2019 Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness Programs Impact Report
The Auschwitz-Birkenau retreat is the core program of ZPI’s Bearing Witness programs. What follows is this year’s impact report on the 23rd Bearing Witness retreat in Auschwitz.
Start Talking Lakota: Manny and Renee Iron Hawk Discuss Reviving the Lakota Language, Immersion Schools, Trauma, Prayer, and Spirit
Renee Fast Horse Iron Hawk and Manny Iron Hawk, two of the organizers and hosts of Zen Peacemakers’ Native American Programs, have been instrumental in the opening of Lakȟótiyapi Okáȟtaŋ Wičhóičhaǧe Inc. (LOWI), a school dedicated to education by full immersion in Lakota language. In an interview with Rami Efal, they discuss language loss and immersion, Trauma, Prayer, and Spirit.
Impact Report: Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness Retreat
Since 1996 the Auschwitz retreat has been an interfaith and immersive cross-cultural gathering event for over 1500 peacebuilders from different war-torn countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Palestine/Israel, Syria, Native American Nations and over 20 other countries. This 2018 impact report details some of the many positive results of the program.
Prayers on the Plum Tree: Sensei Engu Dobbs’s Reflection on the Zen Peacemakers Native American Plunge August 2017
SOUTH DAKOTA, USA. Each day we sat in a large circle and began and ended our meetings by smudging with sage smoke, offering tobacco, and listening to Lakota songs and prayers. Listening deeply and bearing witness to the grief of others tends to be hard, hard practice…But if we’re able, more or less, to stay with the grief…The result is often a powerful and surprising feeling of joy.
The Territory is My Body: More on the Indigenous Leaders Workshop in Colombia, Interview with ZPI Executive Director Rami Efal
SIERRA NEVADA de SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA. Interview with Rami Efal, executive director of ZPI on his experience in the First Workshop for Indigenous Leaders in December 2017, which saw leaders from indigenous communities of Africa, Asia and the Amazon come together to learn, train and bond.
Bearing Witness at Bear Butte: Reflection from The Wounded Knee Massacre Descendants Conference, October 2017
BEAR BUTTE, SOUTH DAKOTA, USA. In October 2017, Lakota elders organized a conference of Wounded Knee Massacre descendants in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Following from the connections made during the ZPI Native American Bearing Witness Retreats in August, a small group of Zen Peacemakers were invited to join. They were led by Michel Engu Dobbs, who afterwards gave this dharma talk at Ocean Zendo in Bridgehampton, New York:
We Are Sumud, or If You Imagine It, It Will Be
ISRAEL. “Sumud, like so many other acts of heartful resistance, begins as an act of the imagination. Someone dares imagine that force, occupation, discrimination, poverty, and violence can end.” Eve Marko reflects on her recent trip to Israel, and acts of imagination and revolution.
Rain, Thunder And Lightning Were All Present – Report from the Native American Bearing Witness Retreat in Fort Snelling MN USA, November 2016
ST PAUL, MINNESOTA, USA. Read this report from ZPO Member Laura Gentle Dragon Kennedy who co-organized a bearing witness retreat with the Native American Dakota in MN, bearing witness to the history of genocide there and its present day expression in the community and land.
Despair and Empowerment in Our Watershed Moment
“How are we going to end polarization while we ourselves are polarized? How do we unpolarize ourselves from the people we want to blame and hate for this electoral disaster? How do we disarm ourselves of our own attitudes and prejudices? How do we do the inner work of self-transformation and simultaneously extend ourselves outward to organize and resist, which we absolutely must do?” By Paula Green A talk given at Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, December 7, 2016, in Northampton, Massachusetts. She has 40 years’ experience as a psychologist, peace educator, consultant, and mentor in intergroup relations and conflict resolution.
DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU IT DOESN’T MATTER!
Gen. Wesley Clark Jr., middle, and other veterans kneel in front of Leonard Crow Dog during a forgiveness ceremony at the Four Prairie Knights Casino & Resort on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. Photo by Josh Morgan, Huffington Post By Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, Zen Peacemaker Order JERUSALEM. I met […]