Welcome to PULL TOGETHER NOW (PTN), a global family that accepts our sacred responsibility to care for peace, children, elders, and Mother Earth, before all else. We are striving to be the ancestors Earth’s children need us to be ─ re-membering, renewing, and protecting our sacred connection and relationship with one another and our Mother, Earth. Through deep listening, sharing, and inquiry from interdependent vantage points, Good Ancestors are transcending imaginary barriers and honoring our sacred responsibility to secure the health and well-being of all people, Water, Land, and all of Creation. Everything is possible when we pull together and serve with love → see, hear, lift up, and defend what is beautiful, healthy, and good in our world, and deal with what isn’t → together. Good Ancestors leave no one, no place, out or behind.

The Path We Walk from here is determined by how we answer one fundamental question:
Is where we are headed and what we are doing serving peace and the well-being of our children and their children’s children, communities, sacred Water, Land, Air, and generations of other living beings?

PTN connects Good Ancestors through an ancient tradition with no end:
The Ancestors’ Relay→ getting back to caring for peace, children, elders, and Mother Earth before all else!
We’re gathering in Ancestors’ Circles to share what holds us together around the world:
→ healthy Water, Land, Seeds, real Food, and Medicine from Earth, family, and neighbors;
→ ancient and new stories, wisdom, ceremonies, songs-music-the arts, imagination, and humor;
→ ancient and new land-based living knowledge and know-how to be in kinship with each other and Water and Land.
We are exchanging inner-generational perspectives, experiences, and ideas from diverse vantage points that expand worldviews, seed trust, and grow relationships needed to enable all living beings to survive and thrive, and help each other prepare for and adapt to a rapidly changing planet.

The Ancestors’ Message Stick carries stories, seeds, gifts, and information of critical importance to all people. It represents humankind’s living memory with wisdom, experience, keen observation, and spiritual insights gained over long periods of time. We are filled with the power of survivors, ancestors who made our lives possible and whose love, sacrifice, imagination, and dreams we carry. Good Ancestors look back and forward across generations for Life-affirming guidance, inclusive of all Peoples without preference for any cultures, nationalities, spiritual traditions, status, age groups, or place on Earth. We honor the protocols of reciprocal relationship rooted in Natural Law, not the hierarchical law of man that perpetuates domination and destruction of Life.

Everything is possible when we pull together and serve with love, face-to-face and place-to-place. Good Ancestors are ignoring the propaganda of doom, division, and hate, supporting authentic, multi-generational alternatives to the mess we’re in. We are moving forward with our difficult and beautiful stories, past and present, to free ourselves from the systems of domination: belligerent predatory cowards vying for supremacy over everyone, every place ─ every expression of Life by any means.

Some Values and Protocols from Good Ancestors:
Wherever you go, go with heart.
Remember who you are, that you were born complete.
Freely share your unique gifts for the benefit of all Creation.
Live with Love ─ Respect ─ Honesty ─ Courage ─ Humility ─ Wisdom ─ Truth.
Express gratitude. Give more than you take from each other and Mother Earth.
Slow down. Listen with your heart. Lead a life that helps.
Hold the long-view. Be the change you wish to see in this world. Enjoy Life.
Never take hope away from your people.
Good Ancestors leave no one, no place, out or behind.

“What are we waiting for:
It’s so simple. We are one People!
We need to learn to hear each other,
put aside me, myself, and I
then put our heads together to heal the world!”
─ Elder Be’sha Blondin, Dene Nation, Northwest Territories

What’s your story? How are you? Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you headed? What do you cherish most? What kind of world do you want to live in and hand off to The Future? How are you doing to make a positive difference and being a Good Ancestor where you live!

→ Carry one, give some! Please sign The Ancestors’ Promise and acquire message sticks for yourself and friends. Thank you for striving to be Good Ancestors!

Good Ancestors →
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we nurture them.

The Ancestors’ Promise→

Good Ancestors →
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we nurture them.

Welcome to PULL TOGETHER NOW (PTN), a global family that accepts our sacred responsibility to care for peace, children, elders, and Mother Earth, before all else. We are striving to be the ancestors Earth’s children need us to be ─ re-membering, renewing, and protecting our sacred connection and relationship with one another and our Mother, Earth. Through deep listening, sharing, and inquiry from interdependent vantage points, Good Ancestors are helping secure the health and well-being of all people, Water, Land, and all of Creation. Everything is possible when we pull together and serve with love and action with compassion leaving no one, no place, out or behind.

The Path We Walk begins inside each of us and is illuminated by our Ancestors’ timeless knowledge and instructions:

Live with Love ─ Respect ─ Honesty ─ Courage ─ Humility ─ Wisdom ─ Truth.
∙ Be of one mind. Lead by example. Give more than you take from each other and Mother Earth.
∙ Be the change you wish to see in this world. Enjoy Life.
∙ Never take hope away from people. Leave no one, no place, out or behind.
∙ Take action only if it is right and good for all children and their children’s children, for communities, and Water, Land, Air, and generations of other living beings.
∙ The well-being of families, communities, and nations and Mother Earth is more important than the accumulation of wealth, status, or power.
∙ Respect all people’s needs and right to self-determination and freedom, to be safe and secure with access to healthy Water, Land, Seeds, Earth’s Food and Medicines, and free to enjoy ancestral traditions.
∙ Be compassionate and understand there are extremely challenging circumstances and diverse traditions for which the struggle is greater for some than others.

Participate in ceremony and pray in your way to express love, respect, and gratitude for the gifts of Life.

Understand that people are but one strand in the Web of Life that is Earth.
∙ All Life is sacred, connected, and interdependent.
∙ Whatever we do to Mother Earth, we do to ourselves and each other.
∙ Honor sacred Earth and the Life she nourishes…all inhabitants, the oceans, rivers, skies, deserts, forests, and fields.
∙ Respect other living beings. Understand and meet their needs to thrive ─ now, and forever.
∙ Strive to live in rhythm with Life’s seasonal cycles of regeneration, of which humankind is a small part.

Honor the generations of ancestors who made your existence possible, who’s love, sacrifice, imagination, and dreams you carry.
∙ Look back and forward across generations for Life-affirming guidance, inclusive of all Peoples without preference for any cultures, nationalities, spiritual traditions, status, age groups, or place on Earth.
∙ Respect, learn from, and defend people who live on the land in ways that care for us all.
∙ Respect, learn from, and cooperate with the Original Free Nations and Peoples and the Knowledge-holders, Elders, and those with special skills and knowledge of the sacred teachings of Water and Land, and Earth’s real Food and Medicines.
∙ Honor all treaties. Seek free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), and where necessary, permission for the access and use of Traditional Knowledge prior to accessing or using any Original Peoples’ Traditional Knowledge, including that in the public domain.

Nurture children with love to be strong, healthy, kind, and able to flourish with the community and Land to which they belong.
∙ Help them remember who they are, that they were born complete ─ here now to freely share their unique gifts for the benefit of all Creation. And remind them, that on the path they walk, to be respectful and compassionate, leaving no one, no place, out or behind.
∙ Teach them that Earth is our Mother ─ that we belong to her ─ and what befalls Mother Earth befalls all of her children.

Love and care for yourselves properly.
∙ Gather, hunt, fish, grow, enjoy, and share Earth’s real food. Cast out drugs and false entertainment that confuses your mind and weakens your will. Cast out selfishness, materialism, and consumerism to lead a meaningful life with dignity and purpose.
∙ If you weaken begin again. For the Good Ancestors on The Path We Walk love you and help you to be true to yourself, to remember and reclaim who you are, and walk in peace and harmony with every living being.

I promise, to the best of my ability, to honor this Message Stick and share these instructions with all I meet on The Path We Walk. I understand that we do not inherit Earth, but respect, care for, and defend her for future generations of Life.

As a Living Ancestor, I pass on The Ancestors’ Message Stick to others, that as inhabitants of Earth, we may never forget our sacred connection and relationship with Mother Earth and the Life she nourishes…all living inhabitants, and the oceans, rivers, skies, deserts, forests, and fields.

Signed:__________________________________________ Date:__________________

You may or may not remember us, but we remember you.

You may or may not know us, but we know you.

We are your Ancestors.

We are now woven into the Circle of Life.

We embrace the stars and beyond, the earth, its water, its fire, its air.

We embrace the unborn, the children, the ancestors of the future.

We are your Ancestors. We are here. We are listening. We are watching.

We know you. We feel you. We are always with you.

You are each the sum of all your ancestors who have gone before you.

Whoever you are, listen. Your ancestors are within you.

Listen to each other. Each of you is the sum of ancestors before you.

Seeing, imagining, and knowing is as diverse as the universe itself because opposites are necessary to keep the world turning and maintain its balance.

Together you can create balance.

We are here. You are not alone.

Whatever the struggle, we are here. We are within you. Listen.

You are more than you think. You know more than you think.

Listen to what is within…instincts, orientations, rituals born of knowledge and traditions long forgotten.

Listen to each other.

Each of you was born complete. Each of you has a right to be here.

It is time to relearn how to be here. But I have no role model, you say. I cannot see the ancestors.

People are not your only role models. Look around you. Teachers are everywhere.

They are among the trees, the plants, the animals, the birds, the sea creatures, the insects.

We have forgotten how to live. But they have not. In a world older than we know, they live complete.

Like the land, a person must practice being the one whom one is meant in all one’s humanity to be.

What is asked of you is to ground yourself in your own life and let its truths emerge.

You are born complete. You are enough.

The Ancestors’ Message:
“We, Your Ancestors, Are with You!” →

Guides to Help Heal Ourselves, Others, and Mother Earth:

“We need to reconnect our Spirit to Mother Earth and embrace the ancient knowledge we hold of understanding our relationship to our environment. We are given a window of opportunity to forge harmony and peace in these difficult times. Only if humanity were to open their hearts and allow for the real spiritual connection to flow.”
─ Elder Francois Paulette, Smith’s Landing Dene Nation

"We are giving our lives defending the sacredness and health of Grandmother/Mother Water."
─ The network of Original Free Peoples of the Lowlands of Mesoamerica

“We are all of Water and all united by Water.”
─ Grandmother Josephine Manadmin

“If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die.
Our future and the state of the oceans are one.”
─ Sylvia Earle

“Instead of taking Water for granted, we have to say, 'Every policy that we adopt, every practice, everything we do has to ask the question: What's the impact on Water?' And, if the impact on Water is not good, you stop. You go back to the drawing boards.”
─ Maude Barlow

“Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
─ Cree Prophecy

“You cannot protect what you don’t understand.”
─ Elder Rosalinda Ramirez-Yrizarry

“Values change for survival.”
─ Elders Akio Matsumura and Oren Lyons

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” ─ Galatians 5:14

"A spiritual beginning must be the basis of any initiative." ― President Mikhail Gorbachev

“Peace is the most important goal in the world.
If we don’t have peace and nuclear bombs start to fall,
what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic
or capitalists or Chinese or Russian or American?
Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart.”
─ Nikita Khrushchev

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular ─ but one must take it simply because it is right.”
─ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact
on the world around you. What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
─ Jane Goodall

“You cannot see the future with tears in your eyes.”
─ Wilma Mankiller

“Whether you light the fire, carry the fire, or are the fire, it all matters.”
─ Jim Miller, Dakota 38+2 Memorial Ride

“…that is everyone’s calling, to lead a life that helps.”
─ Barry Lopez

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. To be a part of the land community, we must cooperate with both our human and non-human neighbors.”
─ Aldo Leopold

“Eventually, all things merge into one and a river runs through it.”
─ Norman Maclean

”What are we waiting for? It’s so simple!
We are one People! We know what we need to do!
We need to learn how to hear each other, put aside me, myself, and I,
and then put our heads together and heal the world!”
─ Elder Be’sha Blondin, Sahtu Dene Nation

Thank you for joining The Path We Walk