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Dreaming the Council Ways: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge

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Visionary Mohawk medicine woman, Ohky Simine Forest's first book is a comprehensive and poetic reporting of long misunderstood ways of the Red Lodge of indigenous peoples. Had Europeans come to this continent as gracious guests, these are mysteries of the matriarchal Mohawk society that could have been shared with them. Herself an initiate in Mohawk, Mayan and Mongolian shamanism, Forest reveals the spiritual matrix which these cultures share and embeds it in a contemporary, real world political urgency. Synthesizing these core spiritual beliefs and practices, Forest offers compelling evidence that the view from the Red Lodge is what the world requires for individual and collective restoration to well being. The Red Lodge ways also provide, in the Medicine Wheel, an earth-derived map to self-governance that modern people are questing for in many guises. She teaches that the Medicine Wheel equips us to relate to planet and self in ways that are nearly inseparable, self-supporting and without which no sane system for enduring societal governance can arise. How do we build, nurture and sustain community? The matriarchs of the Mohawk have been doing it since antiquity and through perils most of us will never face. Forest, a Mohawk matriarch with a vision lives among the Maya people with this community building governance backed by the spiritual backbone of shamanism. Forest has little patience with hit and run shamanic wannabes and the extraction of "techniques" from their cultural matrix which leads, she observes, to further soul and societal illness. In this book she reveals with surprising candor, depth, and her characteristic humor, the world into which the shaman walks with expanding perception and deepening experience. It's no cake walk and Forest's book is unflinching in its descriptions of the challenges and dangers of this work. For instance, trotting out a Power Animal "technique" or forming a relationship with the incorrect Power Animal can have debilitating effects on personal energy and health. It is a sacred relationship born of the waters of the Red Lodge, she cautions, not a one size fits all concept that can be extracted safely from its matrix and doled out casually in workshops. Forest both describes and elucidates the interwoven meanings of the Medicine Wheel, dream body work, lucid dreaming. power animal allies, earth burial ceremony, vision questing, journeying in the nine Mayan underworlds and the thirteen Mayan upperworlds as well as giving a comprehensive recounting of native prophecies and their considerable energetic, economic and political significance for our modern times. This is a text to which those who study or practice shamanic work will refer again and again.

This book is one of the most serious, dense, and challenging of its kind in a genre saturated with slim, superficial volumes. The wisdom is clearly ancient and rich, and is carefully measured out for the reader. The teachings are not easily absorbed (by this North American, at least), but are excellent if you are looking for a deeper, truer understanding of shamanic traditions. Highly recommended.

Dreaming The Council Ways is a beautiful, complex work of synthesis and rebirth. Author Ohky Simine Forest weaves together spiritual training disciplines and practices from several cultures, including Mohawk, Mayan, Mongolian, and others. An added feature is her beautiful fold-out full color art work on several points of teaching. These are truly lovely, deserving extra attention. Forest patiently and warmly encourages the reader to respectfully explore beginning from their own racial perspective(s) and not to expect quick fix New Age short cuts or other cultural appropriation practices to yield valid, lasting insight or growth. Material on matriarchal traditions will interest students of feminine perspectives. Forest is not a comfortable read. That is not her way or her goal. She opens and hopes for a deeper spiritual connection with the reader, sharing information on dreaming, medicine wheel practices, interpreting power animal guides, and vision quests. She seeks the larger view, the convergence of spiritual paths. She challenges and teaches, reflecting the responsibility to heal back to each individual (where it belongs). As with all worthwhile experiences, more will be gained from giving more. That also applies to reading and understanding her book. Dreaming the Council Ways is accessible to nonNative readers, but it will yield more to the better, more thoughtful effort to understand with respect.

I really loved this book, being half Iroquios and Cherokee, I love find what information I can on their beliefs and ways.