i am so delighted to welcome dr a need a century as she is a transformational leadership and corporate consultant she shares the wisdom of the elders and their message of breakable connection in her new great to have you here now meta i know you well but i think people would love to know about your heritage about your background you have some very proud of my background i am aspect trying i'm actually have inclusion i don't like women or people of color gay people others were rising up so i did my volunteer work at this volunteer gather and back in the mid ninety's those who was there and was going to be presented to us and the story and so as i was there the first just like a chicken with their head cut off trying to figure out what am i supposed to be doing i'm not losing hope not wanting to do this and more having my kid stay but like what am i supposed to do all of a sudden the elder shares the story of these twenty seven coming together and putting in the gifts and yes each you know then it makes sense to me and i realize that my quest for more information more knowledge more war more was totally out of alignment with what my heart and my mind really are or which was wisdom the smell of sage and sweetgrass drew me into the conference room i became fully present for the first time in months i saw with one hundred eagle feathers hanging in the center of the room it symbolized a prophecy from over one hundred years ago about a time when the elders from different directions came to pray and sing together remember grandmother and grandfather make no mistake we each have a role to play we are all part of one mother earth we have been living in a time of a great winter and now we must prepare for the spring there was then he began naming the four gifts for all humanity to help prepare ourselves and our communities from the north the power to forgive the forgivable from the west the power of unity from the east the gift of healing balance other human beings nature and the earth well that's something that we can learn particularly from indigenous americans and i am grateful that you brought this book to us but in reading it you talk about your own personal story and the the brilliance of your mother who had this wisdom about valuing people and seeing people as individuals talk sat there the white man returned when he saw the profile of my father was very dark and fired two bullets and killed them on the spot needless to say i was thirteen at the time  n husband if he knew he was mexican and native american he thought i was black and she went on to say a little things about what people know my mom is pretty solid short little woman and that's the first time i ever saw her shak and i remember hurst well listen said stuff you don't even know what you're saying you don't even know what you're teaching your son but i want you to know that it really hard to pray for your soul if you get off my porch and that night everybody is doing that let me interrupt you and just clarify in other words you're saying that when a person of color was murdered or something horrible happened the newspapers would show the bodies  if a person who was caucasian had was murdered they would not show the bodies yet so there's an economist they would not show that right and this was a form of disrespect and your mother was wise enough to teach you this yes yes and so she did from those beginnings and also from a beginning of having to endure sexual abuse for nine years of my early years reach for thirteen it it's not a surprise that i went into the field of work that i did that i was eager to get my ph to eager to go out and be respected to go into all the for kinds of systems organizations with the people to end needless suffering to dream people together to really be in love with each other to want their gifts regardless of what color what gender or way to should ever meet we're all connected and that comes from the indigenous part of  because she says something else in your book that just took my breath away first of all let's go over this first point to forgive the unforgivable it is it to write that phrase it's easy to say that phrase but to actually forgive the unforgivable your mother gives you an example you ask her you know should you how can you not forgive the taking of our land the killing of our people as you talk about indigenous americans and she says that's or maybe it's the elder i'm sorry maybe i'm saying it let's motherly the elder says that's not the worst thing can you tell the story i was on your mother but actually i realize now it's the elder telling you this yes but they're all connected with computers yes so when i did was in the presence of the who being presented in ninety five while ensuring my time and i was there and heard about  wrong the worst thing that can happen to our people to any people is still in scope and that's what you mean you are losing hope and you can't do that because you are seeing something that other people don't see and we need you the earth is calling for you to be able to show us how to love each other how to work together dance to her cross all of our just before direction and that when she said that to you it was just another reinforcement that we're all meant to be here regardless of our beginnings were largest what's happening right now how challenging every one of us is and i'm so grateful to her for conversation with but i'm just still stuck on this point of forgiving me and forgivable i mean how do you do that well that really starts a lot with about yourself now and taking in what other people were seeing of my goodness my sacred miss my abilities alevi all the wonderful gifts that i come with what really came through for me was an opening up to love myself to not mean that you don't seek justice just means that you free yourself from the chains of that so that you can use your energy or now so i'm going to its advocates and champions for that is the best explanation of that sense of self and self love how empowering that can be to free oneself thank you for that anita now you bring this work that you do not only to people around you but to corporations to institutions how was it received and how are you received well sometimes the first i received was a little bit of a ph d a native american and they take out the paper and pens and they're winding down and that is whether it's in singapore or who gives your body you are canada or mexico or wherever and i believe that is because these foreign  training i'm new to this author thing but i risk comparer because it's time for everything going on needs as they were this is stunning to hear that it is well received in that you continue to do the work well let's talk a little bit about the current environment and usually i talk about this as a politics free zone but let's see if we can look at some of the challenges and not get too deeply into who's right and who's wrong but i am concerned about the mistreatment of mexicans and mexican americans the mistreatment of hispanic americans and native americans what can we do to correct this on an individual basis what can we as americans do to solve this problem yeah well thank you you know speak out speak to your neighbors about what's going on speak to your the people you bill left and you know i still believe in how it actually whatever that is some people will go out in march peaceful march if that's not the worst use your math if there's any but it's actually being in positive action prayer is always well but it's really unclear when we if people only knew all of the contributions is it does have ideals to live up to and so as each one of us would really take that to heart then we would be doing and speaking out whether it's a latino or the spandex whatever native americans but we would speak out  that was really however if you look at the news very little time was given to them and yet it's critical so we need to keep looking at the issues that affect all of us rather than just seeing it as the people on the front line gets it all impacts the wall impacts all of us not just makes more sense though the water getting polluted affects all of us not just me it's just that these folks are stepping up and standing there really important for us to be discerning and in with our answers and in our hearts what we know to be right in your book there are references to the four directions can you talk about that and how our understanding of our relationship to the earth will grow if we learn more about native american practices well one of the things i  oh all of this one is this for directions give us everything that we need the problem is we've gone into a world view a mindset that is it's all just about  notion called seven generations and the idea of this is a leader as any person because we lead our own life not others is that any decision we're going to make we look  seven generations and how they impact on ones we now that's coming from a we notion but when you start looking at that it's current used to really think about the decisions you make that look like short at this again and creating that mindset where every decision we make is you can you do then if it seven generations are going to we would be struggling some of the issues of oceans and and all the waters and instruction are on many