Season’s greetings! During the holidays, our thoughts turn to those who have contributed to our impact. Your support has meant everything to our organization and the Indigenous peoples we serve. With your help, the Tribal Trust Foundation (TTF) continues to make a difference in the lives of many indigenous peoples around the world especially now during these challenging times. This year we funded educational and research projects that safeguard indigenous culture in Peru, Bhutan, and Namibia. With the help of the extraordinary photographer Roberta MarroquÃn, we documented some of our Indigenous partners’ projects in the Peruvian Amazon and in the remote Black Forest of Bhutan.
Shipibo Konibo youth by Roberta MarroquÃn
Nguintimo, Monpa Elder by Roberta MarroquÃn
The generous donors who traveled with us to Bhutan in September and December were also supportive as TTF ambassadors. They experienced and appreciated the Bhutanese landscape and people who place importance on Indigenous cultural practices to protect and conserve their traditional way of life. When traveling into the deep Black Forest of Central Bhutan to visit the Monpa, the TTF participants felt transformed; their hearts and minds having opened to an Indigenous way of life. Personally, each time I am in Bhutan, the experience heightens my respect for all sentient beings and how we are all interconnected. For example, early one morning while I was hiking to Wangling, a Monpa Village on another mountain range, I was marveling to myself about consciously being aware of this trail as a Beyul, which is a landscape that encourages an exploration of an individual’s inner and outer being. Then, almost immediately, I came across a fresh leopard paw print as I paused to catch my breath from climbing up the steep path. Next to it was the bare footprint of a Monpa. In that moment of reflection upon seeing the two prints, I knew on a cellular level that I was a part of nature and not separate from it.
Please let us know if you would like to join the TTF next December on a philanthropic adventure to Bhutan to celebrate Monpa Day in the Black Forest. We can promise you a trip of a lifetime!
Imprints of a human foot and leopard paw by Barbara Savage
WORDS OF WISDOM
From Chief Luis Anaya, Lakota Sisangu-Sioux
Aho relatives of the four directions, the proceedings of today are to love one another, to love yourself, and to be at peace. To be in balance within you and with the eye of the mind. And you should be centered and balanced with the universe. Now, the walk that each of us are doing, we are transforming- mind, body, spirit, and the spiritual body.Â
So the message is, reflect on yourself, share, the other word we’re trying to understand is compassion, so have compassion, share and be universal. Be abundant, give. Then, once your plate is empty, it’s going to fill back again with a lot of wonderful gifts of the wonderful creation of life.Â
I’d like to remind you that you are walking in beauty, look around. Let go of those thoughts that sometimes make a lot of noise. Be good to yourself, don’t criticize anybody, love your mom, love your dad, and the last one, have a lot of respect for the greatest family of humanity,Â
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin
Bhutan Trees in Mist by Roberta MarroquÃn
PLEASE SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE
TRIBAL TRUST FOUNDATION
Barbara Savage
Founder & Executive Director
Tribal Trust Foundation
The Tribal Trust Foundation is located in the unceded homelands of the Chumash People and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. By recognizing these communities, we attempt to honor their legacies, their lives, and descendants. To learn more about the Indigenous People’s land on which your home or work sits, visit: native-land.ca
