39th Annual Native American
Elders and Youth Gathering

July 28th – 30th, 2023


Post-Elders and Youth Gathering Workshops

Monday, July 31st 2023

Sunray’s 39th Annual Native American Elders and Youth Gathering featuring Workshops online and onsite.

Dr. Orest Pelechaty

Earth Healing with Biodynamics: The Alchemy of Ecology

9:00-11:00am EDT

at the Sunray Peace Village and on Zoom

Sunray Peace Village welcomes back Dr. Orest Pelechaty to offer another workshop on the Biodynamic Approach to eco-shamanic Earth Healing. Biodynamics has parallels to both Indigenous and Tibetan Buddhist systems. It places the human in right relationship to Heaven and Earth, providing simple, green tools to empower people wherever they dwell to help heal the Earth, even on a small scale.

This workshop will further explore the beautiful and practical spiritual science of classical Biodynamics, as gifted to humanity by the mystic visionary Rudoph Steiner. For new and returning students Dr. O. will review the core Biodynamic preparations, and discuss exciting developments and alternatives. Then a focus on the central role of rebuilding ‘perfect soil’. Also a sharing of personal ‘miracles’ from this work with the alchemy of Nature. As always questions will be welcomed and a gift of precious BioDynamic “medicine” will be provided to each attendee.

He will approach this subject from spiritual, mystical, and practical perspectives, while grounding the practice in the material realm.

This will include lecture, contemplation and the gift of a Biodynamic healing preparation for in-person participants to bring home to spread on auspicious dates at their convenience. Dr. O. feels this workshop will help all participants to better care for Mother Earth and her elegant ecological systems.

The workshop will take place in person at the Sunray Peace Village in Lincoln, Vermont and will also be live streamed for those joining online. Registrants will receive a recording of the workshop.

Come take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn how you can help yourself and others to engage safely and effectively in healing the Earth at your home, and at the Peace Village and in your favorite places in nature.

$16.00

Jose Rodriguez
Yulia Klimento

Seeding the Future ~ a Sound Healing Experience

11:30am-1:00pm EDT

at the Sunray Peace Village and on Zoom

This workshop will take you into a Permaculture experience through the lenses of an ecologist and a holistic teacher, guiding you through both visionary and earthly realms. During a guided meditation and sound bath, we will use the mind as a tool to engage our human potential to imagine and bring forth rooted, radical solutions to the present challenges of our times. Going inwards to design the collective future that we want to be part of and raise the next generations in, we will listen to our own intuitive wisdom to piece together a mosaic of solutions. We will close in a circle where we will use the vibrations of our voices and sacred instruments to bring this vision to fruition. Bridging these two realms into our present reality, we will have an option to finish with a sacred planting ceremony of fruit and nut trees, along with our intentions and visions for the future. 

From the vast northern lands of Canada and Russia, Yulia Klimento brings her deep love and reverence for the natural world to the forefront of all her work. Trained as a conservation ecologist, she has lived and worked across various continents, exploring the ins and outs of native biodiversity and local ecosystems. It has become her greatest passion to help conserve the natural environment we call home and encourage others to unearth the same perspective. From researching microplastic pollution in freshwater aquatic ecosystems in the St. Lawrence River of Canada, to building massive permaculture gardens and food forests at grassroots community levels to achieve localized regenerative food production, to building relations – food systems – classes with Kahnawà:ke as a means of working towards cultural revitalization and food sovereignty, to workshopping with humans of all ages – from small kiddos to our wise elders – to band together and reimagine how we can move forward into a future of restoration in an era of climate change. This is the heart and soul of Nation Regeneration, a permaculture consultancy co-founded by Yulia. She brings great purpose in remembering our place within the web of life and works through lenses of creativity, imagination, healing work, permaculture, whole systems theory, and deep ecology to facilitate this.

Jose Rodriguez is a Navy veteran that is passionate about finding ways of exploring the inner-self by following his heart and gaining different skills and traits along the way. He is a permaculture consultant and the Co-founder of Nation Regeneration, an organization that focuses on creating a network of small landowners in different communities – installing food forest systems that will be self-sufficient in providing food, fuel, and medicine to the people, while also emphasizing on education to bring cultural shifts to a larger community. He became an agroforestry technician on a Kilauea culinary campus, where he installed a mixed tropical agroforestry system, interplanting hundreds of trees and vegetables with the purpose of restoring the natural habitat as well as creating a food forest. He now works in various themes around rebuilding and regeneration, in conservation as a forest technician for carbon sequestration, a massage therapist  bringing healing touch to the ones in need, and as a local carpenter. As the world is changing fast, he feels the importance of working together with various generations, teaching and learning from one another. Guiding ourselves to understand the importance of carrying hard and soft skills, how to listen to our inner guidance, face our fears to unlock doors of opportunity, removing self imposed limits to our spirit, and remembering the art of listening to and communicating with Mother Nature. 

$16.00

Grandfather Mike Bastine

Continuing to Learn from the Changes on Mother Earth for Best Actions Going Forward

1:15-2:15pm EDT

Online and Onsite at the Sunray Peace Village via Zoom

Grandfather Mike is a member of the Algonquin nation, a member of the Bear Clan, a healer, and former student of famous Tuscarora medicine man Wallace “Mad Bear” Anderson and Tuscarora healer, Ted Williams. He lives in South Wales, New York. He is co-author of the book: Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People.

In this workshop, Grandfather Mike will invite participants to consider what we can do to nurture ourselves and each other to address these ongoing Earth changes. From his deep wisdom, he will facilitate this coming together and encourage us to speak communally from our hearts. He will address natural ways that can supplement Western Medical approaches with health challenges and other challenges facing us, such as the extreme weather, the increase in mass shootings, and the War in Ukraine. He will share his insight as to how we can help each other as we are all in this together. Each one of us has talents and gifts to join with others to care and meet these challenges.

He is known widely for his talks at universities and gatherings where he shares the diversity of culture to convey to all humans how it is time to remember our “Original Instructions” as to how to live together in harmony on Mother Earth. He is carrying on teachings that were handed down from Mad Bear Anderson who wanted to unify and prepare all humans for developing a higher consciousness to do so.

Grandfather Mike will offer questions for participants to discuss to help us all reflect on what we have learned individually and collectively during these times. He will help us harvest what we are learning from this time of change, and how we may act to benefit ourselves and others going forward while we still have time to do so.

$16.00

Grandmother Hears Crow

Welcoming the Other

2:00-4:00pm EDT

Online and Onsite at the Sunray Peace Village via Zoom

Sunray welcomes back GM Hears Crow at the request of those who have found this workshop so valuable and wished to repeat it. Each time, one engages one finds richer and deeper teachings.

Welcoming the Other: “This powerful and highly interactive workshop inspires an appreciation and engagement of ‘the Other.’

In its core format, after laying foundational instruction – and a story or two! – participants engage in an exercise designed to evoke a strong, empathic response to being “outside,” ultimately invoking motivation to action. Dialogue and collaboration are used throughout; full advantage is made of the power of small groups and immersive creativity.”

Jim Brulē, Founder of the Transformational Storytelling School

Grandmother Hears Crow, a woman of the Eastern Woodlands lives her life in the tradition of the Nanhigganêuck, the people known today as the Narragansett. For over thirty years, she has been a Storyteller primarily of Longhouse Tales and other indigenous cultures. “Stories are bridges that can link diverse cultures, transform our spirits, and open our hearts to one another.  When our cultures, spirits, and hearts are open, the Earth Mother will be healed.” 

Grandmother Hears Crow is also an educator, published poet, and workshop leader. She is on the Faculty of the Transformational Storytelling School, the Vermont State Liason to the National Storytelling Network, and a Youth Mentor through a forward-looking program, Youth Storytellers Standing Together. 

Email at storyteller@eenantowash.org 

Website HTTP://storyteller.eenantowash.org

The attendees should be equipped with a few sheets of paper and preferably a pencil, but a pen will do. Grandmother recommends participants bring water or some other beverage to sustain hydration.This an interactive workshop but not physically active. Grandmother has given permission for the recording of the workshop to be shared with participants afterwards but requests that they not share it with anyone who did not participate live in the workshop.

$16.00

All Workshops are available online. Register to receive Participation Links

Receive recordings for re-watch or if unable to attend in real time (exception Grandmother Hears Crow’s workshop — see above). Recordings will be sent by email to all who register. They will be sent once review and editing process is completed.