Spending time with the Zagas is like stepping barefoot onto soft fertile earth and suddenly realizing you’re not on earth, you are earth. It’s dissolving into the loving supportive arms of a mother, of The Mother. It’s suddenly noticing the beauty of nuance – the song of crickets, the sound of wind rustling tree leaves, the reflection of sunlight on water – it’s presence and it’s not possible to be thinking and present at the same time and presence is freedom.
Indigenous People’s Day is an inspiration for philanthropists who most of the time feel like they’re under a ton a bricks. Every philanthropist I know wades in muddy waters between the despair of watching initiatives seed, grow and fail and the joy of real accomplishment. We keep going, doing what we can for the world’s most disenfranchised and impoverished people because we’re helpless to the impetus to do for others what we frankly often keep too busy to do for ourselves. We do it because Indigenous peoples play a crucial role in the survival of humanities collective heritage. Without them, the most precious part of ourselves, what the Teyuna call our segwa, our sacred seeds, disappear too.
Supporting and sharing segwa is what makes humanity special. Cultivating the heart of who we truly are, in right relationship with Earth and with each other is the reason we exist and the only hope humanity has for survival.
“It was like a month long meditation class jammed into 7 days. I had intense dreams and emotionality – that’s unusual for me. I felt a lot of purification and healing.”