco, so people can find what “earth-honoring” might look like in practice. Online registration is now open for next month’s event.

Sound intriguing? Daniel Foor, the Executive Director of the EMA, describes the alliance as “an interfaith 501(c)3 non-profit that supports earth-honoring traditions and ways of life, especially as they help us to remember our relatedness with all of life and the natural world. This potential to collaborate around the common intent of mending our relations with the natural world is, for me, the heart of our work as an alliance.”

To find out more or register, check out their website at http://www.earthmedicine.org/conference. The alliance is also set to launch an interview project with oral history reports from local earth-honoring elders, which can also be accessed through their website.

A lovely Bay Area day in historic “Provo” Park. The Watershed Festival evoked deep love and deep concern for the environment. It delighted human and beast alike and brought out the bioregionalism in all of us.

Dear friends,

In the spirit of reminding you of our priority, the supporters of the ReinhabitoryInstitute,  to continue to build community in the Penn-York Valley so that we can undertake, together, more ambitious projects to benefit the citizens of the Penn-York Valley,  we are inviting you to an event on the holiday Monday October 11.

This holiday, widely known as Columbus Day, is being reevaluated for its context.

It has been suggested that it be known alternatively as Indigenous People’s Day.
Where should we in the Penn-York Valley stand on re-balancing or re-addressing this holiday?

With so much evidence that the continent had been found by other people’s from other continents earlier, and with the humbling evidence of the terrible effect the European invasion and occupation has had on indigenous peoples, we would like to propose a “first annual” event mullling over our shared legacy here in the Penn-York Valley,
once the mighty seat of hegemony over the Susquehanna watershed, for reasons of its geographical shape, where two rivers come together and head south, a center called Carantouan, a sort of Rome where all trails led.

Many people have said that we have not  adequately told and circulated the story of the people who inhabited the Valley in historical times, Queen Esther Montour’s band.
As an important part of our legacy, every school child should hear this story of the matrilineal line of the metis Montours, with details and evaluation being added in the upper grades.

The story has been somewhat distorted or at least veiled by histories, largely  written by white male historians in the aftermath of the Clinton-Sullivan campaign to drive the Montours and their band out of the Valley to make way for English settlers.  Even “our” historians disagree about what occurred at the time of the Wyoming Massacre, that occasioned General Washington to send Clinton and Sullivan to drive Queen Esther and Queen Catherine and their people.

Therefore, we invite you to circulate this invitation to the communities of members that your organization represent.
We will gather at the Unitarian Universalist Church (they have kindly rented the facility to us) in Sheshequin (the place of the rattles, the broad alluvial plain where Queen Esther’s people grew gourds and squashes for eating and making rattles) n Monday October 11 at 2pm until 4pm.

Our purpose in gathering is to tell the story of Queen Esther, of her distinguished Montour line, up to the point (and beyond if possible) of Sullivan’s destruction
of the village, buildings, orchards and crops just at harvest.  Each story has many points of view, and–in telling a story repeatedly–many fine points emerge that had been lost or obscured.

We are inviting–in addition to those whose organizations have a stake in having this story known and re-told–descendants of Queen Esther’s people who still live in the region as well as other members of the Delaware/Lenape who have some ancestral memories to contribute.

We will have light refreshments. We are renting a portapot for the day.  Contributions of baked goods and drinks (no alcohol please) are welcome of course.

We plan to begin promptly at 2pm with some ceremony marking the occasion of our honoring the ancestors of both the European, African, Asian and indigenous American
people who have brought us to this place to tell Queen Esther’s story.  The story will be retold by as many people who come to speak, both those invited and those who
simply show up with a piece of the story to tell.

Those of you who represent organizations with missions related to this event and with members who will be interested, please circulate this invitation to those members of your community.

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,

Destiny Kinal
Reinhabitory Institute

Each Sunday we present a short article to stimulate your thoughts.

The Black Madonna by Destiny Kinal

To many who have studied the more than 500 Black Madonna in Europe, the deity reminds us that devotion to The Mother did not disappear three to five thousand years ago with the appearances of the sky gods in the Middle East, but went underground.

The source of Destiny Kinal’s inspiration in her novel Burning Silk is the Black Madonna at the mouth of France’s Rhone River in The Camargue.

This Black Madonna stands in a crypt beneath a small church in Saintes Maries de la Mer. Nothing subterranean exists in this small church concerning the worship of the Black Madonna: the walls of the church are covered with primitive paintings from earlier centuries depicting life events in which people are rising from sick beds, escaping being trampled by horses, saved from drowning at sea. Each dated painting features a blue aura in the upper margin with the three women in a boat coming to rescue the devotee from harm… read the rest