The agenda and purpose for the December 17th "Mound Meeting" was reported in last month's issue.   The Toronto Dowsers have been going to "the Mound" since  February 2003

Our background:   Mary Hardy, from Michigan,  was our speaker that frigidly cold month and had told us about a visit she made that day, brought to a special Mound in High Park.  She discerned that it had had a very special purpose and still retained powerful energies -- Native Indian spirits and energies.  And they wanted to meet the dowsers.

    Since 4 times a year, the 22nd of March, June, September and December we had already begun focusing on raising consciousness at 8 pm, for our next Consciousness Raising the evening of March 22, 2003, we held it "our mound"..  One hundred of us, going up the hill, with flaming torches no less!  And conducted our ceremonies.  Many felt they were visited by Native Indian spirits.

    We called it "The Mound".  Then we found out that the park called it "Hawk Hill".  Now, David Redwolf, from Taiaiako’n Historical Preservation Services in Toronto, tells us it is called "Bear Mound".

The meeting:   The morning of Monday December 17th was the tail end of a 30 cm dumping of snow, making it difficult for people to travel to the meeting.  Many, though, did persevere.  David brought together:
Tecumseh Brown-Eagle, Chief, Erie Indian Moundbuilders Tribal Nation; Erie, Pennsylvania
Arthor Otskinau– Indigenous Anthropologist– Petroglyphs Park, Ontario (Arthor guided us when Bruce Magill led our field trip to the Peterborough Petroglyphs July 2004.)
Keith Powers, The  Archaeologists Inc., Toronto

    The presence of Chief Tecumseh was a very important part of the proceedings and he gave a presentation rich in etymology and long ago history, starting with a description of the "Aryans" who were actually ancient Sumerians, who travelled by land -- pre dynastic kings and queens.  Later on, the German nobility adopted this term for their own use.

      The homeland of the Erie Indian Moundbuilders Tribal Nation surrounded Lake Erie, Okswego, Lake Ontario, Cadarakut.  Their territory in Ontario stretched from the west near present day Kincardin, east to present day Hawkesbury and to the south of the lakes.
     They had a longstanding agreement and arrangement with the Six Nations Confederacy of the Grand River Territory that they would be caretakers and stewards of all of their sites, including their ancient mounds, villages, campsites, burial sites and sacred sites of all kinds.  They have never had this arrangement with any other Indigenous Nation of all peoples.

     Tecumseh's presentation helped to turn "facts", "history", preconceptions and much of  our prevailing world view topsy turvy upside down.  Tecumseh has the appearance of a black man with negroid features.  Yet he has no African American blood in him whatsoever.  The European royals married into his family in the 1590's.   His colleague looks like Marilyn Dennis.  And she is Algonquin.

     Tecumseh, a Shriner, a Mason of the 32nd degree (Sublime Prince of the Royal Select)  told us:  about the real meaning of the word "America",   Britain a colony of Egypt, the Egyptian origins of Missouri  Tennessee and Kentucky, the origins of the shape of the "Chunky" candy, he reminded us that  Morocco became the first nation to recognize the newly independent United States of America, by their leader Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah, loaning the US $25 million in gold,  making it the longest standing unbroken treaty that the United States has had with any nation.  He spoke about the the evolution of the very strong and largely unknown CAT influence, e.g. yuCATan, CAThay, CAThar (leading to Khazars, Czars, CATholic), (C)AThens; which includes our concepts concerning the color Black, i.e., the Black Cat is the symbol of BAST, the unknown.  There was so much more.  So much more history, source.

     Did Blacks come from Africa to the Americas?  Or was it the other way around?  Tecumseh has knowledge of the migrations of different groups, talked about the Bering Sea bridge, Pangea, going to and from the Americas, Africa, etc.   (An interesting related web link on BLACK CIVILIZATIONS OF ANCIENT AMERICA (MUU-LAN), MEXICO (XI) can be found at: www.raceandhistory.com/)

    Perhaps one of the more satisfying pieces of illumination  is the true meaning of the word/prefix:  GAN, which can be followed by different letters, such as "G", giving us:  "GANG".  GANG  really means  RULER  or  LEADER.   Now we know!   GANGS, like Black cats, women, etc., were made "bad" by the church to take away their power.  What was good became bad, what was bad became good.  We are still living by and accepting  many of these reversals today.  The difference is, we have begun to see this and restore and repair the transgressions.

Mounds, and "Our" Mound:  The purpose of the mounds is believed, but not totally certain.  It is believed they were built for 3 purposes:

• Burial mounds
• Temple / Ceremonial Mounds
• Navigational Mounds.   This is perhaps the most fascinating.  Similar to the way sailors navigate by charting their course by the stars, The series of mounds  . .   all over the planet  . .   is a navigational system . .  based on the stars.   It is as if one took a "star map", laid it over the earth and constructed a mound by each relevant planetary body.  The mound acts as  a beacon so people can navigate as they move around the planet -- on all continents.   Many of these have been destroyed and this ancient navigational system is being destroyed.

The Mounds need to be preserved, protected, respected and remain sacrosanct, just as cemeteries are respected, by law, morality and custom.

I asked David what would be respectful  for us to do when we visit these sites:
     "As far as how you can do things properly ... in our culture we always, put together some food and leave it for the ancestors, we also leave an offering of tobacco for them, so that they may use this in their ceremonies on the other side.  This is a good time to visit these type of sites and to give our prayers to the ancestors, for the time between, the end of November and the just before the maple starts to rise, is what we call the Ogiwi, "Feast of the Dead".   There two times during that period that the feast is done for the ancestors.  Also the ancestors tend to show themselves, in mysterious ways to us, for when the earth goes to sleep, is when they are the most active.   So you may see things up there tonight (we were talking about the Consciousness Raising for December 22) that you normally don't see!"

David signs his emails:  Niawen skenon! Oneh!   When I asked him the meaning:

• Skenon means, it is a greeting::  Peace be to you
• Niawen means Thank You and when it is used with Skenon it means Thank You and Peace be with you!
• Oneh means until the next time because we never say bye or good bye to someone unless we never intend to see them or speak to them again., and in that case we would say in English, " fare you well as you go on your journey".

With respect to "our" Mound --- this is the largest of the 12 Mound complex

              David tells us that  - - -

What is called Hawk Hill is part of the Bear Mound Complex in High Park. Actually it a complex of 12 mounds not just the one. This area was archaeologically assessed 4 years ago by Mike Henry of Amick consultants. Both the Bear Mound Complex and Thunderbird Mound are registered archaeological sites with the  Ontario Ministry of Culture. The Bear Mound Complex in High Park is a Hopewell Mound Complex, built 2,000 years ago.

      It is in exact alignment with Ursa Major (Big Bear) and Ursa Minor (Little Bear) during the Spring Equinox. What is unusual about this site is that the opening to the complex is the North instead of the east, which is the most common opening at other mound sites. This verifies oral tradition that the Bear Mound Complex in Toronto, was built in honour of the Bear Spirit, (Hnyagwai) which is the Guardian of the Northern Doorway, in Iroquoian culture.

      Also the fact that the Big Bear and Little Bear are directly over it confirms to us our oral tradition, that this site was used as a place for springtime rituals, whereas the women and medicine people would gather, to not only give thanks for the first Medicine of the our Calendar cycle, which is the maple, but was a place that was also used for burial rituals during the first Ogiiwii of our calendar cycle (Feast of the Dead) each year.

     All of the sacred medicines are located nearby in High Park, so this site was used not only for medicine rituals but also burial rituals. There was a village site located at the corner of Keele and Bloor, as well as the Erie-Neutral-Seneca-Mohawk village, of Taiaiagon, which was located very close by on the Humber River. It is also the site of the Thunderbird Mound which was erected in honour of the Thunderbird Priest at that time. Both the Bear Mound Complex and the Thunderbird Mound were built by the ancestors of the Erie-Neutral people and are now under the caretaking/stewardship responsibility of Taiaiako’n Historical Preservation Services along with Six Nations Grand River Territory Confederacy Council, as granted by the Erie Moundbuilders Tribal Nation, descendants of the original mound builders.

    At the time of the original Mound builders, both sites were protected by tree growth, therefore would have been much warmer place to be, than today, which at times can somewhat cold and windy, depending on the time of the year that you visit these sites.

        Conical Mounds found at Bear Mound Complex in High Park, Toronto, Ontario. Conical mounds are mounds that are circular in shape. The most common and easiest to build, they once numbered in the thousands, and could be found scattered throughout the entire Upper Mississippi River Valley. Conical mounds were typically used for burial, but were likely also used for religious, political and/or familial purposes. Conical mounds were most typical of the Early Woodland Period (500-100 b.c.), but were of course built throughout the entire Woodland Period (500 b.c.-1250 a.d.).

      Over the nearly 2,000 years of the Woodland Period, Native American burial mounds were built in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from simple, circular shapes to complex "effigy" shapes. These mound types gradually evolved over time, and were used for both burial and ceremonial purposes.

The Mound Builders:
      the Mound Builders were hardly lost or alien to North America. They represented just one stage in the evolution of native peoples, and their descendants live on through Indian nations, such as the Cherokee.

     While the details are debated, archaeologists and anthropologists generally believe that the mound-building cultures, first the Adena and later the Hopewell, appeared east of the Mississippi River about 1000 B.C., and thrived until about A.D. 500.

    The original Mound Builders were known among the Indians as the Moon-Eyed People who occupied the Ohio Valley for a thousand years before the birth of Christ. They were named Adena by archaeologists in the early 20th century after excavations of mounds at Thomas Worthington's Adena estate in Ross County.

     Mound building, in fact, was carried on by a number of historic native peoples, including the Iroquois, the Erie and the Seneca.

Beliefs:  The Mound builders believed that there was an upper world in which they lived, and a lower world. Each was inhabited by spirits associated with specific places and things. They observed their beliefs with ceremonies, myths and symbols, and social customs, rules and taboos. Shamans served as religious leaders and healers, though their powers could be used for both good and ill. The main purpose of their ceremonies was to further the success of crops or hunting, or as a method of healing. The Mound builders paid great attention to their dreams. They believed that diseases were caused by dreams or animals, though they had a number of more concrete methods of curing the sick such as herbals, sweats, dietary changes and massage in addition to the more spiritual remedies. The dead were buried with their heads to the east in the ground or under piles of rocks, their possessions interred with them. The yearly cycle of the Mound builders was marked by six major festivals, each lasting a week or less. The First New Moon of Spring was marked in March. The Green Corn Ceremony was held in late June or early July, followed by the Mature Green Corn Ceremony about 45 days later. The Great New Moon Festival marked the beginning of the New Year in October. A cleansing festival was held ten days later at which time the old sacred fire was extinguished and a new one lit. A sixth festival was held during the winter, celebrated by feasting and dancing.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman   (who passed December 13, 2007)

"When Columbus came that began what we term as the first World War.  That was what we think about as the first world war.  Because along with him, came everybody from Europe.  By the end of the second World War, we were, in America, only 800,000.  From 60,000,000 to 800,000.  We were almost exterminated here in America..  Everything is spiritual.  Everything has a spirit. Everything has been brought to you by the Creator.  Some people call him God. Some people call him Buddha.  We call him Konkachila.  Grandfather.  We are here on earth only a few winters.  Then we go to the Spirit World.  The Spirit World is more real than most of us believe.  The Spirit World is everything.