“Mother Earth is in agony and we must come forward to heal her and all of her inhabitants… because nothing will change unless we change, all of us.” —The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers We’ve destroyed our planet more in the past 100 years than the prior 1,000 before it. With a chaotic over-focus on youth, GMOs, geo-engineering, untenable workweeks and a world population edging towards 10 billion people, we’ve lost our center, our anchor, and our connection to what’s really important. Some believe we are entering the sixth extinction. We are at a critical juncture for creating a road map to building a better world: a world in balance and in harmony with Mother Nature and each other. “Man did not weave the web of life… he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” —Chief Seattle Personally, I believe that we are all connected to each other as well as to the natural world: the plant people, the stone people, the two-legged, the four-legged, the finned, the furred, the winged ones, etc. Within our fabric of connectivity exists a living essence that can provide the help that we desperately need, which we might not be able to access through traditional venues alone. This short film, Pachamama, is an educational piece designed to create awareness about alternative ways people can help each other and Mother Earth: ways that have been practiced for thousands of years in indigenous cultures around the world. Pachamama takes us back to a simpler time, a time when we lived in harmony with our earth and in balance with each other and our environment. In ancient times, community elders often served the function of helping their tribe and their community members to learn, grow and heal. Called witches, priests, medicine people and shamans, they connect with the spiritual world to gain the knowledge and experience needed to heal people and planet. “Shamans / medicine men are the keepers of a remarkable body of ancient techniques that they use to achieve and maintain well-being and healing for themselves and members of their community. Shamans talk with plants and animals, with all of nature. This is not just a metaphor. They do it in an altered state of consciousness.” —The Way of the Shaman: Michael Harner Pachamama provides information from three medicine people, Amanda Foulger from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Tomas Bostrom from the Four Winds Society, and Julie Lynn Tumamait-Stenslie, a Chumash elder, to drive awareness about the importance of reconnecting to ourselves and natural world to help save our people and our planet. “It is in sharing the dream that you keep the dream… The way that we preserve our ceremonies, our culture, is by sharing the knowledge with those who would take the time to listen.” --Grandmother Mona Polacca, Hopi/Havasupai/Tewa, Arizona