The Wisdom of the Past is the Seed of the Future

The Sacred Fire Foundation (SFF) is supporting initiatives that preserve and promote Ancient Wisdom
traditions, ensuring their continuity for the benefit of future generations. Through events and media, the
Foundation seeks to bring a greater awareness and understanding into our modern culture of the irreplaceable
benefit that Ancient Wisdom provides the people of the world. First incorporated in Georgia in 2002, the
Foundation received 501(c)3 status from the IRS in 2007 and was registered as a charitable organization in
California in 2013. The Foundation is run by a team of dedicated and passionate people, the vast majority of
whom are working as volunteers.

About their work:

Because of the nature of their work, the Foundation is unique: it focuses on the preservation of indigenous
traditions and Ancient Wisdom, and also on sharing this Wisdom with the whole world, believing that this can
help us all. Many organizations are focused mostly on preservation, which is vitally important and requires
many groups raising funds and providing assistance on a global scale. Where things are different for SFF, is
that they feel the future of non-indigenous cultures depends on people coming back into a relationship with
the world in a way that everybody honors and cares for the earth and for one another, as it was done for many
generations before us. Therefore, SFF is looking to build bridges between the wisdom keepers and the
predominant culture. Once people experience and remember that all life is sacred, and that everything in the
world is alive, SFF believes that the choices we make for how we live will begin to change and thus provide for
a truly sustainable future for our future.

SFF achieves their goals through various channels: Ancient Wisdom Rising Conferences, grant making, the
annual Wisdom Fellowship Award, and print materials like Sacred Fire Press and Sacred Fire Magazine.

In 2013, SFF supported the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign, an education and advocacy initiative to
raise awareness of, and build support networks, to address the devastation experienced by the
Haudenosaunee nations as part of centuries-long efforts to destroy or assimilate them, and the related
environmental damage locally region and around the globe. Part of this campaign, a symbolic enactment of
the treaty with the Haudenosaunee, took place in the summer of 2013 when Haudenosaunee and other native
people paddled side-by-side, with their allies and supporters, down the Hudson River from Albany to New York
City. The Sacred Fire Foundation supported different Huichol Communities so they can continue to go on
pligrimage to their Sacred Sites every year and conduct ceremony. In 2014 one of the SFF is sponsoring is the
Elders Peoject, part of which is The Black Line Journey in which the four Indigenous Peoples from Santa Marta
(Koguis, Arhuacos, Wiwas and Kankuamos) will go on their sacred pilgrimage to make offerings to their 54
sacred sites along the Lnea Negra in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia so they can bring balance
and healing to their people and their land and strengthen their traditions.



Ancient Wisdom Rising (AWR) Conference:

Every 1.5-2 years, SFF produces a conference that brings together elders from different traditions so that they
may share their wisdom and their perspective on the world. The purpose of the conference is two-fold. One is
to bring the elders together for dialogue and sharing wisdom amongst themselves. The second purpose is to
provide an opportunity for people to learn how the wisdom contained within the indigenous traditions can
help them in their lives today. Elders share their experience, stories of their people. There are some
participatory activities that help participants to experience connection and community. The AWR conference is
one way that we help people to remember this relationship to the sacredness of all life. Past recipients of the
Wisdom Fellowship Award include Chief Oren R. Lyons, from the Onondaga Nation, and Geshe Tenzin Wangyal
Rinpoche, from the Bn Tibetan tradition.

In 2014 SFF will present the Wisdom Fellowship Award at IFIPs World Summit
on Indigenous Philanthropy. SFF is very pleased to honor Tarcila Rivera Zea, a
Quechua activist from Ayacucho, Peru who has devoted over 20 years of her
life to defend and seek recognition and acknowledgment of Peruvian
indigenous peoples and cultures. Her contributions have resulted in the
creation of the Permanent Workshop of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous
Women of Peru, the International Forum of Indigenous Women of the
Americas and the Continental Link of Indigenous Women of the Americas. She
has served as a resource person to the NGO Committee on Indigenous Rights,
and has participated in forums in Nairobi, Cairo, Beijing, Durban and in the United Nations Permanent Forum
for Indigenous Peoples.

You can find out more about Sacred Fire Foundation on their website: http://www.sacredfirefoundation.org/.