We’re in graduation season, celebrating all the graduates’ joy and optimism in the future, amid a waning (we hope) pandemic. Today we’re talking about how families can reconnect, and find strength, power, and wellness together in Native American storytelling and other traditional cultural practices. We’re talking about how the ancestors help people find their true path forward, under their own North Star.
Singing ancient and timeless Bird Songs at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Dragonfly Gala (Carlos Puma Photo)
We’re looking forward to a 5 p.m. June 7, 2021, free online Zoom workshop with Renda Madrigal (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), “Your Own North Star,” offering fun and friendly family activities based on Indigenous storytelling and other traditions, from her new book, The Mindful Family Guidebook: Reconnect with Spirit, Nature, and the People You Love.
Sign up for the workshop HERE.
“My Dreams”
First, though, the individual journeys: Culture Bearer Kim Marcus (Serrano-Cahuilla) shared this 2018 poetry video by students of Noli Indian School on Soboba Reservation.
What are your dreams?
What would you like to tell the world about being a Native American?
Storytelling as Medicine
Mukat (Creator), sign from the “Road Sign Series” by Gerald Clarke Jr. in his recent Palm Springs Museum exhibit.
Throughout 2020, the Learning Center’s News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center and online workshops explored different ways of finding strength and resiliency, and a way forward, through Native American culture. Renda Madrigal’s teen daughters, Isabella and Sophia Madrigal (both Cahuilla-Chippewa), have offered online storytelling healing workshops and plays for us, through the new Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, named in honor of their late father, and Renda’s late husband, Luke Madrigal. These included Sophia Madrigal’s online play, “Wildflower, Indigenous Spirit,” and online workshops such as, “Story Medicine in the Time of the Pandemic.”
Building Your Family’s Own North Star
Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares a traditional cultural story in Serrano from his aunt Dorothy Ramon’s book, Wayta’ Yawa’ (Always Believe) at the Learning Center’s Native Voices Poetry Festival in February 2020. (Carlos Puma Photo)
The North Star is always that one star you can rely on in the sky, to help you find your way. In her new book, Renda Dionne Madrigal (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), a clinical psychologist, draws on Indigenous traditional stories and circle practice for communication, and offers both fun and profound activities on how to cultivate and grow authentic connections in your family.
Renda Dionne Madrigal, PhD, (Photo by Lori Brystan)
Renda Madrigal says: “I was inspired to write this book for my own family and the families I work with, so they could share medicines that help them calm, connect, and support each other in a way that helps all discover and realize their true path individually and collectively.”
We thank Liz McKellar of Parallax Press for this interview with Renda Dionne Madrigal, PhD, about her book The Mindful Family Guidebook: Reconnect with Spirit, Nature, and the People You Love:
Tell us about the impact and importance of creating a mindful family unit:
Renda Madrigal: “Joining together as a mindful family is a profound act; it’s one of the most important things you will do in your lifetime, and its reach is vast. It touches both the past and the future. We don’t exist separately from our ancestors. We come from a history that reaches far into the past. If we have children, we cast a line leading far into the future. The past and the future are connected, and whether this connection manifests in positive or negative ways is determined in the present. That’s why having a North Star to guide you is so important.
“The North Star shines with the luminosity of 2,500 suns. It has guided our ancestors in the Northern Hemisphere for centuries. We need something that is illuminating to find our way with our families. This North Star can’t be from a mass-produced mold. It has to be handmade, crafted from star dust originating in our own lineage. To craft this kind of North Star we need our intuition and our history. So much of who we are has been clouded over, obscured, forgotten. Mindfulness is a practice of remembering. It is a practice that can help us get in touch with that deep instinctual knowing that’s needed to create the life and family that will truly nourish and sustain us all.”
What are your favorite mindful family activities?
“Hands down, it’s gotta be storytelling. With that said, mindful family activities build on each other.
“Three pillars form the foundation: digging deep to find ancestral strength and connections which can be brought forward; weaving a circle of respect together; and cultivating shared joy.
“It’s exciting to teach families about the importance of the North Star through the profound wisdom embedded within a Paiute Indigenous story, and then witness them reaching into their past and discovering their own ancestral strengths, which they craft into stories to transmit to their children.
“This all happens in a story circle. In preparation for a story circle, families create a circle of respect through improvised games in which they build a respectful ensemble. For this activity, they also craft a talking stick and learn a North Star breathing practice. I really love the practices of cultivating joy, which bring out or expand the magic of the fun love that families share together. In one improvised activity, families create joy together through passing a ball around and sharing memories. In another mindfulness activity they practice sending kind wishes to one another. In an appreciative joy practice, they envision each other’s good fortune expanding. This is a crucial practice to cultivate in a society where the emphasis is on competition and one person’s gain is seen as another person’s loss. In a mindful family, success is shared and encouraged. All of these practices work together to create a family environment in which the individual and the group can thrive.”
What was the hardest part of the book to write?
“This book is really about a journey. One of the hardest parts of the book to write had to do with laying out the landscape of that journey — defining and weaving together weighty, profound concepts — in a way that families could understand and use. I built a North Star approach so families could craft their own North Star that was defined from them, within them, and also included the three foundational components of a mindful family journey.”
Your Chippewa identity influences the book in so many ways. What can we learn from Indigenous wellness practices?
“I don’t think my Chippewa identity can be separated from the book. The Mindful Family Guidebook is conceptualized from an Indigenous worldview and in many ways this Indigenous worldview is the reason for writing this book. Surprisingly, I have this passion for writing, yet what I love writing about is Indigenous fictional superhero women in adventure fantasy settings that involve time travel and bring forth an Indigenous narrative — ancient wisdom for how to live. There’s a freedom sometimes about what can be explored and expressed in fantasy that I don’t find as available within the limits of nonfiction. So, my first choice isn’t nonfiction writing about families, yet from the moment I began working in Native communities, I have focused on families and children. That is such a core part of what it means to be Native — and it’s what best serves the community. And within that connection there is a wisdom that children are gifts from the Creator; we need to treat them well, and that also means everyone has to be doing well. We live within a circle of connection that involves children, parents, and communities together. So, my work in Native communities demanded I work with families, not just children, and that led to this book.
Cahuilla basket, ink sketch by Carl Eytel, from The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (1908) by George Wharton James
“What can we learn from Indigenous practices? One is that our ancestors are within us, and they have strengths which are necessary to bring forward and pass along for our journey. We can and need to bring those strengths forward. A second learning has to do with the Spirit of Respect. In Chippewa the word is indinawaymainganug — respect for ourselves, each other, and the larger world. When Cahuilla People from Southern California weave a basket, the weave is so tight, the basket can hold water. In spite of this skilled craftsmanship, it isn’t about the final outcome of the basket that’s most essential. It’s about the thoughts being thought and words being said as that basket is shaped, so that it’s woven into the basket in a certain kind of spirit. That’s what matters. We need to weave a spirit — a spirit of respect — into our families and that takes place though the process of being together and through the worldview we hold. The worldview is the foundation for the basket.
“What can we learn from Indigenous wellness practices? We each have a purpose. We need to discover that, develop it, and figure out how to share it with the people we love. We need to be woven together to live our best life. The mindful family journey isn’t so different from our individual human journey. We need to find our purpose, develop our skills, and bring that to the world, all while we laugh and love and have gratitude for our time together. We become better from being together, it’s more than we could ever achieve alone.”
June 7, 2021, Online Workshop:
Your Own North Star
Register here for Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s online Zoom workshop with Renda Madrigal at 5 pm June 7, 2021, “Your Own North Star,” and a personalized link will be sent to you for the workshop.
About this Workshop: The North Star in ancient times always could be relied on to guide one’s path forward. This free family online Zoom workshop draws on Indigenous traditional stories and circle practice, offering both fun and profound activities aimed at helping you and your family tap into cultural wisdom and find a mindful path forward filled with purpose, connection, and shared joy.
Thank you!
Dragonfly art at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center.
When you subscribe, give us feedback, suggest ideas, or contribute to News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, it helps us serve you better. Please EMAIL. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, saves and shares Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and music and other traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook. Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor. May 26, 2021.