Marian has worked in Senegal with the country’s Ecovillage Network and been a member of this leading Ndeup shrine family for 20 years. Here are American Study Abroad and Senegalese University students learning from the priestesses of her adoptive family shrines and praying for peace and the environment.  

This shrine family has assisted 17 other Yoff Priestesses and Priests to become a grass roots Cooperation Center, supporting a local government initiative to restore sacred sites.  The new "Community RISE Circle, Yoff" in English is named "RESEAU Cosan in French and Wolof,"  (RESEAU is for REnovateurs de la Spiritualité et des Ecosystèmes AUtochtones, and COSAN -pronounced "Chosan,"- is the Wolof word for ancestral cultural heritage). 

Among their 2016 goals are intensive urban reforestation, summer camp including children's games modeling local and Islamic universal values, review and correction of materials written by outsiders about their tradition in order to establish an accurate version, and preparation to share their tradition with other members of the multiregional RISE CC.  Yoff's tradition up till now preserves a strong indigenous government, internationally popular sacred annual festivals and year-round healing, and has effectively prevented foreign luxury hotels from buying this village’s premium beach-front properties for their private commercial use.

Professor Marie Nazon is a Mambo priestess in training in the United States who has plans to complete the transformation of this center or an alternate center into a RISE Healing reference cengter into a reference center or 

Sacred VeVe symbols and the Poto Mitan, through which the Loas, healing spiritual entities, pass between Heaven and Earth

Vodun is " a way of life ", now applied by many of the Haitian Diaspora and their local Haitian partners to combat poverty and to reforest and  restore the fertility of the land

The Vodun religion supported the Haitian People in declaring and in maintaining their independence since 1804.

Janet co-sponsors and participates offering a School of Living Traditions for Babaylans in Manilla; and provides on-going documentation and support in Palawan to help Palawan based Babaylan women priests and Balyan, male priests to restore and revive their ancestral practices. 
She has begun work with the Tagbanwa, the Batak, and the Tau’t Bato Tribes through visits, immersion, rituals, and shared healing. Janet, a traditional healer herself, and a natural farmer, has also been asked by the Babaylans/Balyans to support the sharing of their good traditional farming practices and herbal knowledge of farming wild crops and for tending wild bees.

Gina Martin has  graciously offered to lead our first US Central RISE Circle Bureau, and to share her own Pagan Triple Spiral Center, seen at right wreathed in green at the May First festival of Beltaine, and with a during the popularly termed "May pole," used in the "May Day" festival.  Triple Spiral which has a large, environmentally active Celtic congregation, is located in rural New York, where it has created sacred groves, a labyrinth and appropriate sites for RISE Circle meetings and gatherings. Tripple spiral has a interfaith indigenous and pagan congregation and  a welcoming, multi-national and multi-cultural congregation.    

Sacred groves are among the oldest nature conservation areas in the world. In Estonia there are beliefs about these areas, that one shouldn't hurt a living being there (grass and trees are not mown, trimmed or cut). No animals may graze there. And visitors also must follow certain rules in the grove.  Estonia's sacred indigenous heritage is rich with rituals similar to those in modern tribal traditioons.

Amalurra, Mother Earth in Basque, seeks to access our global culture by discovering and practicing Basque ancestral values, including connection with nature as a mirror of our inner development processes, and connection with the spirit, which our ancestors lived naturally, and which  is the impulse that emerges with strength as each and every one of our dissociated parts are integrated.

Pictured bottom right, Nonty is the first of our group RISE group to have completed and opened a very near complete WISE EARTH Healing Center, serving primarily to  heal  African immigrants to Spain. Her Center pictured lower right, and above has ample space for educational programs,  Sangoma sweat lodges and other ceremonies, healing and other programs.  She also has a clinic in a nearby city, where she goes to work with disoriented African refugees.

Here the indigenous spiritual practice and musical tradition is Kumina.

These are musicians playing for the Kumina dance. Kumina is in harmony with the earth, seeks guidance from the spirits of the dead and in turn protects the environment.

One of about 300 endangered Brazilian Indigenous reserves Thá-fene has been a rainforest remnant reserve for 20 years, functioning as a cultural and educational center of ancestral Kariri and Fulni-ô traditions.

Wakay is a native representative of indigenous people in the northeast of Brazil. He has the mission to rescue values, traditions and customs to preserve and strengthen their indigenous identity, and disseminates it throughout the world, thus ensuring the continuity of the "living essence" of this traditional culture, under the contemporary context.

This silk coton tree is the  incarnation of a famous ancestor who guides and protects the members of the Sacred Grove and their villages

The Silk Coton is accompanied by a hive of bees, who defend the grove by stinging any unwanted stranger who attempts to enter it.  

The priestess has come to consult the Ancestor and the bees, concerning certain manifestations of climate change in the grove

These shamans belong to one of the last living pre-Hispanic cultures, high in the mountains of Western Mexico, and have lived in seclusion for millennia, praying for the Earth and living sustainably  with all creatures. A few months ago, their prayers were answered with the  request that they come out of their communities to teach interested persons about their philosophy, lifestyle, and ways in which humans can change to become more sustainable.  These workshops take place during sacred fire ceremonies."

“Since our independence in 1990, we have been re-educating our people in our Oulokasie spiritual and cultural heritage.

But these rituals, and values still are dying out, due to lack of connection to nature, or means to restore our sacred sites.

We have no protection against the increasing corporate and municipal construction projects on our lands, which do not feed our bodies and spirit any more.”

Our herbal and medicinal teas (#Nanab – top, /Aubeb bottom)  These plants are harvested with protective rituals and chants to the ancestors to bring rain for them to grow and thrive.

They and most of our forests no longer exist,  due to development that has destroyed all plants an living insects.  we have plans to protect the environment and do replanting of  the medicinal herbs for the future generation.

The most sacred place of worship: The holy fire ‘’khurohos’’, middle, the healing Dance: Kais (bottom right), and our Ancestors (top right) ‘’khai-khoen’’ are the most Sacred parts of our being as #Nukhoen people.

Our ancestor’s demand that we cover the once green, now damaged earth, beneath our circle. Yet what can we do?