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Living Indigenous Leadership: Native Narratives on Building Strong Communities edited by Carolyn Kenny, Tina Ngaroimata Fraser. Author: Raquel D Gutierrez

p.103 – Describes the reason that the council came together as the realization of a uniform prophecy that exists in all their indigenous societies despite the women of the council having never met. These prophecies were passed down for generations.

p.104 - Gives complete mission statement of the thirteen grandmothers, and their official statement of purpose.

Official Statement of Purpose

“We are thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers who came together for the first time from October 11 through October 17, 2004, In Phoenicia, New York. We gathered from the four directions in the land of the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. We come here from the Amazon rainforest, the Alaskan Tundra of North America, the great forest of the American northwest, the vast plains of North America, the highlands of Central America, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the mountains of Oaxaca, the desert of the American southwest, the mountains of Tibet and from the rainforest of Central Africa.

Affirming our relations with traditional medicine peoples and communities throughout the world, we have been brought together by a common vision to form a new global alliance. We are the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. We have united as one. Ours is an alliance of prayer, education, and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.

We, the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, believe that our ancestral ways of prayer, peacemaking, and healing are vitally needed today. We come together to nurture, educate, and train our children. We come together to uphold the practice of our ceremonies and affirm the right to use our plant medicines free of legal restriction. We come together to protect the lands where our peoples live and upon which our cultures depend, to safeguard the collective heritage of traditional medicines, and to defend the earth Herself. We believe that the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future.

We join with all those who honor the Creator, and with all who work and pray for our children, for world peace, and for the healing of our Mother Earth. For all our relations.”

One of the first things I noticed about the article is that some of the cited sources are written by one of the thirteen grandmothers. It is my understanding that these are not the best types of sources to use. Instead, independent t or scholarly sources should be used instead. Other cited sources include webpages, which again are not the best sources to use. In general, I found the article to be lacking much helpful information. It provides little hints of information, but doesn’t go into the details that a reader would desire. I would classify it more as an outline, than an article.