PULL TOGETHER NOW (PTN) is a global family of Good Ancestors who accept our sacred responsibility to care for peace, children, elders, and Mother Earth before all else. → We’re slowing down, returning home to our ancestral roots to re-member and renew our sacred connection and relationship with Water, Land, Sky, the cosmos, and one another ─ the community of Life to which we belong.

PTN’s collaborations help us braid our collective wisdom, creativity, and land-based knowledge into one indivisible understanding of being in rhythm with Life’s cycles of regeneration, of which we are a part. Good Ancestors are listeners, we illuminate and give voice to the beauty within and around us. We’re getting to know each other and growing community across and with the watersheds we love by sharing ancient and new stories, ceremonies, values, the arts, cultural traditions, living knowledges and know-how, and nutritious real-food from healthy land and neighbors close to home. We are thankful for our own ancestors who made our lives possible and whose love, wisdom, sacrifice, creativity, and dreams we carry.

Future generations will only know us by the stories, ceremonies, and tracks we leave behind. They are coming. Are we ready?

PTN is initiating:

The Ancestors’ Relay→ , an invitation to share and apply Life-affirming traditions, knowledges, and know-how that hold us together in rhythm with Earth’s cycles of Life. We are continuing traditions of communicating across distances with Message Sticks or bundles relaying messages, invitations, warnings, knowledge, and information of critical importance to individuals, families, communities, and nations.

The Ancestors’ Message Stick represents the colorful mosaic of Life from the 4-Directions. It is carried and gifted by people transcending cultural, social, economic, political, geographic, and other imaginary boundaries to serve the greater good. By people who respect one another’s needs, cultural traditions, and protocols of engagement. Carried by humble, empathetic, respectful, fun-loving people with a deep sense of what it is to be grounded in kinship with one another, with pure Water, healthy Land, and real-food from Nature. Generous, creative, capable people who know how to do stuff, who cooperate and work hard for the benefit of family and community, who’ve witnessed atrocities and remember and tell it like it was and is...who still believe every family, every child, every living being deserves to flourish in a peaceful, healthy, equitable world with enough.

Good Ancestors understand getting to know each other and relaying ways to flourish in kinship across the sacred watersheds, oceans, and deserts we love, is more important than accumulating individual wealth, status, or power. We are wise to the fear-based lies and propaganda intended to separate us from one another and Mother Earth. And we’ve had enough! People everywhere are contributing to a new/old world free of the centuries-long domination system driving perpetual war, genocide, ecocide, corruption, greed, depletion, and exploitation ─ the cartels of necropolitics hidden in plain sight. Strong in heart, mind, body, and spirit, we are pulling together with love, gratitude, humility, empathy, integrity, courage, generosity, creativity, common sense, and humor. Good Ancestors leave no one, no place, out or behind.

→ The way forward begins within, at home. What’s your story? Who are you? How are you? Where do you call home? Where are you headed? What kind of world do you want to live in and pass on to The Future? Please sign The Ancestors’ Promise and relay how you are making a positive difference where you are!

→ Carry one, give some! Please use The Ancestors’ Message Stick to amplify your work and to honor and unify the beautiful ancestors you know who are lifting people up in ways that ripple out to help us all.

The Ancestors’ Promise→

Good Ancestors accept our sacred responsibility to care for peace, children, elders, and Mother Earth before all else. We are sharing our Life-affirming traditions and knowledges for the harmonious, healthy, and equitable world we know is possible and The Future deserves to inherit from us. Our thoughts and actions are rooted in love, gratitude, humility, empathy, integrity, honesty, courage, common sense, creativity, and humor.

Good Ancestors strive to be the change we seek in this world. We hold the long-view. We listen, hear, see, experience, and share Life-affirming perspectives from diverse vantage points. We are getting to know each other, broadening our horizons, seeding trust, and growing mutually beneficial cooperation in ways that lift people up and ripple out to help us all. Good Ancestors pray together and engage in action with compassion leaving no one, no place, out or behind.

Good Ancestors respect all Peoples’ right to self-determination and freedom, to be safe and secure with access to pure water and real-food from bioculturally resilient landscapes and neighbors close to home. We are compassionate and understand there are extremely challenging circumstances and diverse traditions for which the struggle is greater for some than others.

Good Ancestors give back more than we take ─ from each other and Mother Earth.

Good Ancestors understand that we do not inherit Earth, but respect and defend her for future generations of Life. We teach children that Earth is our Mother ─ that we belong to her ─ and what befalls Mother Earth befalls all of her children.

Good Ancestors are humbled knowing that humans are but one strand in Mother Earth’s interconnected, interdependent, indivisible Web of Life. We are grateful for, respect, and protect Earth’s sacred Water, Land, Sky, and Nature’s foods and medicines. We seek to be in harmony with our kin ─ Mother Earth’s sacred communities of plants, forests, grasslands, fliers, walkers, crawlers, hoppers, runners, and swimmers, our human communities, and the cosmos ─ the material and spiritual root for our existence. Good Ancestors safeguard other creatures' needs, habitats, and migration routes, so they too may always flourish.

We are grateful for our ancestors who made our existence possible, who’s love, sacrifice, and dreams we carry. We are learning, preserving, and relaying ancient and new stories, sacred ceremonies, our values, music, the arts, cultural traditions, and land-based living knowledges that hold us together. We respect Knowledge-holders, Elders, and those with special skills and knowledge of the sacred teachings of the Land, Soil, Water, and Nature’s food and medicines. We seek to understand the true Nature of community ─ to be in rhythm with Life’s seasonal cycles of regeneration of which humankind is a part of.

Peace and the well-being of all Peoples and Mother Earth are more important than the accumulation of wealth, status, or power. Good Ancestors are uncovering the root of our shared challenges, helping end the centuries-old domination system driving perpetual war, genocide, ecocide, corruption, greed, depletion, exploitation ─ the cartels of necropolitics ─ known and unknown.

Good Ancestors strive to be and go forward ─ strong in heart and mind ─ physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We eat Creator’s real-foods, love and care for ourselves properly, and cast out drugs and false entertainment that confuses our minds and weakens our will. We cast out selfishness, materialism, and consumerism as we lead meaningful lives with dignity and serve others. If we weaken we begin again, for the Good Ancestors on The Path We Walk love us, help us to be true to ourselves, re-member and reclaim who we are, and walk in peace and harmony with every living being.

As a Living Ancestor now and to The Future, I promise, to the best of my ability, to be kind and live in kinship with all Life on Earth. I will carry and share The Ancestors’ Message Stick with those who like me are aspiring to be Good Ancestors by contributing to the harmonious, healthy, and equitable world we know is possible and The Future deserves to inherit from us.

Signed:_________________ Date:_____

You may or may not remember us, but we remember you.

You may or may not know us, but we know you.

We are your Ancestors.

We are now woven into the Circle of Life.

We embrace the stars and beyond, the earth, its water, its fire, its air.

We embrace the unborn, the children, the ancestors of the future.

We are your Ancestors. We are here. We are listening. We are watching.

We know you. We feel you. We are always with you.

You are each the sum of all your ancestors who have gone before you.

Whoever you are, listen. Your ancestors are within you.

Listen to each other. Each of you is the sum of ancestors before you.

Seeing, imagining, and knowing is as diverse as the universe itself because opposites are necessary to keep the world turning and maintain its balance.

Together you can create balance.

We are here. You are not alone.

Whatever the struggle, we are here. We are within you. Listen.

You are more than you think. You know more than you think.

Listen to what is within…instincts, orientations, rituals born of knowledge and traditions long forgotten.

Listen to each other.

Each of you was born complete. Each of you has a right to be here.

It is time to relearn how to be here. But I have no role model, you say. I cannot see the ancestors.

People are not your only role models. Look around you. Teachers are everywhere.

They are among the trees, the plants, the animals, the birds, the sea creatures, the insects.

We have forgotten how to live. But they have not. In a world older than we know, they live complete.

Like the land, a person must practice being the one whom one is meant in all one’s humanity to be.

What is asked of you is to ground yourself in your own life and let its truths emerge.

You are born complete. You are enough.

The Ancestors’ Message:
“We, Your Ancestors, Are with You!” →

Guides to Help Heal Ourselves, Others, and Mother Earth:

“We need to reconnect our Spirit to Mother Earth and embrace the ancient knowledge we hold of understanding our relationship to our environment. We are given a window of opportunity to forge harmony and peace in these difficult times. Only if humanity were to open their hearts and allow for the real spiritual connection to flow.”
─ Elder Francois Paulette, Smith’s Landing Dene Nation

"We are giving our lives defending the sacredness and health of Grandmother/Mother Water."
─ The network of Original Free Peoples of the Lowlands of Mesoamerica

“Instead of taking Water for granted, we have to say, 'Every policy that we adopt, every practice, everything we do has to ask the question: What's the impact on Water?' And, if the impact on Water is not good, you stop. You go back to the drawing boards.” ─ Maude Barlow

“If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die.
Our future and the state of the oceans are one.”
─ Sylvia Earle

“Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
─ Cree Prophecy

“You cannot protect what you don’t understand.”
─ Elder Rosalinda Ramirez-Yrizarry

“Values change for survival.”
─ Elders Akio Matsumura and Oren Lyons

“We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child.”
─ Julia Ward Howe

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” ─ Galatians 5:14

“Peace is the most important goal in the world. If we don’t have peace and nuclear bombs start to fall, what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic or capitalists or Chinese or Russian or American?
Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart.”
─ Nikita Khrushchev

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular─but one must take it simply because it is right.”
─ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact
on the world around you. What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
─ Jane Goodall

“You cannot see the future with tears in your eyes.”
─ Wilma Mankiller

“Whether you light the fire, carry the fire, or are the fire, it all matters.”
─ Jim Miller, Dakota 38+2 Memorial Ride

“…That is everyone’s calling, to lead a life that helps.”
─ Barry Lopez

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. To be a part of the land community, we must cooperate with both our human and non-human neighbors.”
─ Aldo Leopold

“Eventually, all things merge into one and a river runs through it.”
─ Norman Maclean

”What are we waiting for? It’s so simple!
We are one People! We know what we need to do!
We need to learn how to hear each other, put aside me, myself, and I,
and then put our heads together and heal the world!”
─ Elder Be’sha Blondin, Sahtu Dene Nation

Please relay your message to The Future:

Thank you for joining THE PATH WE WALK:

PULL TOGETHER NOW (PTN) is a global family of tomorrow’s ancestors who accept our sacred responsibility to care for peace and the well-being of children, elders, and Mother Earth before all else. The path we walk is wide and guides us to the world we know is possible and The Future deserves to inherit from us, now, and forever.

Good Ancestors
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we grow them.
Rise!
Stand up for peace, for all children, elders, and Mother Earth→ NOW!

The Ancestors’ Promise→

Guides to Help Heal Ourselves, Others, and Mother Earth:

“Instead of taking Water for granted, we have to say, 'Every policy that we adopt, every practice, everything we do has to ask the question: What's the impact on Water?' And, if the impact on Water is not good, you stop. You go back to the drawing boards.” ─ Maude Barlow

“If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die.Our future and the state of the oceans are one.” ─ Sylvia Earle

“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” ─ Cree Prophecy

“You cannot protect what you don’t understand.” ─ Elder Rosalinda Ramirez-Yrizarry

“Values change for survival.” ─ Elders Akio Matsumura and Oren Lyons

“We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child.” ─ Julia Ward Howe