PULL TOGETHER NOW (PTN) collaborations help us get to know each other and pull together for the common good across the Homelands we belong to and share. We accept our sacred responsibility to honor and share Life-affirming ways of thriving together in sacred balance with all of Creation.
We emphasize what we are for, not what we are against. We are for slowing down, facing reality, and engaging in action with compassion for the mutual well-being of humankind and Mother Earth. We must address our common challenges together, and always ask:
Are we being good ancestors?
Are we putting peace, the well-being of children, families, communities, and the rest of Nature before all else?
What does Mother Earth need from us now to help her heal herself?
PTN gatherings and transboundary collaborations:
PTN is in the process of starting The Ancestors’ Relay:
Good Ancestors pulling together for the world we know is possible and want to hand off to our children!Ensure the well-being of everyone’s children:
Love them. Listen to them. Learn from them. Help them become “Good Ancestors”.
Deepen their relationship with the water and land they belong to. Show them how to be respectful of all Life, to be humble and kind. Gift them the timeless knowledge of how to be resilient and self-sufficient, and able to help others. Help them understand how all forms of Life are interdependent, that we need each other, and that they are the future’s ancestors.Grow Life-affirming relationships with each other and Mother Earth’s other communities of Life, seen and unseen.
Safeguard and respect Earth’s sacred Natural Commons: HomeWater, Soil, Skies and Atmosphere, Real Food, and the natural elements that support all Life on Earth. Preserve, apply, and pass on the timeless knowledge of how to thrive in harmony with Nature.Protect, heal, and fairly share Earth’s sacred HomeWater.
Earth’s HomeWater includes all forms of water from the oceans to the mountain tops, the ice, aquifers, springs, headwaters, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans from which all Life flows.There is no way to overstate today’s global HomeWater crisis. Every dilemma we face, every opportunity and dream for a better world, begins with the health and availability of our sacred HomeWater. It is up to the human community to respect, protect, help heal, and fairly share all Water so that all Creation flourishes, forever.
Grow, gather, protect, and share Nature’s Real Food. Get to know one another by enjoying and sharing our culinary traditions.
Face reality about the mess we’re in.
Choose just and Life-affirming transformations that address the domination, dehumanization, and greed driving perpetual war, social and economic crises, and the mindless, brutal ravaging of Earth’s life support system. Insist on full disclosure and transparency of the whole Life-cycle processes that create our stuff, our energy transitions, how technology affects the whole planet and our Real Food Webs.Be mindful to avoid unintended consequences from the “green solutions” that could further harm humans, other species, our HomeWater, and Landscapes.
Engage in action with compassion to help heal our world.
Below are some of PTN’s past activities:
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Ecological approaches to health on all scales
PULL TOGETHER NOW is honored to be collaborating with Dr. Susan Prescott and her team at the inVIVO planetary health network and the NOVA Institute.
The 2021 Project Earth Rise conference was held virtually on Dec. 1-7. Elders Be’sha opened the event with an update from the People in the North. She explained what is happening to the land, the animals because of the Tar Sands mining and the warming climate, and how we can work better together to stop destruction everywhere. Be’sha closed with a prayer for the conference and all people around the world helping to heal Mother Earth.
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Rise! Stand up for our children, Nature, and our future.
Elder Francois Paulette contributed his message about how Tar Sands mining is destroying peoples’ ways of life in the North and the rivers and lakes of the North’s vast ecosystem. In reality, this destruction threatens the whole planet. Threats seen and unseen, known and unknown.
“My ultimate responsibility is to protect Mother Earth!”, Elder Francois Paulette
Banned for decades, releasing oilsands tailings water is now on the horizon. There is growing consensus that the polluted waters should be released into the rivers. We can not allow that to happen. Rise! Stand for the protection of sacred water and lands threatened by this act of ecocide!
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Connect the dots: There is No Net Zero!
KATIE SINGER, aspires to Herman Daly’s principles: Don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish; and don’t waste faster than it can absorb.
She writes about the energy, extractions, water use and toxic waste involved in manufacturing, operating and discarding the Internet, solar PVs, industrial wind and EVs; and she reports on ways to reduce the technosphere’s ecological harms. Her books include
An Electronic Silent Spring, The Garden of Fertility, Honoring Our Cycles and The Wholeness of a Broken Heart (a novel). She aims to complete Mapping Our Technosphere to Reduce Harms to Nature, soon.Katie’s collection of work explains how sustainability measurements (including the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals) typically exclude the extractions and emissions that occur during the manufacturing and discard cycle. She proposes requiring “Cradle-to-7th generation” analysis of industrially-produced goods, including “renewable” power systems. Katie has also introduced her campaign to encourage citizen-researchers to study and share the supply chain of at least one substance in their smartphone.
Her work is available at these websites:
https://katiesinger.substack.
www.ourwebofinconvenienttruths.com/
and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.For speaking engagements with Katie Singer, go to Contact at her website.
Please contribute to keep Katie Singer’s work going! -
United Religions Initiative
PULL TOGETHER NOW is an independent multi-region cooperation circle within the United Religions Initiative (URI) the world’s largest grassroots interfaith network. People all over the world are pulling together, taking care of peace and place, making friends, reaching out to solve the issues we share.
There are over 1400 URI groups active in at least 111 countries. Thousands of people from different cultures, faiths, and traditions are working side-by-side for peace and harmony with each other and Mother Earth. URI member groups are categorized into eight regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Multiregion, North America, and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. URI is served by a wonderful team working around the world. It is a non-governmental organization (NGO) with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and has long-standing partnerships with several other UN agencies.
Moving from Domination to Reverence
PULL TOGETHER NOW co-hosts webinars with Steven Newcomb to unmask this history as it relates to the roots of crises we face today.
Steve Newcomb, co-founder of the Indigenous Law Institute, and his daughter, Shawna Blue Star Newcomb, examine the history of the world’s Original Free Peoples and nations and the impact of centuries of colonization flowing from the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Their work challenges us to be open to examining the deep layers of consciousness that support our everyday language, understanding, and involvement with legal institutions, governments, transnational corporations, finance, and religions.
“Working on climate change without working on Paradigm Change would be a grave mistake. We need a mental and behavioral shift away from the prevailing paradigm of domination, dehumanization, and greed, the symptoms of which are everywhere on Planet Earth, our Mother.”
Steven Newcomb at the 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions.
PULL TOGETHER NOW has hosted screenings of DAKOTA 38 and is grateful to the late Jim Miller for his dream of reconciling, uniting, and making peace with everyone. The name Dakota means to walk in peace and harmony with every living thing.
PTN Directors Be’sha Blondin and Juan Rojas spoke at the 2019 Open Government Summit in Ottawa.
As lead co-chair of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the Government of Canada hosted the 6th Global Summit in Ottawa, Canada from May 29-31st, 2019.
The Summit brought together the 79 member countries and 20 local governments of OGP, participants from regional governments, civil society groups, multilateral organizations, academia, and beyond. The goal of these Open Government Summits is to share knowledge and together create solutions for more open and transparent governments around the globe. Elder Be’sha Blondin and Juan Rojas enjoyed sharing news from their regions with others from across the Western Hemisphere.
Simon Fraser University helped PTN coordinate the travel arrangements for Be’sha and Juan.
2019
PULL TOGETHER NOW co-sponsored an intercultural exchange, February-March 2019, between representatives of the Dene Sahtu People from Turtle Island (North America), the Nahuat Pipil People from Anahuac (Central America), and the Aymara, Quechua, and Mapuche Peoples from Tiwantinsuyu (South America).
Elder Be’sha Blondin and Juan Nelson Rojas traveled to Bolivia, Chile, and Peru to visit Indigenous communities and attend events with traditional knowledge holders relevant to exchanging ways to continue our way of being as Indigenous Peoples and safeguarding Mother Earth and Grandmother-Mother Water. The groups listened to each other’s experiences in the quest for freedom and self-determination, reclaiming our land, and exchanged plans for the return to our ancient way of living in an everlasting state of harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth.
Pull Together Now (PTN) leaders and friends traveled from the USA, El Salvador, and Northwest Territories, to attend the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto. We presented many programs and conducted ceremony. Thousands of international delegates attended from over 50 faith traditions, all committed to a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.
This was the Indigenous Peoples’ message to the Parliament of the World’s Religions:
“In these prophetic times, where human beings are pushing the Earth Mother’s life support systems to the brink, it is imperative to do whatever is possible to elevate human consciousness. We must heal the separation from self, from other and Mother Earth. This separation is the root cause for all the human dysfunctions that are destroying Mother Earth and ourselves.
All life is equal and interdependent in the Great Creation. Our fate is intertwined; what affects one affects all. We and our planet need healing from the trauma brought on by ongoing and chronic patterns of domination and greed. We invite you to walk with us on the sacred Path, in honor of the first principle of our Original Nations: “Respect the Earth as our Mother and have a Sacred Regard for All Living Things.”
The PTN Intercontinental Indigenous Delegation represented many Original Free Nations of Turtle Island at the 2015 Parliament.
Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.
2015 PARLIAMENT OF THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS
In 2015, PULL TOGETHER NOW collaborated to form the Intercontinental Indigenous Delegation representing many of the Original Free Nations from Turtle Island at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City. This gathering, which included 8,500 people from 80 nations representing 50 faith traditions, marked the first time Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere hosted people from the world’s faith traditions to their ancestral lands. This delegation was funded by several donors including the American Indian Institute, and private donors, logistics were a collaborative effort with the local Salt Lake PWR working group, Arnold Thomas, Sue Lauren Hartmann, and Ted Bancroft. Our group helped take care of the sacred fire, presented many programs, and engaged in dialogues to share diverse Indigenous ways of understanding how to thrive in harmony with one another and all of Nature. This was the Intercontinental Indigenous Delegation’s message to the world:
We, the Human Beings, have been given the Original Instructions on how to live in harmony with the Natural Law. To reclaim the heart of our humanity we must change our values and shift our consciousness and embrace The Web of Life, the sacred interconnectedness of Creator’s gifts - all Life on Earth. All systems and actions are interdependent; the world’s diverse Indigenous Peoples have lived in harmony and in stewardship of our Mother Earth for millennia, in our traditional ways Life and Spirit are not separate. We understand that Creator is present in every aspect of the world that surrounds us; we are bound by the Laws of Nature. It is all about sharing and responsibility; we understand that we must give thanks, enjoy life, and take only what we need. We acknowledge the responsibility for today’s decisions on behalf of the 7th generation coming; only then will we ourselves have peace. Through the power of good minds, humanity has the power to modify what is happening in this world before it is too late.
The experience at the Parliament resulted in us deepening our relationships and expanding our PTN network to collaborate on the programs that have emerged since then. Below are photos of some of the PTN delegation. Unfortunately, we don’t have photos of each person who joined us there.
