That was the experience of Montara resident Tracey Walsh, who teams up with the Community United Methodist Church, the nonprofit Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, Calif., Samadhi Life Inc., and her friend Sandy Emerson, a Coastsider and current center president, to bring the award-winning documentary “For the Next Seven Generations” to the Coastside this weekend.
The film documents the work and journey of 13 women in their 60s to 80s, who make up the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. These 13 elders, shamans and medicine women come from around the globe to promote world peace and share their indigenous ways of healing.
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The film will be screened at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 6, at the Methodist Church at 777 Miramontes St. in Half Moon Bay. Tickets are $10 per person at the door, and proceeds will benefit the council.
Those 13 “grandmothers” — a respectful title depicting wise elder women — include Bernadette, a spiritual leader from Gabon, Africa; Aama from Nepal; Julieta from Mexico; Clara, who is originally from Japan and now lives in Brazil; Maria Alice from the Amazon region of Brazil; Lakota Indian sisters Beatrice and Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance from South Dakota; Mona from Arizona; Tsering from Tibet; Rita from Alaska; Margaret, a Cheyenne from Montana; Flordemayo from Central America; and Agnes, a spiritual elder of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in Oregon.
The film’s title, Walsh said, is drawn from the Native American concept that all decisions should be based on looking out for the next seven generations and how the ramifications of those decisions impact the future.
“Once you look out for seven generations, it’s no longer about me or about my power or my money,” she said. “Now it’s about, does this better the planet? Is this a place where our children’s children’s children want to live?”
At the core of the grandmothers’ views, said Walsh, is “the belief that we’re all one, all from the same planet, the same family.”
Walsh’s connection with the elders began in October 2008, when she and husband Michael encountered the women when they spoke at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Then she was invited to serve, with daughter Leah, as the official photographer of the Grandmothers’ Sixth Gathering in Lincoln City, Ore., in August 2009, hosted by Grandmother Agnes.
She was further invited to serve as an attendant to Grandmother Aama from Nepal at the seventh gathering, hosted by Grandmother Mona, in Sedona, Ariz.
Working closely with the elders requires a finely tuned sense of respect, to cover her photographic duties without compromising the women’s privacy, Walsh said. But she added that it is a task she is glad to perform.
“I love (working with the women),” she said. “They’re very wise, there’s great wisdom among them, but they’re also very human. They can make you cry one minute and laugh the next.”
Walsh presented the film to her church, which offered space for the screening.
Does this assembly of elders have something pertinent to say to today’s world?
“This is a perfect time to have the grandmothers in this world,” said Walsh. “We need to look at each other as one family … as brothers and sisters, so we must respect each other.”
For information about the film screening, contact Walsh at 728-7848.
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