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Grandmothers' Voices
The Grandmothers' Voices began as a seed in Francesca Firstwater's heart twenty-seven years ago with the birth of her first child, Rolling, a daughter of mixed heritage --African/Chickasaw/Irish/German. Her experience as a white woman raising a daughter of color has created a unique psychological and spiritual environment in which both of us have developed. This relationship has developed a life path of exploring the realm of differences that exist between humans and what it is that brings humans together in the midst of all of these differences.
Francesca was confronted very early with an entitlement afforded her merely by the fact of being white, and the obvious lack of entitlement that her daughter would ever be afforded because of her brown skin. At first this realization overwhelmed Francesca with a sense of helplessness and despair, that no matter what she did or didn't do, she wouldn't be able to protect my child from this racial prejudice, and that her culture, her family, her traditions, her very foundation had been formed on a sense of entitlement not afforded Rolling and her non-white ancestors.
This awakening and subsequent disillusionment eventually sparked a determination that led her into her life's work in the field of human psychology/spirituality, exploring the many faces of God/humans across cultural lines. She wanted to understand what created this fear we call racism. Francesca wanted to heal and work at bringing myself out of an assumed entitlement and find something that linked all of us yet honored the brilliance of our diversities. She wanted to participate in creating a future for my children that had enough room for their differences. She wanted to learn about cultural sensitivity and live it in my lifetime. These longings were the seeds that started the Grandmothers Voices inside of Francesca some years ago and have been her compass and guideposts along the way.
The Grandmother's Voices Project is an international exchange program that builds local and global community through the context and commitment to honor and share the innate wisdom of elder indigenous women. The project focuses on sharing the passion, intelligence and creativity of indigenous women, while creating an infrastructure within the world community for this to be shared. Convinced that the future of every community lies in sharing the energy, intelligence and passion of its people, the concept of the 'Grandmother's Voices' is being developed to support indigenous women leaders (elders) in fulfilling their visions and dreams. It is our belief that the wisdom of these women is critical to the survival of their communities and that enlarging the context of community from local to global offers additional human resources to inspire community revitalization, and provides an effective mechanism for mobilizing community leadership.