The days at the Initiatives of Change Caux Forums over the last two years have started out on the terrace, with that amazing view over Lake Geneva and the pre-Alps, and a First Nations “welcome the day” smoke ceremony around a smouldering fire. And I’ve seen slightly puzzled white people like myself coming to treasure starting the day by connecting with the “greater-than-us”, the soil beneath our feet, the air we all breathe, the nature that can go on living very well without us, probably a lot better, but without which we seriously endanger our own existence. And the existence of the generations to come.
Lewis Cardinal, who led these times, has transformed the way I see and “read” the Great Hall in Caux where the meetings are mostly held. In 2023, at the close of the summer Forum, with the chairs and the participants in a big circle, he explained that for his peoples the circle is a sacred space, with no hierarchy, where all are included. Then he drew our attention to the circles in the painting on the walls, and woven into the carpet. Then to the four pillars, and again the diamond lozenges in the walls and carpet between the circles. He told us that for his people, there are four parts that make up us humans (not just our trio of “mind, body, spirit”): the mind and intellect, the body and the physical, the emotions and relationships, and the spirit and ceremony. “Ceremony is the way we can remember to remember,” says Robin Wall Kimmerer. He showed us the greenery, the leaves, painted around the dome of the ceiling – we’re within mother nature. And then a hand holding a pipe – a peace-pipe, he suggested. Finally, facing each other painted on the two chimneys, a male and a female figure, the male and the female in harmony.
When Cardinal left Caux, he gave me a braid of sweetgrass, the hair of Skywoman, the flowing hair of Mother Earth. And a few weeks later, I bought and read Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A life-changing book, subtitled “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants”. Science can give us knowing, she says, “but caring comes from someplace else”. “To become Indigenous is to grow the circle of healing to include all of Creation,” she continues, asking “But if people do not feel ‘Indigenous’, can they nevertheless enter into deep reciprocity that renews the world? Is this something that can be learned?”
I’m on a steep learning-curve. I want to join Kimmerer and so many more Indigenous people in “the fierce defence of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.” Where am I “Indigenous”? How can I become “more Indigenous?”, I ask myself.
When Kim Beazley came to Caux in 1953, in a time of quiet, he received a conviction to care for the restoration of the Aboriginal people of Australia. A lifetime calling that brought some major national changes. Maoris from New Zealand, Sami from the north of Scandinavia… type any of these peoples into the For A New World search engine, and see how many hits you get! For “Maori”, 433 results, starting with the Maori Queen and her visit to Caux in 1997, with the wife of the then Prime Minister of New Zealand…
On a sunny day in the summer of 1934, Frank Buchman (the initiator of Moral Re-Armament and Initiatives of Change) was made a blood-brother of the Stoney Nation in western Alberta, Canada. An Oxford Group house party was taking place in the Banff Springs Hotel, and the two-hour ceremony was held in the grounds of the hotel. Chief Walking Buffalo gave Buchman the name A-Wo-Zan-Zan-Tonga, Great Light out of Darkness.
“Charles D. Ciough photographed portions, including Frank's being dressed in deerskin jacket, chaps, beaded gloves, pouch, belt and eagle feather headdress, and the photos are on display in the Buchman House. The costume also is on display in the Buchman House (in Allentown). Twenty-four years later the chief and Frank met again during his (Buchman’s) eightieth birthday celebrations at Mackinac, when the chief added a pair of beaded moccasins and set in train an association which was to take him (the Chief) around the world.”
See also: https://www.foranewworld.org/material/pictures/frank-buchman-being-made-blood-brother-stoney-indians-banff-1934 and https://www.foranewworld.org/material/films/chief-walking-buffalo-world-journey.
You can read more about Buchman’s campaign in Canada and the USA in that year in Garth Lean’s biography of Buchman (see pages 201-202). But I confess that I’d be fascinated to find out more about how a white Lutheran minister became a friend of what were then called the Stoney Indians, one of the First Nations of Canada.
From today, running way back to 1934, there’s a golden thread running through the difficult-to-define network of this movement, of respect for, inclusion of and learning from the wisdom of the First Nations.
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