The Tree and the Well Institute for Deep Cultural Studies

True Strength: Starhawk Responds to Biden Stepping Aside True strength is giving up power for the greater good.

Get tickets to The Aunties -

An invitation to join the Cultural Wellness Center at the MIA on February 21st, 2020.
The Conclave is a day of gathering for retreat, reflection, and deep connection. As such, participants will spend time looking into ourselves, getting to know each other, and discussing of the leadership needed for a more equitable and inclusive Minnesota. Participants will work through circle dialogue to:

surface and celebrate multiple cultural ways of knowing that address internal transformation and external experiences;
increase awareness of cultural knowledge as a hidden and sometimes lost resource which can be applied to solving problems and living in harmony with one's self and others; and
create a Cultural Self-study community to inform transformational leadership, while producing new cultural knowledge.

Everyone has culture. Cultural continuity is often silently adhered to through identity, ethnicity, nationality, and race. At the Conclave, Cultural Wellness engaged scholars of European Heritage will lead an exploration of rethinking cultural diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially what it means to confront whiteness.

Cultural Conclave: From Race to Culture Moving from Race to Culture Examining the Racialization of Whiteness as Cultural Amnesia The Cultural Wellness field of study: Cultural Amnesia as the forced getting of one’s history wrong and the partial suppression of an unwanted past. What will happen at the Cultural Conclave? The Conclave is a...

Hello Tree and the Well community, Elder Kaia Svien Asked me to forward this onto community. We are being invited in to this action at the Capital on Feb 19th.

Interfaith Action at the Capitol: Protect Sacred Water- Stop Line 3
Wednesday, February 19th @ 10:30 am Governor Walz’s Office- State Capitol, St. Paul
227 Bodies of Sacred Water
That’s the number of water crossings Enbridge would cut through with the proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. We as people of faith are being called to take a stand against this threat to water, land, Indigenous treaty rights and culture and our children’s future.
The Walz administration is poised to issue permits for 227 water crossings for this pipeline against the clear evidence of oil spill risk, broken treaties, and climate catastrophe. Join us in spiritually grounded action in solidarity with Indigenous water protectors at Governor Walz’s office to send our moral message: Protect Sacred Water!
Please consider signing up to represent a waterway with your prayer or blessing.
Earth-based EuroAmericans warmly welcomed!
Sign up- https://mnipl.org/line3action/
Questions? Contact [email protected].

https://mnipl.org/line3action/?fbclid=IwAR3Zh0WDYHBzFsqsglu9z-hT_xB9kYcSaCsqIw2cSm-Y4TImNnwpuFSSYOs

Line 3 Action - Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light Faith Action at the Capitol: Protect Sacred Water- Stop Line 3 Loading…

Winter greetings!

2020 Féile Bríd - From the depth of winter, we feed the flame of hope and justice!

Please join us for the 22nd Annual Imbolc Celebration.
Saturday, Feb 1, 2020 from 4:30PM-7:30PM
Anam Cara House #2
(formerly the beloved home of "One of a Kind" Daycare)
3612 Bloomington Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407

Imbolc is a Celtic holy day celebrating the first day of Spring. A time of purification, initiation and new beginnings. A powerful time to set personal intentions and to come together in community for ritual and song!

Over the years we have gathered together to honor Brighid, the Irish goddess and saint, and her Four Fires: creative inspiration, home and hospitality, healing, and justice.

Come one, come all, Come old friends and new!

We will have crafts, feasting and a fire ritual outdoors. Please dress for the weather. Donations will be collected for food and supplies.

We are still looking for help co-creating the event and volunteers will be needed on day of the gathering. Do you have something you’d like to offer?

Please call Cara at 612-462-3812 or respond to this email [email protected] with questions. Rsvp is most helpful for food prep.

Féile Bríd Keepers of the Flame

hello friends! Elder Kaia forwarded this onto me. It has received rave reviews. Maybe I will see you there!

The Juniper Tree The Juniper Tree is loosely based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, and stars Björk in her first on-screen performance. The film premiered to glowing reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 and led Keene to further direct Heroine of Hell (1996) starring Catherine Keener and Bar...

A rare treat this Fall to see Sami elder and artist Mari Boine...... tickets go on sale Friday for Mari Boine Trio, Thursday October 3 at the Ceder Cultural Center.
Mari Boine.
Musician. Songwriter. Singer. A genre-bending trailblazer with a taste for jazz, folk, rock, and world. An artist whose music is inspired by and infused with her Sámi roots. A woman who knows who she is, where she’s come from and what she stands for. A music icon who has inspired indigenous artists the world over.
Mari Boine. She’s got soul.
“It’s completely irrelevant what you call her music. Her music that blends seamlessly into the rhythms and sound picture of our times. She could have sung her songs a thousand years ago or a thousand years into the future and still retained the same depth and resonance. In other words, it is like Mari Boine’s voice reveals just the smallest sliver of eternity,” said one critic about her album Gávcci Jahkejuogo (Eight Seasons).
When Mari Boine made her music debut in the early 1980’s, she was an angry young woman. And she had every right to be. Christianity, repression of the Sámi language and the oppressive culture of “the big men down south” – these all weighed heavily on the mind of a girl raised in her native language but discouraged from performing traditional yoik. After all, it was “devil’s work.”
“The first music I ever heard was from my parents, singing hymns. We had no records or television in our home. My strict religious parents never allowed that. We did own a radio, but it was restricted to listening to the news, weather forecasts and Sunday church service,” says Mari. “But of course, when our parents were out or at night, we discovered music from all over the world on those radio channels. In fact, I first heard jazz on that radio.”
Outside the family home, Mari absorbed the music of nature, like the wind “singing” and in spring – birdsong.
Performing first in Norwegian and English, Mari eventually switched to her native tongue Sámi – “a good language to sing in, so rich for the voice,” she said. Mari channeled her personal and political frustration into the 1989 breakthrough album Gula Gula, which propelled her into popular culture both at home and internationally and gave her a platform to advocate for Sámi.
“It’s not that I was always a political activist,” she says. “And I certainly never profess to represent Sámi. It’s just that music gave me a profile and gives me a platform, so I use it. By telling my own personal story as a Sámi, I feel I’m sharing a piece of my people’s story. After all, my songs describe the pain of oppression and the struggle to reclaim self-respect, but I also sing about the joy of growing up within a culture that has such a close bond with nature.”
In 1993, Mari’s album Goaskinviella (Eagle Brother) was awarded the Norwegian equivalent to a Grammy. A decade later, Mari was recognized with the Nordic Council’s Music Prize. This special award acknowledged her artistic achievements, but also her ability to connect with a global audience while still maintaining her integrity as a Sámi.
Mari Boine has a new album. See the Woman. And as to be expected from Mari Boine, this new album is a twist.
“For this project, I really wanted to do something different. So, I reached back into my past, to the kind of music I listened to when I was younger. Much of the music I’ve been making up until now has a shamanistic beat at its core. My new project is full of keyboards and synthesizers and to me, it’s more experimental. These sounds create space for me to tell more complex stories.”
“It’s been a real challenge to see whether my own vocal style (which is heavily influenced by traditional Sami styles) can work in a language that isn’t my mother tongue. I think I’ve pulled it off. It’s an album I’m very proud of.”