Transcription
[Music] Oh [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] So we're standing by the beautiful, beautiful Grand River. And in our indigenous way, whenever we meet with the waters, we say a greeting. So I would like to greet the waters today in the Mohawk language. And, um, Day attenuato sokoyan diesel onion.
[Music] My name is Gaha Dio Jan Got Hit Deal Longboat, and I'm from the Mohawk Nation and from the Turtle Clan. And I live on Six Nations of the Grand River. I was born and raised here and still live here today. Every day, we use that same, same, what I said, and it's called the Ohanto Goliwadekwa. And it means, what that word means, is the words that come before all else. So every, every morning, we offer that thanksgiving, that greetings. It's not really a prayer, it's greetings and thanksgiving to everything in the universe that sustains our life. And that would be the earth, you know, the trees, the winds, the water, the birds, and the food, the medicines, our Grandmother Moon, Grandfather the Sun, the stars, everything that on earth that keeps life. Every day, and without it, we would not be able to live.
Well, hello everybody. My name is Peter Crowell. I'm a geologist, and I'm here to share with you [Music] a story that is seldom heard by many people. Not too many people on this planet know what I'm going to be talking about, except for other geologists. And it's really the story of the moon and how the moon has given us life on this planet. When we look at the sky and we see the moon, we might gaze at its beauty and enjoy that on a walk or whatever. But the purpose of my talk, and the purpose of Jan's talk, is to install a new, a bit more mystery and wonder as why that moon is so important to us. It's not just a rock hanging in space. It guides so much of who and what we are, and who we can be.
[Music] I have worked with the women and had moon ceremonies every full moon. When I worked with the women, they wanted to know, what is the name of Grandmother Moon? What is, what do we call our Grandmother Moon in the Mohawk language? Which I speak, it's uh, Yeti suta asantanaka kalakwa. And that means, our grandmother, the moon with a full face. And that's what that, that word means. Our grandmother, the moon with the full face. And that's how you say it in, in the Mohawk language. I had the honor and the privilege of sitting at the knee of many, we call them dudas, many daughters or grandmas, all my life, listening to their stories, listening to their teachings, and assisting them in whatever they were doing. We were always told that stories are already in our body. Stories are in our, our bodies because we have listened to the old people. And, and when we listen to the old people, the stories are embedded in our, our, I guess, our psyche. They're already embedded. I guess you could say they're embedded in our DNA. And so then it becomes our responsibility as a storyteller to tell those stories so that you teach the next generation of these stories.
Here, science is just one way of telling a story, and geology is one way of telling a story. And Jan Longboat, from her First Nations perspective, is also going to tell a story. And these stories of creation are all legitimate. The First Nations story is correct, and the science story is correct. It's a way of justifying and trying to understand who we are and why we're here. There's a First Nation perspective, which is, which is wonderful. And there's a science perspective. And science doesn't know everything. And so we go with the information that we have when we try to create the story of how life began. My daughters, my, my elders always said, when you, when you tell a story, they said, you always start at the beginning.
[Music] And the beginning for us as Hodenosaunee people is our creation story. So I'd like to just share a short version. The Hodenosaunee people believe that a woman fell from the sky. And this woman was pregnant when she fell. And she landed on the back of a turtle. And that's why today we call this Turtle Island. And when she landed, the birds helped her down. They helped her come and land. But when she arrived here on Turtle Island, or the back of the turtle, there was no, no, nothing for her to, to relate to the earth. And so she asked the animals if they would go down to the bottom of the ocean and bring up soil, earth, which they did. And what happened was, when they put the soil on the back of the turtle, she walked around in the earth. And she walked around and around. And pretty soon, as she walked, the earth grew and grew. And soon became Mother Earth. And so as she grew up, as this, uh, woman grew up, and she, she had a daughter. And as the daughter grew up, she got to be of an, an older person. And one night, she had a dream. And she dreamt the West Wind came. And the next morning, she found two arrows on her stomach, crossed. And her grandmother says, you're going to have twins. You, you've become pregnant by the West Wind. And you're going to have twins. Which is what happened. But when the twins were to be born, one of the twins was born the right way. And the second twin came out of her armpit. And when she came out of her armpit, the mother died. And that was the daughter of, of the old grandmother. But in the womb of the, of the daughter, the boys, the twin boys argued. They continued to argue right from conception. They argued and argued. And even after they were born, they began to argue and be at odds with another. Now, some people call them the, the good twin and the not-so-good twin. But I don't like that. You know, I think that that one was, uh, one was of the twins was, was, um, very kind. And the other was inquisitive, inquisitive, and always argued and that sort of thing. And that's how they grew up. They were at odds all the time. And their names were Sawiskola. So Whiskula was the one born second. He came out of the mother's underarm. And Dahlia Waggle, he came the right way. So he was a first-born twin. And as they grew up, they were always at odds. And finally, one day, um, Donna Iwago said, I'm tired now. I'm really tired. And I don't want to argue anymore. He said, so we're not going to fight over Grandmother Moon, Grandmother any longer. She, because she favored Sawiskila. He said, so he took the grandmother and he threw her up into the sky. And her head became Grandmother Moon. And that's what we still believe today. So it's right from our creation story that that when she went up into the sky world, she became Grandmother Moon. And to this day, we still call her Grandmother Moon.
[Music] [Music] So once upon a time, you've heard of the Big Bang, massive explosion that created the universe all of a sudden. And then shortly after that Big Bang, there was a gigantic shock wave that rippled through the brand new universe, just kind of like a tsunami of energy flowing in all directions. And what that did was it started the very first rocks and dust that we created from the Big Bang to start to rotate. And that rotation caused the very first planets to start to form and become rocks and planets and moons and things like this. This is about 4.5 billion years ago, and when our galaxy was just starting to form, our solar system was also starting to form. And we have our sun that we see every day. It took 50 million years for that sun to be formed from the concentration of hydrogen and helium. But then after the sun was formed, about 500 million years after the baby Earth was formed, there was all of this debris still floating around in our solar system. And a huge chunk of rock smashed into the new forming Earth. And that big chunk of rock was called Theia, according to the geologists and scientists who study this. And it was also called the Big Thwack. So this giant piece of rock blasted itself into, into the new Earth. And how do we know this? We know this because that's a picture of the moon right there. At the bottom of the moon, you see all that blue. That is an indication that there's very, very dense rocks there. It shows that there was a massive impact to cause those rocks to be formed on the moon. And as well, on planet Earth, we have a mineral called Trinite. And Trinite is formed, for example, at nuclear blast sites where there's tremendous amount of energy. And Trinitite is also found on the moon as well. So those are two clues to show that there was a massive explosion at one time. And the Apollo mission also proved that there was this collision because the moon rocks, when they're brought back and analyzed, do not have any nitrogen, sulfur, or carbon. They were all burned off during this massive collision as well. This huge rock that crashed into the young Earth brought water to us. And if we don't have water, there's no life on this planet. So hydrogen and oxygen was injected into the young Earth by this collision as well. Now, what is getting really interesting about this particular collision? It was a one in a trillion odds of this happening. If that rock had hit Earth directly, the whole planet Earth would have been shattered. It wouldn't have existed. But what happened was, this young planet, or this young sort of gigantic meteorite that hit Earth, came at a glancing blow. So it really didn't destroy the planet. It just kind of really gave it a good shot, like a really bad car crash. And that blast injected a whole bunch of rocks into the atmosphere, which created the moon.
One of the things, or several of the things, that happened during that time is Grandmother Moon said, I will do different things, but I will be responsible for the women. That's going to be my role and responsibility up into the sky world. So she said, and I will be, I will look after all the waters of the world, from the smallest waters to the oceans. That will be my responsibility. And also the waters of the women. Grandmother Moon, Nakomis, is is known for the creation of of tides. And without tides moving back and forth all the time, ever since time of memorial, we would not have life. That constant sloshing of the water on the planet back and forth with the tides, that wetting and drying, wetting and drying, set the stage for those first tiny microbes to come together to produce life and to produce oxygen. The very first breath of life happened about 3.7 million years ago when what they call sticky little one-celled organisms started binding themselves together. And they bound themselves together around clay. Clay is really, really fine-grained. And we've got all this fine-grain stuff floating around in the oceans and on beaches. It's a perfect platform for these sticky microbes to find a home. And they all gather together on these clay pieces, these clay clumps. And you got it, the very first organism on the planet called stromatolites. A stromatolite is nothing more than a small mound of bacteria that takes in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and breathes out oxygen. So when we take a breath, we have to thank these very primitive plants, if you want to call them that, started living 3.7 million years ago.
When I listened to Peter, he talked about elements, elements of the sky world. And one of the elements he talked about that that happens with the moon is that part of, part of the moon is clay. And, and, and that a lot of those elements fall from the moon and the stars and, and the planets down to Earth. And then they, they attach themselves to different elements of the Earth. He talked about how when these, when these elements fall, they attach themselves to clay. And it's really ironic because when you ask a person their name, Oni zonta lodo, what it means is, it doesn't mean what is your name. It means what is your clay? Because we come from the clay. And so that, that teaching that he gave, and right down to, to the Earth here, and our name is, is really connected. And I thought that was pretty, pretty amazing that that happened with the clay. From the teachings of First Nations, and, and Jan Longboat is going to talk about this too. The moon gives us life. Babies are born because of the cycle of the, of the moon. Farmers plant seeds with the cycle of the moon. That 28-day cycle. We have developed the calendar. The Mayan calendar and the Aztec calendars were developed around the cycles of the moon. And agriculture, I talked about. And language. Language is also the root of our languages has come from people marveling at the moon. As, as I started out mentioning that that the Sky Woman landed on the back of the, of the turtle. And when they brought the earth up, she danced around in a circle on the back of the turtle. And she, and as she danced, the earth became Mother Earth. Yeah. And so, and so that was our first, our first Mother Earth, our first Earth. And so the turtle then became one of our teachers, one of our very, very strong teachers. And the teachings of the turtle's back connect to the moon. They're the connection and interconnection to the moon. And so if we look around the back, the back of the turtle here, there's 28 different sections, which is the number that connects to the menstrual cycle. Every 28 days, our women, we live this, this cycle of 28 days. Now, we're getting to something which is extremely important for the creation of life on this planet. That huge collision tilted Earth into 23 and a half degrees. If we did not have that 23 and a half degree tilt, we would not have seasons. And those seasons are extremely important for the development of Earth, of, of life on the, on the planet. The other thing that the moon gives us is that, that 23 and a half degree tilt is kept in that position because the moon holds us in that position. If we did not have the moon influencing Earth with its gravitational pull, the moon wouldn't be there. The Earth would flop over, and Jupiter would become our dominant gravitational pull. So we, instead of being like this, we would flop over like that, and we wouldn't have seasons. So the moon keeps us stable in our orbit on the back of the turtle. Okay. And that 28-day moon cycle for us Hodenosaunee people, when you divide 28 days into 100 number of days in a year, it comes out to 13 moons. So we believe in 13 moons. So if you look here, you'll see that there's 13 sections on the back of the turtle. There's 13 of them. And this represents the sky world and the moons with 28 cycles of the women. When we, we learned this, we realize that there's three moons in every cycle. Spring has three moons, summer has three, fall and winter, there's three moons. But there's also that extra moon because of the number of days. And that's, that's, uh, and that follows around this time of the year of the harvest moon. In these three cycles of spring, if we follow, and we do follow all these cycles of the turtle's back, we realize that this is springtime. And our role is to plant our gardens so that life will continue. Because the moon has gravity. And so when the, when the moon is full, we plant the foods that are below the ground, the root vegetables that need the gravity to pull them up. And when the seeds are above the ground, we do that on the new moon. And so this is the time that we plant our gardens. The next three moons is a time of looking after our gardens. It's a time to assist our food to grow, to be looked after by the moon, by the sun, by the winds, and all of the elements, natural elements of the world that assist our life. And, and that's what we give thanks for every day. Is, is thank you for giving us your life so that life may continue on Earth. And so that's what happens in each cycle. Then this is harvest, and this is winter, and this is rest time. And so if we follow, which we've always followed, the cycles of, of the moon is here. And all we've got to do is look on the turtle's back, and we know exactly what to do at what time. And the women know that every 28 days their moon cycle will appear. So we're, we're really, um, fortunate to have this natural calendar. We call it a natural calendar. And I feel extra [Music] thankful that I belong to this, this clan. I belong to the Turtle Clan, which, which really gives us life, gives us life every day. It, from the time we're born till the time we're no longer here, we live by the cycles of, of our, of the old turtle.
So we've got the conditions for life. We've got oxygen being formed. And the first young plants being formed. When was the very first organism that had multicellular structure with a cell wall? And that's red algae. And they started to come onto the planet about 1.2 billion years ago. And they still are around today. So really, the very first multicellular plant was red algae, which exists today. And 20% of all of our genetic material is from red algae. So all the life forms that we see today is related to plants. 20% of who we are is related to forests, is related to trees, is related to daisies, sweet grass. We're related to sweet grass because we share the same genetic material because we all go back to the common root. And there's the family tree of life on the planet. There's a human being at the top, but the algae is at the very bottom. So we share a lot of our genetic material with life forms that started 1.2 million, 1.2 billion years ago. No moon, no us. No moon, no children. No moon, no trees. The moon is what has given this planet, I guess, the criteria for life to be formed on this planet.
Thomas Alkosh, who is a Navajo, uh, gentleman from Arizona, who studies biology, and he says, science is not just a white man's thing. And I want to say that because of this. Thomas King wrote Coyote Tales. And on the first page, it says, in those days, the moon was much closer to the Earth, and the light from the moon was much brighter. That absolutely stopped me in my tracks. I could not believe what I was reading because a First Nation man knew that the moon was moving away from Earth. Not too many people know that. How did First Nations people know that the moon was moving away from Earth? And that the moon's brightness was a lot brighter a long time ago than it was today? I find that really fantastic. How did they know? How, what is it that, that, how our people were taught the depth of science, the depth of, of life, the depth of survival? And one of those things was, you know, there was 10 of us in our family. And we, we, we didn't have running water. So we had to rely on the water from the rain to help us. And so my, my dad, my father, he would look up into the sky and he would say, well, you children, you say, we better set up our barrels to catch water. It's gonna, it's gonna rain tonight. And he'd be looking up into the sky at the moon. And I didn't understand how he knew it was gonna rain. What was the relationship? Well, sure enough, it would rain. So when I got to be about 15 years old, you know, I went out with my dad. And he'd say, I said, Dad, how do you know it's gonna rain? It's a beautiful night. You know, he said, look at the moon. And look at the, the moon as it's, uh, as its, um, shape.
[Music] And he said, it's holding water. The moon's holding water. And tonight is going to dump it out. And that's, that's, that's brilliant. How did my dad know that? Who never took a science class, but knew the workings of the moon? He knew the workings of the stars. And, and I think that many times, how they gathered that knowledge was through dreams, through visions, and, and through, through that way. And, and to me, as, as old as I am today, they were never wrong because they, they got to understand the natural world, how it worked, and what, what was going to happen. And that's why the old people said, if you want to understand, you've got to learn the, the language of the natural world. And that's what I have done all my life. Is learn the name, the language of the upper world, the sky world, the, the Earth, and all, all the plants, the medicines. And I've spent my life, I guess I could say, that's been my passion, is to learn the language of the universe.
[Music] We thank and we offer gratitude for that, for that moon, for our Grandmother Moon, who still looks after us since the beginning of time, still doing her duty for us as human beings.
[Music] So [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] You.