June 2010
Editor’s Note: Grail Member Theresa Dardar, a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe in southern Louisiana, attended the United Nations Forum on Indigenous Issues in April. While she was away, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The oil has begun to invade the coastal bayous where Theresa and her husband, Donald, make their living crabbing and shrimping. As we write this, the oil is just five miles from the slender finger of land they and the Pointe-au-Chien Indians call home. Below is an “intervention” Theresa offered at the UN, along with an interview of Theresa by Joy Garland, who accompanied Theresa to the UN. Theresa’s presentation offers an eerie prelude to the damage the massive oil spill will bring.
Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe of South Louisiana
~ Mazie Theresa Dardar ~
Theresa Dardar at UN General Assembly in April
Theresa Dardar at UN General Assembly in April
Since the early 1700s, our tribe has been living in lower Pointe-au-Chien along the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Pointe-au-Chien is the traditional village of our ancestors – primarily Chitimacha, but also Atakapas, Biloxi and Choctaw – all farmers, fishermen and hunters.
Today, the people continue to live off the land and the water by hunting alligators, fishing, and by catching shrimp, crabs and oysters. In addition to fishing, we once had extensive farming, a very lucrative sugarcane business. Farming is no longer possible for us because of saltwater intrusion.
Our people know how to use the land and to survive from the land. Now our once beautiful and fertile land is disappearing. Our wetlands have almost disappeared totally. The marsh that extends out from the coast of Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico is a rich habitat for shrimp, the most basic staple of life for our people, and our primary source of income. Without the marsh, our people have no shrimping industry. In addition, our homeland, our sacred sites and our burial mounds are threatened. This area, once so beautiful and fertile, is sick and malnourished.
The Mississippi once deposited into our bayou. The government decided to reroute the Mississippi and now no fresh water replenishes our land. For years, the marsh was damaged by oil companies cutting canals into the marsh in order to build pipelines to carry the oil drilled off the coast and from our land. Other canals were cut through the marsh for transporting their crews. Today, the marsh is only a fraction of the size it was when I was young.
Rebuilding the barrier islands would be the best solution to the problem of the disappearing wetlands. The barrier islands break the waves coming in from the Gulf, especially in times when storms are raging. In times past, we got flooded but never to the extent we are getting now. During 2005 and 2008, our community received eight-foot storm surges from hurricanes that landed over three hundred miles away. In the past, the indigenous people who lived on the Gulf Coast relied on the protection that the barrier islands provided.
Over the years, however, repeated hurricanes have washed out those islands in Louisiana. The neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are all maintaining their environment by rebuilding their beaches after a hurricane. Louisiana has not rebuilt the barrier islands, and lack of action is seriously threatening the life and livelihood of the people who live on the Coast.
The technological solutions that the state and federal government have created are not working and have little hope of ever working effectively. The pumps that are an important part of the levee system are designed to lower water levels in certain areas. But because they funnel water into the major waterways inside the levee system instead of outside, toward the Gulf, other inhabited areas like ours are flooded even worse than they were before the levees were put in place. Before the levees existed, the water could come in and go out. Now it is trapped, and the homes of the people are flooded.
Faced with the environmental crisis on the one hand, the Pointe-au-Chien tribe is engaged at the same time with a struggle to get federal recognition. We are recognized by the state but have not yet been able to obtain federal recognition, which we believe might give us access to federal resources we could use to rescue our wetlands, even if the state of Louisiana fails to do it on our behalf. Without federal recognition, we have no real political leverage and federal and state agencies do not work with us directly to provide aid to our people. Because of federal, state and local policies, the Indians of our tribe were prevented from attending high school until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. These policies had a tremendous impact on the ability of tribal members and the tribe as a whole to advance in areas of education, economics and health care.
Our tribe is in crisis because of the changing environment of the Louisiana wetlands. The water is rising and the wetlands have almost disappeared. The situation is made worse by corporations that exploited our environment in the past without regard for the impact on the habitat of our wildlife. The real solution, we believe, is to work with the natural environment and restore the barrier islands that are now covered by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The earth is our Mother: we know we should care for her.
Our neighboring tribe is threatened with dislocation – with having to leave their island home, the land of their ancestors, the land they love. We don’t want the same to happen to us. Please join us in trying to rebuild and maintain our livelihood to protect our culture, traditions and heritage.
May 2010
Holy Week at Grailville 2010
photos by Elizabeth MurphySpring Metanoia at Cornwall
Debra Silvestri and Carol Siemering
n April 16th, 17 of us from as far away as California (Ceci Figuaroa) gathered at Cornwall for the first of two Metanoia Weekends in 2010.
The questions we considered before coming to the weekend were:
● When I consider the choices I have made in my life, do I see any thread or common theme in the things I have chosen (e.g., work, partners, causes, jobs, leisure, the communities I surround myself with)?
● Do these choices inform my understanding of what my “call” is, or might be?
● When faithfulness to my call or choices becomes difficult, am I able to find something to sustain me? If so, what or who? If not, why not?
We were asked to bring a reading, song, prayer, object to share to begin the discussion of the three questions we explored.
We gathered on Friday night for dinner and a “check-in” since our last gathering. Saturday morning we shared our readings and objects with a short explanation of how these manifested a response to the questions posed above. In the afternoon, we painted some symbol of our source or call on stones, which would later be brought to a “well” made of bracken and flowers in an alcove of stone from an old foundation on a path on the property. This was part of a ritual of “Going to the well.” That afternoon, we shared our experiences of the different elements of the weekend up to that point. [Carol wants to share that one of her favorite parts of the weekend was on Saturday evening when we had the incomparable experience of a Debra Silvestri auction of items participants brought to raise money for Cornwall. Besides raising over $200, our collective sides were split with laughter.]
Sunday morning we spoke about these questions in terms of our collective experience as Grail. We were asked to put a question this raised for us on paper to help us prepare for our gathering in September. Here are some of the questions that arose:
● Why should I, how do I make the Grail part of my everyday life? What are the possibilities for living in this collective consciousness?
● What is the essential thread that will keep us connected to the past as we go forward to the future?
● Since my most powerful experience of Metanoia in this process came as we shared fears, how can we share deeply and respectfully enough to provide the opportunity for change of heart?
● How do we work with diversity in the Grail?
● How can this present generation of the Grail hold together/continue/build on/evolve from the founding generations?
● Could we talk more about the Grail myth and stories?
We decided that our next theme would be based on two questions that come up in the Grail myth: “What ails thee?” and “Why doest thou suffer?,” understanding that when the wounded King answers these, it heals not just his own suffering, but also that of “the land.”
April 2010
Grail Work with UN Commission on Status of Women
~ Rev. Lucy Jones, Grail Member, Shokan, NY ~
Editor’s Note: More than 3,400 people from 138 countries participated in March at the 54th meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. The Grail is an official participant and below is the reflection of a first-time Grail attendee.
Perhaps, like me, you have been interested in The Grail’s work at the United Nations for years. Perhaps, like me, you have dreamed about attending the Commission on the Status of Women or other activities that we are involved in at the UN. One day it finally happened that all the stars were aligned and I was able to be involved ever so tangentially. Let me tell you, it is very impressive. Certainly, The Grail’s work that I got to be part of, as well as the energy of so many committed women working for the welfare of women and children in all parts of the world was very exciting. Although I was there for only part of two days, I was energized by the potential of transformation contained in the people there and the work they represent. I attended NGO (non-governmental organizations) sessions to avoid the long wait needed to get official passes to enter the UN sessions. There were many to choose from.
In addition to the session led by Grail members and United Methodist Women staffers Carol Barton and elmira Nazombe on the Intersectionality4 between Gender, Race and Class, I attended sessions on Women and Health sponsored by the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation; Women, Faith and Development Alliance sponsored by Religions for Peace and Comparative Strategies to End Violence Against Women sponsored by MADRE.
I heard presentations about the compassionate work of the Tzu Chi Medical Foundation in Haiti, thus challenging notions that Buddhists don’t do relief work. I heard the statistics of a psychotherapist quoting that 80% of those affected by war are women and children and that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is more common among women than men and that women register higher in all mental illness categories except substance abuse and impulse control.
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I learned about a medical ministry in Appalachia begun by a nun from Boston to provide free and low-cost health care by a traveling van called The Health Wagon. Sixty percent of the patients are female in an area in Virginia that covers 1700 square miles without any 4-lane roads and no public transportation. Some of the poor women in these communities are not able or allowed to drive. The area has substantially higher rates of death from heart disease, influenza, pneumonia and suicide than the rest of the state. In addition to the traveling van, a health expedition offers free medical services to residents once a year. In a 3-day period, over 5,000 patient encounters were logged last year.
I learned of a new effort to connect organizations working in diverse areas to come together for common interests. In a meeting called the “Break Through Summit” in 2008, organizations from women’s groups, faith communities and development organizations came together in Washington, D.C., to see how they could work together to work on global poverty and women’s and girls’ issues. There were 70 specific commitments made from 90 organizations. Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, spoke on this collaboration, indicating that these organizations had committed $1.4 billion. Dr. Azza Karam of the UN Population Fund explained that the maternal health goals of the Millennium Development Goals will not be met, to the great shame of member nations. $500 million has been given to do a better job for child-bearing women around the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. I was introduced to an organization I’d never heard of before, “Women Thrive Worldwide,” which is committed to affect U.S. policy on issues that can help women lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Two Australian women spoke of a comparable effort to bring religious communities, women’s rights activists and development organizations together. Secular organizations are beginning to recognize the power of religion to shape the opinions and actions of societies.
The session on violence against women was standing-room only, as were many of the sessions. Women who work in Sudan, Afghanistan and Columbia shared the harrowing stories of women in those societies and the work they do so valiantly. The courage and strength of women was readily apparent. I was greatly encouraged by the size of the crowds, the youth and energy of the women (and a few men) attending, and the commitment and compassion that seemed to charge the air. I don’t know why more press and media coverage is not made of these events. If there is anything that can counter the thrust of the “tea parties” that seem to get so much media attention, it is this kind of gathering, where women are working to make a difference for the world.
I experienced this transformation work up close and personal in The Grail and on this trip, eating with Mary Kay Louchart and Sharon Joslyn at the Bronx Grail, with a contingent from Portugal — Lidia Martins, an official UN delegate; two girls, Sara Teles and Marina Castro; and their chaperone, Susanna Estevinho. Just returning from a family visit to Mexico was Grail member Angelica Contreras, Monica Maher arriving from Boston and Mary Gindhart from Philly — us visitors spending the night at the convent attached to St. Luke’s. I’m grateful for all the work Mary Kay and Sharon did to keep me and others connected to what was being planned and for their hospitality. This truly is a valuable and important Grail work.
New Grail Council
On January 1, 2010, the Grail began a new era, with a new Council responsible for governance of the 70-year-old U.S. movement.
Mary Farrell, of Boston, MA, and Judith Blackburn, of Longmont, CO, were elected to the National Leadership Team. Kate Devlin, of Deerfield, MA, was elected Treasurer. Marian Schwab, of Hamilton, OH, formerly of Houma, LA, is continuing in her role as Representative to the International Council.
Other new members include Elizabeth Robinson, of Loveland, OH; Carol Siemering of West Newton, MA; and Audrey Sorrento, of Claremont, CA. Noreen Willhelm, National Director, serves as ex officio member of the Council.
The Grail IRS 990 Tax Return
GRAIL NATIONAL DIRECTOR HIRED
The U.S. Grail has hired a national director, Noreen Willhelm, who comes with a wide variety of non-profit executive leadership experience. Ms. Willhelm is well suited to direct the Grail and was attracted to the movement because of our focus on spiritual search, social transformation and ecological sustainability. She has a long history of contributing to women’s quality of life issues from workplace discrimination to political participation. Most recently Ms. Willhelm has been the Executive Director of Rhythm in Shoes, a traditional music and dance company. She continues to manage, with her husband, a CSA farm in western Montgomery County and is chair of Miami Valley Grown, a local food initiative aimed at raising awareness of those who can more sustainably feed the region. Noreen Willhelm assumed her role as Director of the Grail in the U.S. on September 8, 2009.
Read the article in the Dayton Daily News.