Prayer of Thanks & Grief for the Indigenous Soul of Life

It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States, a holiday when feelings tend to run deep, no matter what our experience or perceptions of it's meaning.

In these days, many First Nations people as well as some of us who come from immigrant bloodlines (I’m including the founding colonists as immigrants), are expressing this is a holiday that is bittersweet- as it holds both an opportunity for gratitude, and a gateway to deep grief for all that has been lost in the traumas and travesties of colonization.

Here in our Alaska sanctuary, we are holding sacred space and healing prayer throughout the weekend, leaving room for both gratitude and grief... and it is from that place that I write this transmission, and heartfelt prayer to you today.

No matter where you are in the world, if you feel the call you're invited to take a deep breath and feel with me, for what I am sharing here will hold a resonance for any colonized land that exists today....

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I lived in Colorado, near the four corners area for nearly ten years in deep communion with that sacred land. It was there that the indigenous soul truly began to emerge for me for their ancient songs, ceremonies, their ways of embodied communion still resound through the soils, the mountains, and the rivers.

And this is true anywhere you live that has been inhabited by ancient Original Peoples… when you listen in deep communion with the land, you will hear them… you will hear their hearts of lived communion with Mother Earth as well as inevitably be shown to the great travesties they endured during the horrific processes of colonization.

It is only then when this happened for me, that I truly began to understand the depth of the what has been lost in the intentional genocide of the peoples who live for and with Mother Earth. For She has also been deeply affected on the innermost as well as outermost levels by the pain of their loss and trauma.

I want to be very clear that I am not speaking for any First Nations cultures… I would never do that- for they know their histories and the pain and traumas their relatives have endured and speak so well to that themselves.

I can only describe my own inner experience as a soul of having suffered many lifetimes of atrocities at the hands of the colonization machine. And when I feel the pain that the beloved Original Peoples of this land have endured, the pain, grief, and mourning it brings in me is acute, it is real, and it is cathartic.

There is a goodness in this movement- of allowing it all to be felt, as when we truly begin to awaken to the Great Mother it is natural we experience how any deep soul travesty is a loss for al of life.

And allowing ourselves to acutely feel the pain other souls have endured (with deep presence and appropriate energetic boundaries, of course), is an ever deeper gateway into the awakening of Her alchemical Heart of compassion within us.

So this is a simple prayer of thanksgiving and grief, pouring from my heart and soul for the Ancient Ones of previous generations and for all indigenous sisters and brothers alive today through whom their bloodlines run strong.

You are welcome to join me if it resonates with you...

Prayer of Thanks and Grief for the Indigenous Soul of Life…

Mother, my Great Mother of life may this prayer from my heart resound out through your mountains and your waters, be heard in the deepest recesses of your Earth and the farthest recesses of the Stars.

I give my thanks, My soul’s song And my heart’ s deep grief For the indigenous soul of life.

For the Ancient Ones who once inhabited this land in body, in breath, in being… those who were Your guardians in incarnation And now still stand strong behind the veils.

I join in grief and praise for those who suffered the most horrific travesties of colonization.

And for those souls of their bloodlines who are alive today, and stand at the threshold of unfathomable loss and gentle, yet fierce reclaiming of culture and honorable place in the Mother's natural tapestry of life, I stand with you in deep respect for what you embody and for the dismantling of our colonized human perceptions and lifestyles. I pray for the restoration of the wisdom of your cultures to show us the Ways Home into lived communion.

I am so grateful for the ceremonies you keep that make our Mother Earth’s heart beat and keep Her spirit alive.

I am so grateful that you have kept and still keep those most sacred of ceremonies safe from the eyes and ears of those who would co-opt and diminish their value and impact on Her Life.

My heart cries with yours In these days of re-membrance As the healing of all is pushing through.

And I pray in communion with the souls of those beloved sisters and brothers mothers and fathers, daughters and sons who many years past suffered the atrocities and died at the hands of the colonization machine....

May your souls once again run with the buffalo Fly with the eagles And howl with the wolves

And in your own soul’s sweet healing time May you walk this blessed Earth in the Ways of the Ancient Ones once again In the knowing you are One with all of Her life.

May your bodies, your precious hearts and your souls rest in peace and in the Mother’s embrace and be healed & restored Home to Her Womb of Life in this and every moment.

May the breath of indigenous life be restored and your song be sung throughout all of creation.

For this I pray with all of my heart, and my breath of life in this sacred gateway moment.

-Maleda