If you're speaking truth every day through your life and stuff, I think the hardest thing to deal with that is that people like will hate you.

If you're always in truth, you know, and you always just have to say what's real. Yeah. And then people don't want you to say, what's real.

Oh like the water crisis in California. And you can be at high levels of decision making and people still want to ridicule you. And then at one point you go, okay, well, what's going to happen is going to happen. And, you know, you just let things go and you just realize that things are going to go the way they go.

Hello. Welcome to. We're the Leaders We're Looking For a podcast from United Way of the Wine Country, produced with tech support and direction from Brandt Hoekenga and TIV Branding.

We are here to share the voices of our neighbors, change makers and everyday leaders who are building a region rooted in belonging, resilience and justice. And I'm Lisa Carreño. I'm president and CEO of United Way of the Wine Country,

Thanks for joining us. And let's get started.

In this episode, we are honored to welcome Charlie Toledo, executive director of the Suscol Intertribal Council. For decades, Charlie has been a powerful voice for indigenous rights, land stewardship, cultural revitalization, and restorative healing across Napa and the greater region. In fact, her work has international impact now. Her leadership is rooted in deep ancestral wisdom, community care, and a lifelong commitment to protecting the land and the people who belong to it.

Charlie's work reminds us that leadership is not simply about influence. It is about responsibility, reciprocity, and remembering our place in the long story of the land.

Through the Suscol Intertribal Council. She has created spaces for cultural education, youth empowerment, environmental protection and indigenous presence to be both acknowledged and truly honored. Charlie has also been intentional about making these spaces inclusive for non-native people. That is how I have come to know her over the past three years. Through her generosity in opening her circles so that we can learn together.

Receiver teachings and experience are inherent oneness with all that is. It is an expansive oneness that embraces everything seen and unseen. Past, present and future generations and all sentient beings. Being in these spaces with Charlie has grounded and strengthened me in profound, indelible ways, shaping my professional and community life and always guiding me toward becoming a better human.

In this conversation, Charlie invites us to reflect on what it means to lead with humility, with reverence, and with a fierce dedication to truth and healing. Her voice adds an essential thread to season one,

expanding our understanding of courageous leadership and reminding us once again that we are the ones we've been waiting for. Well it's beautiful.

Makes me want to cry. Welcome, Charlie. It's so good to have you here. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I, I, like I said, I'm, I'm honored. And I'm grateful. So our first question, is, is always this,

What story of your life reminds you why you do this work? Well, I think,

It's not a story, but just a memory. You know, I'm one of those people who loves people. When they get boring, they forget where they came from and who they are. And so I'm one of those people who didn't do that. And so I always knew, you know, I think probably at the age of three, I was aware of I could see things and pay attention to things and people weren't seeing.

You're paying attention to you. So I started being, you know, conscious being really at the age of three. But even in utero, I remember that time. And so I was always aware of that we were being born into a time of, dramatic change. And then it was really important to pay attention. And then it was really risky for us.

You know, in the past, people like myself have been killed publicly and all that stuff for quite a long time. So. And then also being Native American, being born into this DNA. There was the genocides here and the lies about the genocides, what I call the myth of discovery, and then the European invasions that were the beginning of the genocides in the United States, but especially harsh in California and in New Mexico.

There was still a real visible presence of native people. So we knew that we were a part of that world, but we weren't a part of it. We've been forcefully assimilated. You know, my grandparents were taken as babies. So I, could see that, disconnect. Well, you know, early on, and I was aware of it, but, being born into a large family, my father was one of 12 siblings, and I was one of ten, but the oldest, a second twin with a brother, 15 months younger.

So I was an age group of five under five, which makes for kind of like a little village. We were our own little cosmos in New Mexico, in the desert. We were allowed to play outside, so. And we developed our own cosmology. You know, we had our own little universe, our own world that we lived in, collectively.

So I think that answers the question.

What I get when I hear you talk about the story, the story of your life, remembering your origin. Being able to see.

Hear, understand what really happened compared to what your were being told about what happened and knowing. I think in our world, in New Mexico, we were being told, you know, because the native population can still see. But we knew we were separate from it, but we weren't separate from it. So I don't think we were being told, like, not like in California say or New York.

Some of the areas where the genocides were particularly harsh and the population was nearly wiped out in New Mexico. We could see the tracks. We went to the, you know, pueblos and villages and went to, you know, ceremonies and stuff. So that was part of my early childhood. So it wasn't separate. I wasn't. And then we didn't, you know, because we were this little posse of kids, we didn't pay that much attention to what the adults were doing.

You're talking about, except when it was time to eat or go to church or something. But I think the church being raised in the Catholic Church, that we I knew that I was separate from that. But it was just something you just kind of had to do and you just think, okay, this is what we're going to do.

And we just kind of did it. But I realized it wasn't, it wasn't real I guess is the word, I, I, it is just so profoundly interesting to me that as a posse of kids and as, as, as a three year old, you developed your own cosmology, as you just said.

To help you navigate and meet all of the.

Inconsistencies and and myths and and harsh realities of of the world that you were inhabiting and inherited. And it wasn't that inconsistent because we were just outside all day playing, creating. So it wasn't we weren't it wasn't till we started going to school, I think, and then especially moving to California as an eight year old. And that's when the worlds were separated out, you know, because it was the Anglo worlds and the white world, and that we knew we were different than that.

But my mother really wanted us, you know, which we understood, especially as adults, why she separated us from. It's kind of like new Mexico. The whole state was like a reservation. So it was pretty violent and primal and stuff. And she separated us from that and moved to, you know, Orange County, which is predominantly Anglo. And so we knew that we weren't that.

We could see it. But again, we were a large family because by the time we moved to her eight children and ten children and we were going to Catholic school, so we were separate even still from the neighborhood. And then the kids, we would charge them money to come and play in our backyard. Let's just put it that way.

I got in trouble when my mother found out, but quite a bit of money, you know, because we we just we, you know, we had our own, I guess, gang, you would say, but, you know, a posse. So we got real secure. And I never went anyplace alone, I think, until I was, like, 18. Wow. Now, we could never leave the house without my sister or brother or, you know, in high school with friends.

We always had to be in groups. And so in that cluster, it's kind of protective cluster. Yeah. And then we knew because my mother would say, you know, because we were in understanding the dream realm is real and stuff. And that's what I would do sometimes if I had a really profound lucid dream, I'd be sitting on the bed now, my brother and sister would be sitting around.

I'd be telling him a dream, and my mother would interrupt us, you know? And then she'd say, don't talk like that. When you go outside and we go, okay. And so we did it. That was a big step when I started to talk about metaphysics and the kind of the different realms of reality, different dimensions of reality. And that was until actually pretty recently trying to think, I think, maybe 2011.

Like publicly, I was always teaching classes and stuff, and I always had a group of people that I was working with. But as far as just starting to talk about the Dream Realms and the different shifts of, cosmic ages and stuff, you know, that were like how I talk now about moving into the Aquarian Age and into the Piscean age.

I wasn't talking like that at all publicly. Because it was still too, too dangerous, you know? You know, it's not quite so dangerous. Yeah.

I, you know, the.

It just feels like there, there are all of these different layers and experiences of claiming and naming and, and, and, and manifesting throughout your life from the time you were so young to becoming the presence that you are now in the voice that you have now. I think I've always had the force. I think even as a child, sometimes people were scared of me.

And then I know that I was just thinking about it and then drive over here. I was thinking about a funeral that I went to. A friend of mine's dad died and I didn't want to go into the Catholic Church. My friend was like, come on, let's just do it. She wasn't Catholic, or she'd been raised Catholic, too, but she didn't.

And then we did go in and I went in really conscious and it was sad. I know it's about 300 people. So the church was full. It was this kind of famous person who was my friend. Standard passed. And the priest, when he was doing the mass, he kept giving me these dirty looks and I was like, because it felt like he could see me.

But we were having a telepathic battle. And at this point, I think we're an adult. You know, it wasn't very long ago, probably 20 years ago. And he was thinking, but you get to you, you know, when you're dead, then we get you, you know, you think you're here, you know, you think he got away, but he didn't.

And I was just like, crap. And then my friend is like, do you know that guy? And I was like, no, because why does he keep looking at you like that? I said, I don't know, but I'm going to leave now. And I just got up and left, you know, in the middle of mass, which back then was really still a big thing if it's to get up and leave.

But I thought that was interesting because I haven't had that experience. But that was real profound because I felt like that person was the personification of evil and that they are, you know, harvesting souls. And then he thought, you know, he's just letting me know telepathically while he was doing the mass in front of 300 people that we got down and it's like night out.

Right. But so those are all those things that go on, but that kind of stuff. Now it's really overt what's happening in our society right now, that struggle of the negative and the positive and the kind of the soul harvesting or whatever the things that you call that.

You have often said, in the meditations that I've been joining you in for almost three years, that what we're seeing right now is being revealed because it's what we're meant to see, right? Everybody's waking up, like from a dream. Yeah. Do you want to share more about that? Well, I think that, you know, the dimensions that I talk about a lot, that there's multiple dimensions of reality, and you're facing this third dimension that we're in this physical world.

The illusion for most people is that this is real and everything else isn't. And so the fourth dimension started disappearing around 1986, and that's when there was a lot of channeling going on, a lot of books being written said that might room. And that's because the fourth dimension, which is the dimension just above the third dimension, it looks like the physical world, but without the physical matter, there's no matter.

It's just it's emotional body, really. And then the fifth dimension is what some people might call heaven, or that higher dimension of the higher self, the ascended self. And so the fifth dimension started compressing that fourth dimension. And so that dimension either had to ascend or, or descend to the third dimension. So that's why there were so many of that, because a lot of those entities were just descending coming into the third dimension.

But also that was a way of preparing people, especially people in the Western and the industrial nations, because in other countries it's not like that, but in the industrial world it real firm contact that this physical reality is out there. And so that's sort of helping prepare. People will make decisions and doctors. And then now it's happening, which is real exciting is the fifth dimension is is blending in with this dimension.

So the world is becoming very fluid. And especially now moving into the the year of the horse, the fire horse. That things are becoming more fluid. So that means things will be changing really rapidly and things that we imagined were solid. They won't be as solid anymore. They're not already because some people think of institutions as solid things like, like the Catholic Church or the government or you know, the cement walls, all that stuff is real and everything else isn't.

And so that illusion is being dispelled.

Charlie, when in your life had to have you had to pause, listen deeply and see with new eyes. I thought about that question because I never did, I didn't I do pause, you know, because I meditate all the time. And then I started praying and meditating literally as a three year old year for you. And that's one good thing I got from the Catholic Church is a meditation.

And being raised in Catholic schools with Irish nuns. The Irish nuns are very esoteric. So my third grade teacher, she does this meditate all the time. We would do visualizations and if somebody lost something, you'd pray for something or you just saying, you know. So we would start class and meditate. And I always was meditating. I was always dreaming.

People thought, I think sometimes I remember one of my cousins and that's one of my early childhood. Does she talk because I didn't talk that much, which cracks people up now. But, I but I was always watching. Yeah. And and so I remember them saying that she talk and then I wouldn't talk and be like, you can't bring me down.

But just that thing of of watching and trying to discern what other people could see or not see. And so I think there's, there's different times, you know, like I took that one pause or I just bought a one way ticket to Europe after the Vietnam War. We were protesting the draft and because Orange County had the strictest draft board in, California back in the 1960s and 70s.

So that means in high school that that my brothers and my classmates were being forced with either getting college degrees, which in Catholic schools we were being directed to be college oriented. But, some of my brothers weren't that intellectual. So they were going to have to be facing the draft right? At 18. They'd have to sign up.

And if they didn't sign up, the FBI would be at their door on their birthday. If they hadn't registered for the military and they had the choice of getting arrested right then in their home or going down to the draft board and signing up, which the FBI would escort them there. So that was in high school, 1968, in Orange County.

That was that reality. So even in high school, a lot of us were, you know, really starting to rebel. And that's what I understood about the military industrial complex, I think when I was 16. And I understood what that was, and I thought, I'm never going to fit into that again. Thinking of things as realities that you feed or deal with me.

And I thought, that's not going to be a part of my reality. So I became an active, draft counselor in high school and actually went to training after high school working with young men, to help them avoid the draft in legal ways. And then the draft got the war in Vietnam and the draft the involuntary draft ended.

And so I took a leave of absence from college and never did go back. But, just came up to San Francisco because it was such a big party going on. You know, we had friends in the city, so we'd been coming up to party and demonstrate in the streets. And then at one point I just said, I'm just going to take a break and go to San Francisco and hang out, which I did.

And then that was a party, you know, it was really fun at Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin lived down the street from us in the Mission District, and they had these free concerts in the park. So it was really a very, very celebratory time. But then the party started to shift, you know, there started to be the LSD that was giving away free on the street, started having acid or not acid, but speed cut into it.

So people were having bad trips. In that analysis of them. And they used to be the statement, you know, love it or leave it. And I thought, well, I can't love it, so I'll leave it. So I and I was getting tired of people just talking and not doing stuff. I was about 20. I think it was my 21st birthday I had bought.

I got a passport and took about a one way ticket to Western Europe, and that was probably the pause I did in my life, getting away from the Catholic upbringing and being, you know, surrounded by siblings. I have 101st cousins and all my brothers and sisters. So just moving myself out in a singular entity, out into the world.

At the time, of course, I thought I was all grown up, but, you know, from 76, 70, 21 seems pretty young. But then there was all these people who were traveling around Western Europe and because of my experience, draft counseling, in my experience, resisting military induction, the young men traveling around in Western Europe at that time were from Germany, the United States, South Africa, and Israel, the countries that had enforced draft.

So I was still doing a lot of draft counseling. And then just partying. You know, there was a lot of just fun go having fun. Yeah. So I was doing that. And, I was going to go, I really wanted to go to Afghanistan back then, but then when I got to Istanbul and stuff, I realized it was too dangerous.

As a single woman, I was traveling with some guys I'd meet different people, different. But then I thought, it's getting I wasn't gonna do that by myself. So then I went and spent the winter in Israel and really saw again the divide there is very similar to the genocides of California and New Mexico, where the, Arab population, Muslim population had been wiped out and relocated into, camps and stuff.

And we I was living on a small kibbutz in the south of, Israel, south of Tel Aviv, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And we would go hiking in the hills lot very similar to New Mexico, the desert there, you know, kind of a semi arid desert. And see these ruins of these buildings. And I would ask the kibbutz looks what what is this?

Well, we had to blow up the houses because we didn't want the people to come back and say, that's my father's house. I said, when did that happen? That was the Israeli wars that occurred shortly before I had come into Israel. And then we traveled, because we had time off on the kibbutz in a couple weeks. It was really easy to hitchhike around Israel.

So I went up into the camps in Jericho and stuff and met with Muslim people in the refugee camps. And, and then I realized I wasn't gonna stay in Israel because I was thinking the kibbutz. I thought of communal living. That's what I was being attracted to, communal living and stuff. And and then I realized it was very structured.

And then, it was predatory, you know, that that that the British, the British and the American government gave Israel to the, quote, Jewish people, but it was fully inhabited. It's like California again, the myth of discovery, that same Euro invasion, genocidal, takeover of land and, people's lives. So I didn't want to participate in that.

So then I traveled to Greece, and so I just traveled around for a while, and I found myself back in London and was really happy there with my friends. But then I had had a kind of a visionary experience when I first left in south of France, and I had seen I was this we were in a bar and this guy was arguing with me about your country, your country.

And I said, it's not my country. And he goes, show me your passport. And I was like, And then he said, show me your passport. You're a tourist in this town. You have to carry your passport with you all the time. I know you have it on you. So I'm like okay and I took out my best work.

And then he said, look, there's your name, there's your face. You're an American citizen. You're lying to yourself if you think you're not American. And that was kind of like a cold water in my face. And I had like a vision which I would periodically in my life. Everything just went dark. And I saw this huge dragon just standing with its feet in the United States.

It's just raging, scorching the Earth. And I thought, if you've come to kill the dragon, you have to live. You have to go where it lives. And I thought, oh, man, I had just been two months out of the United States. So I'm like, that'll make me go back there. But I just said, well, okay, you know, tell me when it's time to go.

I've never I was the least amount of responsibility I've ever had in my life again. As an older sibling, in a large sibling group, I was caretaking babies, you know, from the time I was about three and four. And so I was just like, well, I'm just let me party for a while, let me tell me when it's time to go home.

And I heard, okay. And then I was just back in the bar with my friend and we were, you know, carrying on with our argument. But I thought at that time I had the clarity that I would return to the United States and that I would find the iris of the eye of the dragon, because most people don't realize that the iris of the eye is actually a hole for the brain, and it's the blind spot of the eye.

So I thought, I'll just dwell in the iris of the eye of the dragon when it's time. I could just pith the brain. So that was like, took about three minutes. You know, it takes a while year to talk about it. Then it happened because it was just a real quick, flash. And then I was just in this little village just south of France, having a good old time.

So I kept, you know, on with what I was doing. But then when I was back in London, I was staying with some white South African friends of mine, that they became lifelong friends that I'd met on the road and traveled with through Italy and Greece and Turkey. And then his brother had been living in London. So I was making my way back here, going back to South Africa to fulfill his, military obligation.

And his other friend, because of his two friends that I had had decided to stay in Israel and didn't go back, which meant he could never go back to South Africa. He became a global citizen, both of them dead. But anyway, at this point in the 18 months later, I'm in London living with his brother and and then I had another little vision that, oh, it's time to go home to the home of your grandfather.

Yes. And I remember I just started crying because I was in a record shop and back in the 70s, they used to put, Lakota Indian chiefs on the record albums, which now would be appropriation, culturally inappropriate. At that time, I was like, groovy. And I just was looking through the albums in this chief, everything went black and the Chiefs sort of became me unabated like that, because it's time to return to the home of your grandfather or something like this.

Put the records back. I just started crying and I walked out and I was in Picadilly Square. The grass with the square is this big sign, you know, one way ticket to Los Angeles. And so I just walked across the thing and I said, when is this light? And they said, tomorrow night. Okay, we'll take one take when they take it back to Los Angeles.

But I was just crying the whole time. And then I went back to where I was staying, had been staying for about a month, and I told my friends that I was staying with, I'm going back home. And I was like, why? What do you mean? Are we having fun? What if we do something wrong? It's like, no.

And then back then you wouldn't talk about that stuff because it would be considered, you know, me talking about what were you on there? So I just didn't need anybody else to censor. Give me a thoughts about what I was doing. Your wine. And then that was a really I think that was one of the hardest points in my life, was just making a decision to come back into the United States when I was pretty happy where I was.

But I just came home. I flew back in Los Angeles and my family picked me up, and I told my mother that I was going to stay with her till she let me go, because she'd always felt like I'd run away. And I was always having nightmares for chasing the threatened coming in. And then she would always write me a letter and say, I had a dream.

You came home. I said, I had a dream that you were trying to kill me. You know? So we had that going on for quite a bit of my early adulthood. But I told her when I got there, I said, you know, can you come back until you realize I'm ready to go? I can take care of myself.

And, you have to stop chasing me around. Which was what you can do. I seem to stay here until you realize that we love each other, but, we're very different. And it's better if we don't live together. And she's like, okay, what are you going to do? Is want to get a job and take some money?

So I did, and I was, you know, hanging out with my younger siblings. I had seven siblings that were still at home. And, and then I had a job for about a month. And then at one point, my mother kind of called me into the hallway. I'd been there, I think, for like less than 30 days, and she's like, okay.

I said, okay, what? And she goes, okay, like you said. I said, like I said what? I actually made her. Yes, we could love each other, but we're really different. It's better if we don't live together. And I said, okay, so just because what you can do is I'm going to leave. And she goes, when I spray with that 20 minutes and she's like, okay.

I said, okay. So I just called some friends and I left in ten minutes. You know, a couple of my friends from La Salle Beach just came pick me up, and then I made my way back to San Francisco and ran into the FBI. So it was my first permanent address in three years, and I think I was there for three days, and the FBI was at my front door with a search warrant that had my name on it.

And that was probably about 1972, the fall of 72. And I had a boyfriend living in Napa who'd been wanting me to come up and stay with him. And I was kind of like, kind of live in the city, kind then I just, had my conversation with the feds and then I won't talk about it because I was too bad.

I was so bad. Not bad, but just very wild. When I was younger, I knew I had that thing, you know, bring it on, baby. Because then they had a search warrant. They said they had a, I had a good chance that I had a boyfriend named Romeo who was stealing typewriters and I was, I was storing them until they could sell them.

And I was like, wow, you guys, I said we come up, I said, I'm staying with some other people so you can search my room, but I can't give you permission to search the rest of the house. And they're like, okay. And so they came up in my room and I set the door behind him. But I was had my hands on the doorknob, and I was standing between them and the door that I closed and just said, you know, what do you guys really want?

I said, who makes up your stories? I said, that's pretty bogus. And they're like, well, do you have a boyfriend? I said, oh, you guys wanna come? And they're like, what? I said? I said, okay, I'm gonna let you go this time. But next time you come, you better be ready. Now. Wow. And they just, like, just opened the door and let them out.

And they went running out. And so I just packed my backpack right to they left and just told my housemate that I had just been living with for three days because who was at the door? I said, oh, it was the FBI. What did they want? I said, well, they were looking for me. They have a search term with my name on it.

And she goes, what you can do? I smell leave and she goes, we can't pay the rent back. And I'm like, well, that's okay. You keep the rent. I'm. And she goes where you want. I said, what's better for you? Don't know which. I always think that's a line in a movie. I thought they made it up. I think they copied me because I said that.

But then I just left and called my friend that was living in Napa, and I was going to another friend's house in the city, and I said, well, I will come up and spend the summer there. And I told them what happened because we were used to the feds coming around, because when I left, the FBI was at our door all the time looking for guys that had left Orange County without registering for the draft.

So the FBI was really active. Track tracking down with the second draft draft right. But it was always other guys. It was never me. And then all my friends are either in Canada, they were doing community service or they were in jail, you know? So I was just me. There wasn't the party anymore. And so that's what brought me to Napa, and it took me a while to realize that, that was the eye of the dragon, you know, that's where I was going to settle.

And living.

Where I am now. Yeah, that's still there. Got there. You've already begun to answer this. This next question, Charlie. What practices help you stay rooted in your values when the world feels overwhelming? I've heard you talk about prayer and meditation. Yeah. I've heard you talk about listening to your intuition and following that voice. I've. I've heard you talk about, believing your visions when you have those lucid moments in dream time or otherwise, and, and following that divine guidance, and and and under underlying all of it.

I've heard you describe like this, courageous kind of willingness to adapt. But how would you describe the practices that, that help you stay rooted when things get you describe you pretty well? Actually, your introduction was really impressive. I was like, wow, she talk about me. But I think when you start meditating and like our family, we're trained walkers.

So that's a, alternate reality. And I think we don't take things as serious as other people do.

And so, but the meditation is a part of that, you know, just an integral part, because I remember even I think when I was 11, I was having really lucid dreams, which I guess is prepubescent. So that would be a time of, of, of that stirring up, and I used to just think my dreams are so lucid.

And I remember when dream my dad that was really profound. And then, it was a dream. I won't get into the detail of it, but at one point I took control of the dream and told the person who was trying to kill me. I said, no, you're the one who's going to be tied to the train track and you're the one who's going to.

And I was like, okay, okay. But I remember the next day I was just out in the yard thinking, what should those people go? And I wake up. And then I was really contemplating that this person who had been sort of terrorizing me in the dream because it was like a movie, and I'd say, stop and then rerun it, you know, and make it more to scary and more scary.

And then all of a sudden I said, no, wait a minute, it's my dream. And if you don't like what I'm going to do, you can get out of here. It can be. You all know this. You know, getting the train come right up to you so you can feel the heat. And then I thought, where do those people go?

And why did that guy do what I said? You know, I was just thinking about it, but I thought, well, because he didn't have a place else to go, if I kicked him out of the dream, where would he be? And then I saw it. You know, when I was awake, I thought, what if I'm just dreaming? Who's what?

If this person wakes up, where will I go? And then just, you know, having those really, really complex thoughts for an 11 year old, but just really contemplating that. And then at that point, again, in the Catholic framework, thinking I'm in God's dream and God is holding us and having faith in that. Just that was what just made me think, oh, okay, whatever.

But it was around 3 or 4. And then just knowing that, you know, I think that's something I used to try to teach people, which I don't. And I realize one of my closer friends recently was doing an interview like this, actually a podcast, and asked me about that. And she said, could you tell more about that?

And I said, I don't talk about it too much because it's not something I can teach somebody. And then people get mad at me. And she did get mad at me because I went and talk about it more. And then also that I was telling her, I can't teach you how to do that. It's something it's sort of I think it's in your DNA.

It's genetic, but it's also, you know, being a clairvoyant, it's very close to being a schizophrenic. And so it's a thin line between, what's a mental illness and what's not and what I and that was something I thought a lot about in high school. And then just again, in my family line, because we had we have a lot of mental health issues.

And my family, not my well, me actually my immediate family, but extended family too. And so that's something we've always looked at that. Okay. Is that over the line or is it before the line? And it wasn't till I started studying mental health and mental, health issues and understanding through the Western mind how what's schizophrenia, what's depression is do with serotonin and the receptors in your body that you have.

Most of them are like these. And so one side is the link to the V, and so one side sense and the other side receives. And that's what passes feel good hormones or, you know, anxiety hormones around the body. So person who's clinically depressed, they don't have the V, they've got all these eyes like. And so they're not having the transportation system to feel good.

And then schizophrenics have a bunch of W's. And so they're receiving too much data. And so the difference of a schizophrenic and a clairvoyant is a schizophrenic can't turn it off. So they have like way more W's and then they have to be medicated or physically restrained and stuff because a danger to themselves or others. So that was all stuff.

I was perceiving all that stuff in high school, those lines of.

Mental health, I guess. Would you say what's what's the difference between mental health? And then, especially once I became a hypnotherapist nemesis and started doing that work and then thinking, oh no, those people aren't crazy. They just didn't have training. They didn't have initiation. It didn't have a family cluster that protected them from the outside world. But then I realized, oh no, it's the difference of being able to turn it off or on.

And that's depending on how many W's you have in your synapses within the neuro system. And so that's more of a genetic thing. So that's always so for a while in my practice, people, especially young children that would be having nightmares and stuff, their parents would bring them to me or a pre-adolescent or adolescent, and I would help them distinguish whether that was a mental health problem or a clairvoyance.

And unfortunately for a lot of times it was it was schizophrenia because they can't turn it off and they're probably sedating and they've become a danger to themselves or others. And so that's, you know, that's just a hard, that's your hard reality are hard discussions to have, especially with parents, but with people to then have those, because a lot of times what ends up happening is suicide.

The person reaches a point where they really can't handle their life and they realize this is it. You can take these numbing psychotropic drugs that shut them down and they feel nothing, or they can be out of control. Their behavior in ways that harm other people or themselves. And that's just a harsh reality to deal with.

And so it's, you know, those are different discussions I've had, you know, throughout my life and, and then sometimes, just helping people, you know, figure for themselves, you know, it's not something you can always do either you can do it or you can't. And just like a person, if a person's a real talented musician, you know, there's a lot of kids who just sit down and they start playing the piano or, you know, they're just really, and so I think clairvoyance is kind of the same thing.

There's gifts. We all have gifts and and then some people don't. And so then if you don't have a real extreme talent, because I know sometimes the better musician who's more successful is the one that has to work really hard at it. And then they have the discipline and then they become professionally successful, which is the natural thing.

A musician takes it for granted, and they don't have the drive to to create an income with flow from their music or their art. So it's the same with clairvoyance. It's the same thing. You just have, right? You know, you accept what you have and do what you can. You, you seem to have, just a very like, steady practice of discerning and learning and,

And, and and extending grace with other people and also with yourself as you are. It's those Irish nuns undertaking. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my goodness. I'm going to have to ask you about the orders. They taught you when you were young. We can compare notes. What have you learned to love even when it was hard to.

I think that was just the things I was talking about. It's the dichotomies, you know? In our world, it's, you know, it's hard to accept, like psychosis, like, like what's going on there? We have criminal psychopaths and that kind of stuff that that lack of empathy or compassion, and that occurs in people. It gets pretty hard to deal with.

And so mostly I just get away from it, you know, because if a person I can't change or won't change them, the systems. And then what we used to call back then, monkey ranching, which is sort of a playful thing and I see that's what's happening like with ice, especially in Minnesota, that's a really doing a collective societal monkey ranching.

You know, they're staying passive, they're staying hopeful. They're going out in the cold, freezing nights and singing. And I think that that's, that's inspiring. And that's what we do. You just have to think, what am I going to do? And and I think if you, you know, like, again, I was raised by two parents who loved us and wanted us.

And so that gives you when you're a wanted child and a love child and protected child, it gives you a certain amount of stamina or adaptability that sometimes other people don't have. But I've seen people who were given nothing still be really adaptable and graceful and compassionate, and the same other person is given nothing. And they turn into these, you know, really criminal psychopaths and to just have no empathy.

And I just think those are all the do the places you serve our realities, you know, which one do you want to live in? And.

And I feel like, you know, like I've said so many times that we're in the shift and that really see that, especially the gen see, my granddaughter said I didn't see. I said, what's that mean? It's Gen Z. And then I realized that age group is like the under 30 or something like 15 or 30. So that's my grandkids are in that.

But I met this young woman recently, who was raised in a very protective Catholic environment, but very educated. And I can see that generation. They're just very fluid. Like I said, they don't have homes, they don't have cars. They're just traveling. They're global citizens. They're going, oh, like the job is here. Oh my job. Oh, I'm living in Napa.

Oh, that's why I'm here. But and then I'm talking about so I think all of us knows that. But that's okay. You can live in Sonoma because again, even looking at the duplicity between the up in Sonoma, there's the right neighboring communities, but they're so different. Because Sonoma is more mellower and I think more like when people were fleeing San Francisco in the late 60s because the temperature had changed and became sort of more of violent and aggressive, and the party was over.

So a lot of people moved north, a lot of them moved to Portland. And Portland has changed because of that, because they changed the whole policy. But I know when I was choosing to live in that, but people are like, why don't you live over here in Sonoma? It's like, well, I'm living where it's the opposite. And that negative.

There's Crusaders, you know, the people that profited from the mass murders in Western Europe, you know, that old money in Napa from the Crusades. So that where I, you know, I had intention and I realized shortly after moving there that that was where I was going to be living, I still do. You know, I'm reminded that, monkey ranching, you just referred to monkey ranching and I'm reminded that, we've had conversations in the past about how we look upon the people who are easily viewed as our opponents, and seen through the eyes of, of compassion, but not condoning that, that that has a way of monkey ranching.

It is has Kurt Vonnegut I was trying to cover who created that term, but that was kind of the motto, I think, of the late 60s and 70s, monkey ranching, rather than taking the system straight on, and maybe getting killed or, you know, committing suicide. But yeah, we've seen a lot of young men do those things that just to monkey wrench and then that thing of finding legal ways to avoid the draft and, all of that stuff.

So I think that. Yeah, that that monkey ranching that you sort of do it right out in the open and then people go, are you really doing that? Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Because, that's what I've done. And I'm doing still in, in Napa, you know, because it's the wealthiest people in the world live there.

And, I think the centuries of, of mass violence that have occurred, a lot of those descendants live there. And, the story that I'm telling and I'm surfacing it counters their myth of discovery. Yeah. And people would tell me back in the early 70s and 80s and stuff, you can't you can't do that. They're going to kill you.

You know, if they say, well, they're just getting out to kill me, because then I'll just come back and, we'll know what I did the next day. I think when you have, to believe in reincarnation and if any of the spirit that gives you a sort of compassion and also courage to just go. What?

Well, I didn't work. So let me try this next time. You know, if you're always which which a true intellectual is always experimenting, you think, okay, here's my hypothesis and here's what I'm going to try. And if that doesn't work, okay, I, we come up with a new hypothesis and say, if this were, you know what I mean?

So if you're always having that kind of attitude towards life and life's problems, it's, it's kind of a different dynamic that keeps you from getting burnt out. You know, if some people say, I, you know, get burnt out, I'm like, well, I take a lot of naps. That's another great practice. Yeah. All right. Just like like I take two days, I just the day.

And then it was Monday. I thought Monday was still Sunday, and I totally. Sister, I know it's when you're going to do something because. No it's not when it's it's Monday. And people don't think that I actually rest a lot. And then if people are around me, they go, that's you sure sleep a lot. Okay. Well, I'm not really just sleeping.

You know, it's kind of like a reset or I'm dreaming. You know, if I get to a place where I'm not sure what to do, I just go, let me just sleep for a while or dream about it, you know, just go into a dream state and see the different alternatives. And I think when you have more of a playful attitude towards life is sort of like real serious, right?

I think most people take life too serious. You've alluded to that. But I appreciate you're saying that explicitly here. Yeah. Because it's, you know, if you if you don't like even when I was started teaching meditation classes, which was back in the 86, I got my hypnotherapy training and it was through hypnosis that I had spontaneous recall of lots of different lifetimes and just started spontaneously threading.

Oh, those dreams were actually other lifetimes and all that. When I started teaching meditation, sometimes people would get mad at me because I would start making fun. It is. Sometimes people would tease me and think, oh, you think this and blah blah. And then I would start making jokes about it myself. Only I said, well, they said, well, now what you can't do, you're not even taking this seriously.

I'm like, well, why would I take it to mean I can make funnier jokes? Because I understand it better than you do. So my tricks are really funnier than hers. So why would I let you make fun of me when I could be better fun at myself? And then that would just piss people off when I was sitting on a couple boards like, you know, I've sat in a lot of state boards that and different people, which would be yelling at me because I didn't.

You know, this one goes there, but is it the water board director of the State Water Board had come to a meeting because I was asking questions nobody can answer. So they thought, oh, okay, let's bring the big guy in. And he started yelling at me in agendized state meeting. And he said, well, board member Toledo, I didn't realize you had a degree in hydrological engineering.

And my brain was thinking I knew what the word meant, but I never pronounced it. I thought, I wonder if I can say that? And I said, no, you're right, I don't know. But degree in hydrological engineering and that I'm really quite a civilian around water. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? And he was like, no, no, no, of course he was crying in ten minutes.

And then the board chair decided it would be a good time to call lunch. And he's like said to me, well, when we were to leader what exactly are you suggesting? And I was talking about the water crisis said California in severe water crisis. And even though it's raining, we still have over allocated days of water. Right? Can't sustain how we use it.

And I said, well, there's people in Los, you know, we're going to have to move. And he's like, you understand you're talking about the LA base. And I said, well, yeah, I said, all those people moved there in the last 20 years and they're, they're just going to have to move again. And then that's when he started just like losing it.

And then they called the meeting to adjourn for lunch. But then the next board meeting four months later, because we met quarterly and every as board members, we could have like a few minutes to introduce ourselves, or maybe we'd introduce ourselves and we could say something. So I said, well, just to address the issue, when we were back in San Francisco, everybody got upset about me talking about people relocating out of LA because of the mass water crisis.

But I have to tell you this firestorms. We have been up in Napa this past few months. People were running out of there as fast as they could possibly. And that's all I said. But that you know those are that's what we're looking at that we're all now in this dimension on this earth or can have, we're in a time of rapid change.

So we have to be prepared to adapt and adjust and make changes that we wouldn't, think, you know, and I know that all the times it slightly didn't happen because we were living in a floodplain. So we evacuated seven times in ten years. And then I would always say every time I'd rather be flooding than burning. And then when we were dealing with all those horrific fires that you dealt with here in Santa Rosa, too, but we had dealt with it more.

Five times. You know, people do adapt and change, but it's amazing to me that a lot of those canyons, those box canyons, I've had 4 or 5 firestorm so that people are deadlocked in there and they've got to run through the fire to get out of the fire. If we built their houses, that's, you know, okay, okay, go ahead and do that.

And Paradise because I was advising them about some of their fire. And I said, well, it's ridgelines and fires travel on ridgelines. That's not the places we're supposed to be building. And then they were rebuilding and I was suggesting that they not. And then they burnt out again just recently. So, you know, part of it is adapting and then having, you know, making informed decisions.

Yeah. About things like sledding and bats, fires, things deep. Listening seems to be really essential to all of this, to being able to confront what's hard and make peace with that and, and do the next right thing. Yeah. Because ultimately and I think that's what we're all kind of in a collective denial that, you know, you think you're going to die.

There was some song like that says, oh, everybody wants to go to heaven. No one wants to go right now. You know that. We all know that eventually we're going to die, that this is a limited term expression, this physical body. But, we don't want to be today or something. And then when you realize, well, it is a kind of an end story, and when you really have experienced that, like through dreams or understanding of reincarnation, which many, many cultures in the world do, it doesn't mean that you don't fear death, but you don't just fear it as much and you can accept it more as a okay, this area is is wet.

Now we have to move or this area because I'm watching the floods. I would hike before, during, after. And then what we developed is called the flood plan, the area that we were in it then it was a nine year drought. So it wasn't until these last winters that we realized that plan that I came up with. Most of the ideas works.

But then with the fires, I was watching the fires burn and and realizing, oh, this is just like a flooding. The water is going where the water went in places where the rivers have been redirected, like in Sonoma County with burned village, the big rivers around here, the rivers have been redirected to put through culverts and then those have to be released and opened up the dams on damming.

But with fires they burn around ridgelines and box canyons and you don't build there. But then people want to keep building there and then they go, oh my God, it's burning again. And you're like, yeah, That it's like, okay, again, that hypothesis, you know, if you did it, then you have compassion because you realize we're all in school and we all have a hypothesis that if I have a friend, he's a he's actually a brilliant, world famous architect.

He's one of the guys I met, his brother I was staying with in London. He's now world famous, and his idea to climate change is just to build bigger and stronger and, you know, and and we'll see, you know, because in a lot of those buildings will withstand earthquakes or fires, but not, sliding mountains. Right, right, right.

I guess sometimes people think I'm cold and I think, well, I'm not just call them just practical. Yeah. And unafraid to speak truth to power, which is kind of the next question. Is there a moment in particular that really stands out when you've needed to speak truth to power and protect what you love? Well, I think that's every day, really.

And, you know, there's if you're speaking truth every day through your life and stuff, I think the hardest thing to deal with that is that people like will hate you. And then sometimes people that are your friends, if they really close and watch you, the life choices and occurrence and stuff together. How did you do that?

What that happened there. And then they start to just get mad at me. And that's that's a hard thing to deal with. I think that's answer your question. I don't know, I because I'm always if you're always in truth, you know, and you always just have to say what's real. Yeah. And then people don't want you to say, what's real.

Oh like the water crisis in California. And you can be at high levels of decision making and people still want to ridicule you. And then at one point you go, okay, well, what's going to happen is going to happen. And I'm going to start committees meetings. Cats are really boring. You know, you just let things go and you just realize that things are going to go the way they go.

Just like if you're watching a catastrophic accident or a tree for electricity right on the car window, they were cutting these trees, which I was always crying or sad when people were getting trees. And it was a place we boarded our horses and this guy was cutting the trees and being a real jerk about it. And then I had made some comment to him because our car had to stop.

And and then he started yelling at me. And so I just got quiet. And then we waited till the bird was up and then we moved. But then I was coming back to pick up my daughters from the horse riding, and the dude had left his truck, his big giant red truck, and one of the big trees they were getting snow right on this truck, and I had made some comment about that.

You might want to move your truck. And then he didn't leave the side. I was a bit. And so I'm back like an hour later and his truck saw smashed and he I thought he was going to come over and like start smashing my truck with a sledgehammer or something because he was just pissed. But I just didn't say anything to him at that point.

I was like And then my daughter was there. She said, why you told.

And sometimes you just don't tell them because you just think when people get mad at you, either way if you tell them or if you don't tell them. Yeah you just have them and I so I so admire your your curiosity, your compassion, and the courage of how both show up in all these different ways that you show up in the world.

I think getting older is hard because then you are more vulnerable. I think when you're young, you have this, feeling like I can live forever. They can just bring it up. Was a year older, you realize, okay, now I really am more vulnerable or, you know, people. It's interesting aging in this culture, in the Anglo culture, because there's kind of a, a dislike for older people.

And in the native culture, in Hispanic culture, there's not it's the opposite, you know, they're very refuge and right. Sometimes people would say that to me and I said, well in my culture I'm very reverent. You know if I go to Mexico, it's almost like I'm a patron saint or something. It was literally just, you know, it's just different.

So it's nice to have those. I mean, that's what gives more compassion is you realize those are all different interpretations and don't take it personal. What systems or narratives are you actively working to transform. Well I think the one that Native Americans are really focusing on and I've been focusing on the last 20 years is water.

You know, that water is essential to life and that, you know, it's going to get a drink at the bang on the table. But the and what I've say and I say it a lot and sometimes I wish I could say it in a larger form, is that we're the only planet in the solar system that has water, like surface water, like this incredible rain and rivers and oceans and lakes.

And they're full of fish and octopi and dolphins and whales. I mean, it's just such an amazing place. And to disregard that incredible beauty magic, it's like appalling. And so what I can say that will put silence into a room of any size is that, we're the only planet in the solar system, has surface water. How far do you imagine the next planet in the universe has a water like this?

Where? How far is it? Next other planet? You know, just to try to help people wake up to the sacredness of water. And that's. I think that's a thing that I focus on a lot, you know, that story and again, it brings us back to fluidity and change and currency. Tides.

Yeah. That you use the word sacred and I can't help coming back to that, that word, I mean it's not a word that I hear in my daily life all that frequently. We don't have in, we don't in this Western culture seem to have an awareness of. Yeah. Of all that sacred. Yeah. Because sacred means special really is so special and that there isn't just that specialness, you know, just all all of it, every part of it.

I mean, just like the water takes the shape of the container and then our bodies 89% water and then now they're finding I just I was reading this story today that octopi living in little villages, which they thought they were independent living, but they're actually in the under the sea living in the, you know, there's so much sentient life.

And I think that's what's waking up and that again, that Gen-Z, that younger generation, they seem to have that it seems like I see that in my grandchildren. And even when they were young and still now as teenagers and this young woman I just met yesterday, I was so impressed by her, you know, just seeing the total sacredness of all life and everything that they do is really conscious.

And they're really like, wow, we're gonna, you know, be, to take care of the sacred water. You know, they just came they came a welcome that they didn't forget. And they haven't forgotten and, and I think especially my generation, the baby boomers, anytime I'm talking to younger people I always apologize to them on behalf of my generation with that sort of moment of waking up, you know, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and all this other bands.

And you can remember it was so much fun. But then it was it closing up again and then and then just this, deep driven desire to accumulate material stuff. You know, I'm always so amazed at how big the house is like, again, going into Lafayette, driving in the Bay area yesterday and seeing homes, trying so you know that there's no land to random.

The house has just got bigger and bigger, and then the people aren't even in there because they're so busy over there at a job that they don't like working really hard to pay for a house that they don't live in, that it seems so, weird. But that's what the fifth, you know, the baby boomers did. Yeah. And they're still doing, they still want to go on increases and have people waiting on them hand and foot.

You know what I was like, that just seems so odd to me. It always has seemed odd to me my whole life. It seems odder still because I thought maybe as we aged as a group, that they would people would become more compassionate and generous. And I don't see that in my peers.

Which gets them to get really pissed at me again. Some more like another narrative that you're actually trying to. Yeah. Just, just and then, you know, it's interesting when you say it because it seems like such a simple thing to say, sacred. And then for you to say, I don't hear people use that word. I'm like, yeah, see, that's it.

You know, that's that's the floor. That's the block is not honoring the sacredness of every breath of every moment is so sacred. And then just when you look at the simplicity of the water or something, you know it's so amazing. Yeah. And we just drink it and we and sweat and you really, you know just the whole thing of water is so mystical.

Magical. How can people learn to. And then my kids, you know, when they were little growing up thinking, oh, it's raining. My mother's probably out there dancing naked in the rain again, just. Yeah, I think that's that's a fantastic mental picture right there. There's so much play and joy and, I don't know spirit in that, in, in what you've just said.

Yeah. But again, we don't talk about it and we don't, we don't recognize let alone give ourselves permission to recognize that what is missing like. Yeah, just to be silly about it. Yeah. That's what one of my elders had said to me, like the first time was going into around House Native American, around the house. He was sitting next to me.

Those houses different from how you played growing up? I saw when the Catholic Church had to be really quiet. I just sat on these pews, was running around talking, and then they're singing and dancing and joking and laughing and everybody's running around. And then when it reaches down, they bring all the food and you eat the food and they dance somewhere and, you know, I was like, yeah, it's really different.

And then he's like, you know, if the people that are teaching you as the religion, if they're not laughing, he goes, get away from them because that's not God. And I'm like, I can do that. Wow, that's profound advice. It is. Yes. Wow, that's wonderful to get it at a young age. I know I had this one elder because I learned because I didn't have elders.

My grandmothers were dead before we were born and my grandpa were grumpy. So we didn't really have elders a lot in our life like we do in the native tradition. You have elders that are there and present and sit around and you go and say, so I would go and sit with them and then wait for them to talk.

And this one friend said, he doesn't say that stuff when I'm there. I said, well, you just have to sit there. So we were at a round house gathering at on the coast, and I was just sitting with him and nobody was talking and then my friend was sitting there, and then he got pissed and he walked away.

And we're still just sitting there quiet. Why do you people, you know, your friend elders, like, he's like, you know, you pretend like I guess I don't like him, I said. And then my response is, I didn't think so because he wouldn talk around him. And sometimes he would come around and say stuff because once he was making fun of me, he's like, you know that song you were singing, you just made it up.

You can't just make up songs like that and start singing them. And and then he went away. And then it was another time we were just sitting there and he set the records. And this. This was before the time he said, you know, your friend, you don't like it. He just said, what does he think the elders got the songs from?

He just he dropped them. They made him up there and that's what it was. But when he would say that, when people have said things like that to me, I just try to let it go. I'm just like, okay, or, you know, so I don't say that. And there is that, you know, and I think that's the biggest difference.

Like if you look at like California tribes, compared to dominant cultures, that silence is a really intense form of communication. And so one of the boards I sang, I was all Native American, and we'd have outsiders come that if that particular group, if they were silent, that meant they could agree to didn't have questions or discussion.

And so somebody was getting it. We had a lawyer or somebody advising us on something, and I could see they were getting really nervous. And I said, with this board in this group, silence means agreement. And so you can go on to the next item. And the person said, oh, thank you so much for clarifying it.

We're just getting really jittery because I just stared at them. And it's like, well, silence means agreement. And they're like, oh, okay. And then another native Catholic, because they're all different in a different tribe because you I think I've never traveled to India, but just what I've heard about it, the people are very prosperous and they're being yellow.

And so then you would just argue about whatever. And so silence I think, is a powerful form of communication. It's also underestimated. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love that. Oh. Well, I watching watching our time. And I want to be sure that I give you an opportunity to talk about. So school intertribal council in the work that you've been doing.

Yeah. That's that's again that, that being in the eye of the dragon, you know, creating something because we had the idea or the dream, the direction, however you would talk about it to create a land based in a hostile environment. Because that was in 1992, and I would go on to the same elder that I'm referring to is one of the elders on the coast here, and he was one of my mentors.

So I have the good fortune of having some lovely mentors. So he was who I went to because I thought, well, if I'm going to do something like that, I have to get permission from the tribes and the tribes at that time weren't that visible or, you know, giving permission to non people that weren't tribal members. But I had sat with him.

I'd gone because of the times I just go to the cliffs and hang out with them for a couple of days and I told him and he said, well, who's, who's the director? And I said, well, I think that would be me. And he said, well, who's directing you? And I said, well, I think it's God. And he goes, tell me, what do you want me to tell him?

How I got the direction? So I told that to him. And he goes, that sounds about right. And I said, well, what should I do next? And he goes, well, if you're the director and you're getting direct from God, what are you talking to me for? You know, and that was just a thing of just listen inside of yourself to what you're being told to do.

But that was his permission. And then different times when I was being treated really badly in the community, had gone to a gathering and he had said, you know, he and his advice had been initially, don't do it. And I said, why not? Why wouldn't I do that? And he said, everybody's going to hate you. And I said, everybody who goes, everybody, you know, the government, the state government, your friends, your family, everybody you know is going to hate you.

And I'm like, okay, I think I can deal with that. But then it was we were starting out in there, and then we were at another gathering up someplace, and I was seeing him, I had driven by myself because nobody wanted to drive with me. And then I saw him. He says everything. And I said, well, like you said, he said, like I said what?

I said, like how you said everybody's going to hate me and stuff. And he goes, whoo! And I said, everybody here because we were coming to a big gathering. And he he went, he just looked around like that, and he's like, you just stay with me. I'm like, okay, let's bring my chair. And I would always carry his chair anyway, but I just got his chair and he set up my chair.

So we sat down and we were sitting in a circle. And then he just had me sit at his feet, and he just put his arms on my shoulder. And then because he was the elder, then all of the different family members, because it was a bunch of native people coming together, they just gather in family groups, and usually the elder would be the one sitting because they wouldn't be of a standing, and then the families would stand behind him.

And so they all had to stand behind me. And that was just a whole nonverbal way of saying, I'm. I stand with her, I stand behind her. And you got a problem with her? You got a problem with me. And that was nonverbal communication and stuff. Those people didn't like me, but they'd stop fighting against me, you know?

And then those, those are things so, so. So Cisco was stood create a land base for a safe place for native people to gather in public and do ceremony and carry on our traditions. Unrestricted access to land. And then we were trying initially just to get a donated land or unrestricted access to state land, like a blue state park or skyline.

And I won't talk about how those meetings went south pretty bad. But then the person who was the chairperson at the time, because we were forming a nonprofit, he said, you know, Charlie, these guys killed us and ran us off and they're not going to give us anything back. If we want land, we're going to have to buy it.

And I was like, you know, because I was real into a non material world. And I said, okay, so then we did start to do that, and then he left town for different reasons. But, we just continued and then we, we you know, I just, we kind of bullied on land. I was watching land prices and they were as low as I thought they were going to get.

I could tell they would start going up. So we were able to secure the 20 acres, undeveloped land and regarded at a really good price. And the prices, of course, doubled and tripled in the years 1 or 2 years later. So we just kind of got in that little window and then to stick in following direction to develop a native American ceremonial place.

And a lot of times we're not doing ceremonies here, but but it's like, with intention, you create a space and it's doing that on its own. And, you know, a lot of the stories of what happened there and are happening, but again, in the middle of a very hostile environment, because Napa, you know, they're like the wine tourists and it's not touristy marketing to say, oh, there, this place was fully inhabited for 10,000 years.

The the longest continuously inhabit place in North America. But see those people that were living here, we killed them all. And then the survivors. We ran them off into remote, faraway places, and most of them died on the road 101 going up into clover that was filled with bodies of women and children that died on those bloody roads.

So that was a real hostile environment. And, we just, you know, you just kind of go one step at a time. You just think, okay, we're here, then what would be the next step? And then what would be the next step? And the IT day with idea was always to create a prototype that other people would replicate.

So we've done that. And it's at a point now where people can go, wow. And then people come out there thinking, oh my God, this is so beautiful. And we even had some native people come because they'll, they'll be doing like tech training, traditional ecological knowledge. And they said, oh, there's this and there's another. And we're like, yeah, yeah, well that's because we harvest it out.

So invasive weeds and we let the medicinals live and they're thriving. And so it's, it's it looks like a beautiful place now. And in every place on the earth is sacred. And then once you say, okay, this little, this little table, you know, how much weed could I grow here? You know, we could grow enough food for each other to eat for for the.

Oh, we, you know, and it's just that if you really see that sacredness in life and say, okay, there's this little rocky behind this parcel that was really low on the market right now that we snapped up and then we just prayed and did a ceremony and asked, what do we need to do? Who where is this going to go?

So everything's placed, you know, with geomancy and you know that where we put our spirit gardens, when I was finding the center that I found, that little stone that I realized later was a meteorite. So that's again the cosmos talking to the Earth and the Earth talking to somebody who can hear, and saying, oh, this will be the center of our spiral garden.

So when that stuff is there, it's generating, energy, you know, it's it's it's in prayer. It's a sacred ceremonial place. It's in ceremony continuously. And that's where now, as a point, it is where people just come. And it was never going to be open to the public. It's not open to the public because the public will just trash it.

And and it was more like a, an idea. And people were saying, oh, that's not going to happen in California. But now, 25 years later, land is being given back to the tribes huge parcels of land. They've, dammed the rivers. And that's the work of, thousands of years. The tribal people who got this place stayed focused.

And then people like myself, allies were told, you know, other state assimilated Indiana would be the words the federal government used about me. But just keeping that vision and working collectively together to shift the change the systems. But then every step was, is a victory. And then just the fact that we were able to buy land as a valley, that's an electric current through the whole state of California, those people, those dumb people down there, we could buy, you know, back our traditional Terra.

We could do this, right. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. To do that, it's a it's a opening, you know, because when you think, well, there's this little small group of people had no money or no nothing and now have created something that really is a is a prototype. And then what we've done with cleaning up the Napa River that consciousness put to going to meetings and process that Napa River is the state model of how to repatriate or remake, trade a watershed and heal it.

It's now the cleaning model that's being used, nationally. And so, you know, those are all little steps when you look at it collectively, you go, whoa. But that was a whole lot of people, one person making the step to be ridiculed and then saying, well, what about this? And then everybody collectively shifting the system. So that's happening and that's what Cisco Health is.

It's kind of one of those awakening moments. But there was a lot of awakening moments around the world at the same time. Yeah. 1992 93. And now, you know, again, 1986 was the end of the Piscean age. So from 86 to 2013 was a free fall. And that's that period where those things got manifested. And now what we're seeing is it's going faster and faster because it's got the momentum, it's got the public will.

And people realize their water is sacred for life, giving force on it, for poisoning it. And then we don't have access to it. But also seeing the beauty. I was just reading again today that the polar bears have been Alaska are fatter than they've ever been, which is bad for the seals, but good for the poor, because before they were all skinny and starving.

But now the ice is coming back. So the damage that was done during the industrial age to this earth is being repaired now, and it's no longer popular. Whatever's going on in the United States right now, it's I always say it's the chicken with its head. Get off. It's it's it's it's it's making a bloody mess and it doesn't know it's dead.

So you just have to step back from it. You know, not feeding into it. And I think that's what we're seeing across the country and really around the world, because now, you know, Den Haag, there's all these countries in Western Europe and South America that are filing human rights violations against the United States to what they're doing to the immigrant population and what they're doing globally.

So then those are the royal courts coming in to say, oops, you've lost control of your government. We're going to take over and take these people that are in charge and put them in prison. If you can't do it yourselves. And that's the movement right now, and that's where things will be. You know, things will be changing faster and faster towards balance and really honoring and seeing the sacredness of every day and the beauty that surrounds us, you know, because then you don't have the feeling to consume.

Right. You don't have to get drunk. Right. Yeah. Or unless you want to. Yeah. Charlie our last question I, I this has been absolutely fascinating and a joy to be in this conversation with you. My head is like full of all kinds of, of of ideas and, and reflections and, I could go on and on, but this conversation is about you, not about me.

So it's great. I, as a closing reflection, though, I want to ask you, what's one small thing that you do or witness that reminds you that we were made for these times? I think just looking at the young generations, have that's that next cycle coming in, and they're so full of joy and innocence. You know, they really, are not wanting to consume stuff, and they're wanting to deconstruct what was happening.

But in a in a gentle and loving way and really in a, in a global way. I think that's, you know, just seeing that open hearted generations of people that are here now and they they're not going to replicate what they're seeing. You know, there's a researcher that I heard about in a podcast a year or so ago who had done a lot of research on hope.

And hope is hope has elements to it. The elements of hope are having a plan and having agency. It's really simple. And what you've just described about this generation, you know, they have a plan and they have agency. And it's a it's a beautiful thing to, to reflect on as we think about the rupture and the chaos that we're experiencing.

And then if you think of it as, a dispelling of what is, you know, that those illusions are just cracking wide open. The chaos has purpose. It's just like a woman in labor. I always describe, you know, I delivered a bunch of babies at home. But that can look very chaotic. And a woman can feel like she's dying, and the baby feels like the world's crashing in.

But really, it's that birth. It's that expression of the

next phase. So what's happening is the dissembling of all of the I think it's really anger that's being dissembled, you know, there's people that's raging against, how they were treated, his babies, and that's where that sacredness comes again. If this every baby has a wanted baby, whether it's an octopi or a dolphin or a whale or aunt, right person.

And so we change the way we talk about, our sentient life forms. And when I say in villages, that always changes little kids because I talk to a lot of kids and I'll say, well, you know, the villages, I'm going to tell stories about the villages in the villages. And it changes your perception just to right there immediately.

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, we're going to close on the ant villages. Let's do that. I love it. Thank you so much I thank you. This has been wonderful.

So folks thanks for listening. We're grateful that you've joined us in community today and that you believe just like we do, in the importance of building belonging, resilience and justice in this region. We know it will have ripple effects across the state and across the country and around the world. So your presence is really meaningful and we're very grateful for it.

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Thanks for starting here.

Before we close, I want to invite you to learn more about and support the incredible work of the Suscol Intertribal Council, led by Charlie Toledo. By showing up for Suscol, we can help make native lives, culture and truth more visible. Known and understood. This work matters not just for indigenous communities, but for all of us who are committed to social, racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.

Supporting Suscol is one of the ways that we can practice responsibility and reciprocity. Honoring the land we live on and who provides for us the histories we inherit and the future we are shaping together. I encourage you to visit their website. Follow their work. Share it with others and give if you're able. When we show up in these ways, we help create a more truthful, connected and beloved community, one rooted in respect, care, and relationship.