Manitonquat

>> author & founder of the Circleway-Method  <<

How is this camp for us? Yeah, I think successfull. I`m very impressed with all the work that everybody is doing. Starting with the organizers from the beginning, lot of thought went into it. And all the people continue to volunteer to do all the things that need to be done. Everything is running smoothly. It`s also relativ unusual for a large group of people that we haven`t had any big upsets or problems. (Not yet, Ellika) It`s a slide for me to run out for (?) were almost there…We only have tonights celebrations, ceremonies. Tomorrow is clan-meeting and the last good-bye. And all has been wonderful.

And I gave a couple of days workshops to my new book about caring for children which I think thats the most important thing we have to work with. I`m very happy that so many people are excited about the whole process. About what we doing, about playing with the children. The ones who have read the book are very excited about the book. Some people told me from my workshops here already just from coming knowing nothing about us. Nothing but they felt completely supported and liberated and just cheerfully grateful that they ran into us. And all of us is happy. That makes me feel good.

Well, we had more of a group this year then before. And we had a couple of people who paying good attention to them. And we will determine to reach out to them because the youth are very important to me. They got very isolated from society there. They are at the point were they are looking whats going on they getting pushed here and there. And they are making up their minds whats outthere. But they don`t much like it. And so they creating their own culture. And we need them. We really do. We need to reach out to them. Get more support them or get more input from youth culture.

About the swedlodge… I don`t always caring about doing swedlodge because I`ve done a lot of in my lifetime. And I have a lot of other things that I wanted to move. And it takes some quite a lot of time. Likely (?) Ellika is very supportive of the swedlodge and makes sure if there is anybody who wants it that it happens. And I was happy that the young people really wanted it, the youth. For my part being able to present that there for them I was unfortunately not able to go throu the entire ceremony inside. Because I realised that if I did I probably would finish of the week here. It was more important to everything else than…Likely I have a wonderful partner that can do the whole thing. And she appointed to me afterwards that it was very important for those youth. And a lot of got a grate deal out of it. So it was a really good thing to do. But you need to talk to them. If you got to find out how it really was.

We try to play every day with the children but with the various…the day been taken up so much by empathize (?) it. The amount of time we had to play with the children was less then I would like. However I would say then it was quality time. I got some pictures today in doing some more play. We got some people out there that really getting into. And the children were loving it. Thats the main thing.

When we began the community-process I was 48.  Cause I had been part of many communities in the past. And had some good ideas about how they should be or what will be good for them. It was a combination of myself an Emmi, who is the mother of my children, wanting the best kind of atmosphere for our boys to grow up in. We began the process when our oldest boy was just two years old. And the other one came along about three years later.

So they grew up in this community that we with other friends created. The one that was created expressively to respect and honour the children as full human beings. Listen to them, make sure that theire wants and needs get expressed and heard and that we all act together. And we had a lot of things to do that. And we were very supportive of their wants and their feelings. We had a lot of fun. We played together. We had a play-day every month were all the whole community went out to play with the children all day long and eat out and cook out together.

And we all used this process of co-counceling that now we are calling supportive listening to help with each other ot find ourselves and our group-relationships and our personal relationships and all that.

It was wonderful. 20 years from the initial-start. Where we had a banner: “In us we trust”. To the final end, when our boys had got to collage, people were leaving to do other projects. And I wanted to expand that community. I wanted a one much larger than the one that we had. I wanted it to reach out further into the world and spread. I wanted an Eco-Village. And I wanted it to be the way we functioned. Thats what lend to our eventually leaving the community and doing the process of making camps and workshops and circles over here in Europe.

I met her when I was doing a workshop in Kopenhagen. And whenever I would come to Europe she would organize things for me and we were travel together. And then she would come to my community. So I had the experience of her community, Kristiania and she had the experience of mine in Mellanokit. And then we build our dream of an Eco-Village. Large enough to be its own culture but functioning the same way that our small community did in the U.S.

What is the Circle Way? Is an combination as its developed now. Capitalized the way we use it. Its also referred to by another group called “Peer-Spirit” that uses the CircleWay in their own way to get groups together, to get people harmonized and working together. They put out a book, called the CircleWay, which has the sub-titel “A leader in every chair”. And its very good. What they don`t have.

What makes ours different is all this supportive-listening tool which we developed from co-counceling.

The whole idea for both of these circleway-projects and others, I think, stams from, my experience, stams from the old experience of native american communities, traditionally. Thats something that I know something about. Probably more than most of the people that are doing communities now.

Because I have lived on reservations, I have traveled through reservations. I have spent lot of time with elders all over North America, Canada and the U.S. And talked to many people about the Circle, about children and elders and all those things. So that is kind of the backround of it what the elders told about the circle. How it helps us all help each other. The basis of the circle, the reason for a circle is to help each other.

And it actually goes back to maybe 100.000 years ago when human beings were first becoming human beings. First making circles they made circles to help each other. To hunt together. To gether food together. To build their homes and settlements together. Do everything together. Take care of the children together. Helping each other is part of our human nature. We want to be helpful. We need help. And we want to help.

But the society changed. Began changing maybe 8-10.000 years ago when civilization began to come out of the population was so big that this circles got lost. The cooperation and the compashion, the helpfulness, the love that was the guide of those old circles got lost. Because the way to survive when fear is the dominating instead of love is to be physically strong and make sure you take what you want.

And that developed a warrior-culture. It was warlords that began to organize the early societys and they became kingdomes and empires. And all of human history is been the same. Its a history of violence, a history of conflict. A history of human beings hurting other human beings for their own selfish needs. Meanwhile behind the scenes all of the native people were living peacefully in harmony with each other and cooperation. Until they were finally conquered by these violent dominating cultures.

The way of living changed for our people from cooperation to domination. And thats to mad. That created a seperation. That seperation which is the most important obstacle we have to our humaness. Keeping us from each other. Actually there are three kinds of seperation. They are all segnificant to us as human beings. First is, human beings are segnifcantly seperated from their roots in the environment, from the earth, from the natural world. From the birds and the plants, and animals, just the natural growths of things.

Its getting worse and worse. More than half the worlds population lives in cities now completely seperated from nature. And its healing effects, and its softening effects, its slowing effects. Going after a faster, mader more confusing, more tense more stressful live. And also a more isolated live. So the second seperation that we all are suffering from is seperation from each other. Communities had broken down. They are no longer close communities anymore. Families had braking down. The young people were leaving home, breaking up, going all over. They all…sound there the family helping …its not there anymore.”[…]