My name is Vunit Foster and I am a full-bladed climate mode dot Indian. The climate mode dot people reside in the state of Oregon, so this is the state in which I was born. At a very early age since I was placed in various foster homes, one of the foster homes ended up to be in Minnesota and I was with a native family and that was my first introduction to the native people. Because prior to that, the homes that I resided in were not native people. We had no idea about the cultures while it was myself at such a young age. So I basically had to discover being a native person and I did it through this native family that took me in as a foster boy. They were involved with tradition and culture and they would attend ceremonies and being at the age I was at that time 14. I really had no knowledge, no interest about separating what a native life was compared to the life I had lived. But I started attending ceremonies with them basically from their request and it seemed as though it just miraculously happened that I connected with what was being said, the songs that would be in some and the men that were speaking and the way they spoke, I resiginated with that and from that moment on I tried to make sure that if not the family at least myself attended some sort of ceremony or gathering and that was my introduction into the native world. Well, at that age at 15, 14, these men and women, they were speaking, they were leaders, they were great leaders and I didn't realize that what I was listening to in these meetings was the birth of the American Indian movement. Unlike a lot of other youth that were drawn toward youth activities, I was drawn toward the singing, I was drawn to the language, I was drawn to the ceremonies and eventually I was drawn to the politics of what I was hearing. So at that time because the way I was brought up my self-esteem wasn't that great. In fact I often times look for a way out of life and it was that American Indian movement. I won't go into the story in depth but it was that movement that that meeting that I attended was one that saved my life. And ever since then I have dedicated my life to not just the American Indian movement but to the spiritual path. So at that very early age, working and living actually, besides medicine men and women, I started to learn native culture in a different way than I ever, ever knew was possible I guess because my contact or my visual contact with native people has always been television. This was the opportunity to get first-hand experience from your native people in a real native setting. And so at the age of 17, I went on my first vision quest and working with the medicine men at that time. I learned many, many things, many ceremonies and many ways on this spiritual road which eventually helped me overcome my depression, helped me overcome some of the battles I was facing in my own personal life. So as my life kind of progressed, I became an actor for many years and Hollywood and I eventually became a private investigator, keeping my background issues in the back of my mind and what I went through, I got involved with the mental health program, what to college, her psychology and family therapy and that helped me to move into a professional career as a counselor, as a therapist. The difference was, I was taking traditional concepts, traditional ideas and implementing them into the field of psychology. So where that really actually took me was to understand that native people have always had a psychology. But it was more traditional. Today's psychology textbooks, psychology, if you will, concentrates on the mind and the thought process, where is traditional philosophy and psychology deals with the heart process, feelings, emotions and what that really means in the traditional content. So I started to develop exercises, physical exercises that can be shared not just in our native community but also with the states and with federal programs. And from there, I kind of just started to work in the mental health field and found some programs, youth programs, adult programs, dealing with addiction, dealing with social issues that we face today. In doing that, it led me, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, it led me to where my life is today. Prior to being here in Brazil, I was traveling all throughout Europe, Japan in different places of the world, sharing not only the traditional concepts for lots of the ideas of native people, spirituality, but how to implement those teachings into daily life, how we can overcome some of the obstacles that we face today. The reason of the world that is faced with a magnitude of domestic violence, of addiction, of self-inflicted depresions and what I discovered just recently in the last ten years, I started working with what I referred to as past cultural historic trauma. The seventh generation, a native American concept, deals with this and I've been able to take that seventh generation concept and begin to work on a healing process of our past generational historic trauma. Now I've been around the world, so I hear many people talking about past cultural traumas, but in the sense that it becomes a blaming, a justification to blame our current issues, our current problems that we face today, our ancestry. Well, some of that, yes, it does come from that. But we have an opportunity to heal, we have an opportunity to empty the bucket that has been handed down in the bucket we inherited with the pain and the sorrow of our past generations. And I come to the conclusion that if we empty that bucket, because we today have the means, we have the know-how, we have the knowledge, we have the wisdom, and we have the tools to do it. So we empty that bucket of the past generations, we can let our ancestors rest in peace, stop digging them up to blame our problems on them, and we can live the happy life that they wish they could have lived because I look at those generations and I put it in a time frame. I look at what was happening in the period of time on my great, great grandmother and grandfather. Then I look at the time period what was happening during my grandmother and my grandfather's time. And then I look closer to my mother and my father and I see what was happening, what led to alcohol, those things. So when I started to empty that bucket as the seventh generation, my ancestors, my relatives behind me can rest in peace and I can live the life that they probably wish that they could have lived. The reason it's important for me to empty that bucket using that concept is because now I have two daughters. And empty in that bucket, I know exactly what my daughters are going to inherit. They're going to inherit the knowledge and the wisdom to deal with problems and situations in their life. And it's going to be carried on to my grandson and my grand daughters and my great grand daughter and great grandson who are not in this world yet. That is the seventh generation. Three generations behind us, three generations ahead of us and me at the top is the seventh generation. Soon I will step down and take my parents' place and my daughters were stepped into my place and be in the next seventh generation for it rotates it continues. So I've been able to work successfully. I may add working with psychologists, therapist, doctors, medical doctors because if we look at those fields, they're very intellectual fields. So I help them to understand what intuitive healing is, how we use the heart, how we can heal ourselves, how we can begin to heal the processes which has taken mankind, eons to discover that he can heal himself. And so as we begin to implement our native teachings, and our native ideas and concepts and philosophies into everyday society, people begin to understand it's a very simple process. The simple process is just living your life who you are and when I say that, many people become their sickness. They carry on the personality of their sickness. So their sickness takes control of their life, whether that sickness be some kind of medical sickness or most importantly emotional sickness. So a depressed person becomes so depressed, so down that depression begins to dictate to them how to feel, what to feel, what to do, how to do it. And that person is inflicted by that listens to depression. Because myself, I'm one of those examples. Let me give you a little quick story. I was sitting on my flat and I was just minding my own business and I got to knock on the door and I opened the door and there's depression. Didn't say good morning, didn't say hello, how you're doing, it just came in. And went all through my flat, told me what to do, went to do it, how to do it, and it did whatever, and I let it. And when it was finished with me, it just got up and left. Didn't say thank you, didn't say goodbye, didn't say you later. It just left. Few weeks later when buying another muck on the door, I opened it and there's depression. Depression's standing there with the whole box full of groceries. He goes into my kitchen, takes everything I like to eat out and puts everything in the cupboard that he likes. Again, took over my house and when he was finished left. No thank you, no goodbye, no see you later. A few months went by and I got knock on the door and there's depression. And he's holding a suitcase, clothes, and he goes to my closet, takes out my bright colored shirts, hangs up all his flat clothes, makes himself at home, tells me what to do, what to do it, how to do it. And I did it. I did everything depression asked. And then in the morning, I was sitting at the table drinking coffee and depression came in. I knew. I knew what depression wanted me to do next, but I already tried it. It didn't work. So I looked depression in the eyes and I said, sit down. We need to have a talk. Depression came and sat down. And I said, listen, you're welcome to come here anytime you want, anytime you want to come, you're welcome. But when you do, you have to follow my rules. And with that depression stood up, looked at me and said, I respect you. I asked depression, why do you respect me? And depression's answer, you stood up to me. And I looked at depression and I said, I respect you too, because I know how much power you have. And with that depression stood up told me, I am leaving and he left. A few weeks later, God is not going to die. Depression standing there, looked at me. Can I come in? And I said, sure, come on in. We sat down. We had a good cup of coffee. He helped me write a couple of good songs. I'm a guitar. I looked at my watch and I said, it's time for you to go. And depression stood up and it left. See, that concept, that story is saying. Instead of spending the years that we have fighting, pushing away our feelings, which is a part of us, make friends with your feelings. Make allies with your feelings, not enemies, because you're only fighting yourself. You're the only one that's going to end up with bruises, not your feeling, not your emotion. That is a traditional concept utilizing words, if you will, to fit into something that we deal with every day. People are depressed. People are angry. People are frustrated. People are jealous. People have hatred. Rage. Those are feelings and those are emotions. They are a part of us. They are attached to us. So using this concepts, I tried to bring the teaching bit. It's time to surrender. It's time to make friends with your feelings, because making friends with your feelings, you make friends with yourself. That's just one of the many exercises that I've come up with that I've been able to share in circles and different programs. If you're coming to a retreat or a workshop, work it, work it, do the work, don't come expecting everything to be ready for you and enjoy that weekend and when it's over two weeks later, you're back into your depression state, you're back into your emotional state. The ceremony should be with you. It should be in your heart. When you're at that ceremony, when you at that workshop, that retreat, you should be putting it inside your heart so that you could take it into that other world. Because just like us, Native people, if you're walking this spiritual road, you're walking in two worlds. Both feet in the intuitive world of ceremony, both feet in the intellectual world of society, the only difference is now you've taken that intuitive side of yourself and placed it in your heart and it's always there. Because there are some things that you can do in society that doesn't accommodate your spiritual path that you follow. You have to do it from the heart. So in final words, remember this important quote, I came up with this a few years ago. On this spiritual path, you must be willing to compromise your lifestyle to accommodate your spiritual path. But you must not be willing to compromise your spiritual path to accommodate your lifestyle. If you are seeking something, you must give something. And sometimes giving means giving tears, sometimes giving a shout, sometimes giving of yourself. So in final, I want to say for you that are viewing this, remember to walk your ceremony and remember the moment you were conceived in the womb of your mother, you were given a beautiful spirit. And sometimes you'll be coming to this world, people cover that beautiful spirit up, sometimes we cover that beautiful spirit up. But that spirit, it's like the sunshine. No matter how dark the clouds are over us and we cannot see the sun, no matter how dark things are over us in our life and we cannot see that beautiful spirit, that beautiful spirit, just like the sunshine.