Lessons from our Elders
Permaculture Mentoring, Community Inspiration, Direct Application

We are very excited to be launching our new interactive membership website this month, EarthActionMentor.org. Although this website is new, the vision and process behind Earth Action Mentor goes back thousands of years, to a time when an intact mentoring culture was still present in the lives of all of our ancestors. We are working to restore some of these best practices along with the lessons that have come since then to the present moment, where we are all being called to take action to repair some of the damage that has been done on this earth. This website has come after years of visioning on how one group of people may be able to make a large impact on the Earth for the health and survival of our future generations.

During my youth I had the privilege to be mentored by those who were very intentional in the way they went about their lives, work and vision. All of the strands that have been woven by mentors in the large tapestry of my life are being pulled together in one place — EarthActionMentor.org. At first glance, it may appear to be just a website, but there is so much more to it.

One of these mentors of mine was a man named Gilbert Walking Bull, a Lakota raised by elders in his community of Wanblee, South Dakota. He was raised outside of missionary schools, in a refugee camp during the time where the Native Peoples were bringing their ceremony underground in order to preserve their culture. They lived and breathed what now is termed permaculture, Care of the Earth, Care of the People and Returning the Surplus. There was no other way of living.

When I was in my early teens, Gilbert took me under his wing and adopted me as his daughter, as he did not have any children of his own and I had no father. He taught me the ways of his people — to search deep within myself and create the life I want to live and create an Earth I wanted to see. He mentored me, not by sitting me down and teaching me material from a book or from research, but through story, song, dance, adventure, ceremony, crafts, the way his elders mentored him. I recall one such experience when I was taking part in a ceremony with Gilbert when I first met him. At that time in my life I was living very close to the Earth, most often my clothes were dirty or muddy from sloshing around looking for animals and adventuring in the wilderness. During this ceremony, at one point I must have put my face on the ground, because when I looked up, Gilbert glanced over to me and gave me a name of Maka Wi’, or Earth Woman, with a slight chuckle. I took this as a compliment until later I thought he may have been referring to the earth that was covering my face at the time. The name Earth Woman stuck and I searched for meaning. I took on the experience of what the Earth was feeling, what the Earth was experiencing. I embodied the name, which led me to making a commitment to taking on the care of the Earth for the rest of my life. At that point, I transitioned from a passive observer to an active participant in the regeneration of Earth’s well being. This lesson could have never been taught to me in a classroom or from a book. This lesson came from within, which may have been intentional on Gilbert’s part, although it may have been just who he was, passing on the lessons from his culture of naming.

Another mentor of mine, Naturalist Jon Young, explains this act of cultural mentoring as follows: “What is Cultural Mentoring? Whereas mentoring can be a conscious choice by an individual facilitating another's learning journey, cultural mentoring is learning as a side-effect or unintended consequence of exposure to culture. The inherent, powerful effects of culture are often unnoticed or even invisible to most. Thus we also refer to cultural mentoring as "the invisible school."

I remember when I first entered into one of these “invisible schools,” the Wilderness Awareness School where I spent my high school years. I had the background of sitting in a classroom, thinking of going home and riding my horse or swimming in the river and blocking out whoever it was that was in the front of the class talking. Once I entered into a cultural mentoring environment, it felt fun to learn. I found myself up late at night researching the plants we found out in nature and journaling about all that I had learned. Learning became life, not something you go and do or achieve, but something you experience with all of your senses engaged and something that lasts a lifetime.

This is how we are designing EarthActionMentor.org — as an invisible school, where learning is fun and engaging. By joining EarthActionMentor.org, you will have access to mentors who are trained in cultural mentoring, action learning and project-based learning. These mentors, along with all of the excellent content, and engagement with other members of the EarthActionMentor community, will allow you to have a solid foundation in permaculture and have the ability to take action in your own community with the support of an entire village!

By DonigaMarkegard