The past is not a burden; it is a scaffold which brought us to this day. We are free to be who we are—to create our own life out of our past and out of the present. We are our ancestors. When we can heal ourselves, we also heal our ancestors, our grandmothers, our grandfathers and our children. When we heal ourselves, we heal Mother Earth. Yup'ik mother, grandmother, great grandmother, wife, aunt, sister,friend, tribal elder. Born on a fishing boat and raised in Tununak, Alaska, Rita attended a Montessori school in Seattle for four years. She raised two children and worked at many hospitals delivering babies as a doctor’s aide in Bethel and Nome. She has traveled and taught basket weaving, song, dance and cultural issue classes world-wide, earning money for Native American Colleges. Rita has participated in many healing conferences where her teachings of the “Talking Circle” were recorded and published. Rita is currently employed with South Central Foundation as a tribal doctor using plant and energy medicine.

Buddhi Maya Lama, who is also known as Aama Bombo (Mother Shaman), was born in the remote village of Melong in the Eastern part of the Bagmati Zone, Nepal, 65 years ago. Her father was a renowned shaman in the Nepalese Tamang tradition. Aama became a shaman in spite of the Tamang tradition that women are not supposed to practice shamanism. In the early days, her father restricted her in every way from practicing shamanism. However, when her father died at the age of eighty, his spirits and other gods and spirits started visiting and teaching her to be a shaman, against the prevailing cultural values of Tamang society.

Today, Aama has achieved great renown in Nepal. She treats around 100 patients every morning at her house in Boudhnath, near Kathmandu. Patients come to visit her from around the country, as well as from India and Tibet. She does not discriminate against those she heals, treating the poorest of the poor as well as the Royal Family of Nepal with equal dedication and respect.

Jyoti Ma is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher. She has cultivated projects that demonstrate ways of life that honor the Earth and all Peoples. As the Grandmother Vision Keeper of the Center for Sacred Studies, she co-founded Kayumari with spiritual communities both in America and Europe. Other projects she has helped to convene are the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and the Unity Concert. She is also the founder of The Fountain. Its mission is to restore an economic model that is based on reciprocity and collaboration guided by Nature and the Sacred. She serves as a delegate of the Mother Earth Delegation of United Indigenous Nations. And it is through this current work in collaboration with the Fountain, that a global Sacred Territories Initiative is evolving to protect Mother Earth’s sacred sites and Her Original Peoples. Jyoti has devoted her life to bringing unity to the planet by facilitating the development of alliances between individuals who are the guardians of indigenous culture and traditional medicine ways. Through this work, collaborative relationships with organizations that are focused on economic, social and environmental solutions have developed, creatively addressing the global challenges of our times.