Prayer For the Ancestors ~ Those Gone Before.

The original poem below was an attempt to honour the deep connection to that place within us, which resonates with Ancestral awareness, in/through nature. The forms (directions) are qualities of nature and connection (we are all air, fire, water, earth) and we stand in the centre of all when we connect to those deep spaces ~ personally, I feel that we are enclosed within the sacred, as understood by the Wyandot, as the “life authority”. We are below and above ~ we stand in the centre and all ,passes through our awareness in the now.

This is not a poem/prayer/address about connecting with a particular “person” per se ~ although it may be used as such, what this is meant to be therefore, is a “prayer” or “remembrance” of those deeper places within the self and our connection to the Ancestral continuum. This is a request to them, to show themselves to us. This is an acknowledgement, that we began (as eggs in the wombs of all of our Mothers and within theirs and their grandmothers’ back through time and so on)… and also into the future, as that which has not yet been born (“Whose faces are coming from beneath the ground” The Peacemaker). This prayer/or addresses spiritual life in the anti~clockwise (Iroquoian) directional force ~ as positive, natural and beautiful.

I wanted to create something that was free of boundaries; from the world of nature, to our day to day world, and from and including all of the Wandat, with no acknowledgement of national constructs. Something spritual rather than pragmatic, or political.

The sound recording is my attempt to vocalise that sacred space using discordant or flat tones.. a suggestion of the deeper interior places we may invoke through ceremony, to the pulse of the heart. It is also a way to read and hear at the same time, which has helped me to begin to learn how to speak the language. It is a non traditional form, using discordant tones. What was important o me was to follow inner direction in this regard.

Major Thanks are due to Dr. Craig Kopris and Richard Zane Smith for your beautiful and substantial contributions t the development of this piece. Vocals Richard Zane Smith ~ Composition ©Tammaro