Tamarack's rendition updates this beloved text's language to make it accessible to contemporary seekers. Each stanza is illustrated with a captivating brush painting by sumi-e master Jan Zaremba to create a beautiful and easy-to-use meditation guide for the 29-day lunar month. This is a tool for reflection on the most profound aspects of life, especially for people who may have limited time for contemplation. Each day's stanza cuts through the mind's clutter, bringing clarity and guidance.

“For 97% of the time humankind has existed, we have organized ourselves into small, cooperative, extended families, and we have lived in balance with our environment. In the very brief span of our hierarchical, industrialized existence, we have systematically destroyed a good portion of the very world that sustains us. In addition, we have created what I find to be the most sinister of human conditions: chronic loneliness. I believe this to be the root cause of much of our personal and social malaise, including crime, depression, and suicide.

One approach to our problem is to attempt fixing it, and another option is to return to what has worked for us in the past. There is yet another way, which rather than a choice between this and that, is to reconnect with the essence of what it is to be human.”

—Tamarack Song, Introduction, Song of Trusting the Heart

Whispers of the Ancients

University of Michigan Press, April 2010)

In May 2011, Tamarack travelled to Minneapolis and New York to be recognized for Whispers of the Ancients, which has received the Nautilus Award, three Midwest Book Awards, and was honored as a special storytelling resource by Storytelling World.

When Tamarack first met Moses (Amik) Beaver several years ago, the Ojibwe artist lamented the missionaries who decried Ojibwe traditions and supplanted their epic legends with those of another people. Now some of their stories are returning with the help of Whispers, which they completed together to help restore the oral tradition of the Northern Ojibwe people.

It's easy to imagine yourself transported back to a time when an Elder might have told stories like those in Whispers of the Ancients around a glowing hearth. Thanks to the combined artwork of Moses (Amik) Beaver and Tamarack Song's storytelling skills, monsters, heroes, and shapeshifters come alive and open a doorway to the mysteries of life. Easily accessible to all ages, this is a book that speaks to each person at his or her own level of comprehension and need. It is as beautiful to read as it is to look at.

Stunning Aboriginal artwork by Moses (Amik) Beaver combines with provocative storytelling to renew, in all their traditional splendor, exceptional legends from around the world. Entertaining, profound, passionate, glorious---these are stories that illustrate and evoke themes common to everyone's life, with an ancient wisdom that helps the listener to cope with today's opportunities for tenderness, grief, passion, and irony.

Easily accessible to all ages, this is a book that speaks to each person at his or her own level of comprehension and need.

Whispers of the Ancients is available from your favorite bookseller, or you may order it from the Teaching Drum Outdoor School. If you'd like to know more about the book, you can listen to an interview here.

Journey to the Ancestral Self

Station Hill Press, 1994

Contributions

Introduction, chapter, and endorsement for Forgiveness and Child Abuse, by Lois Einhorn, Ph.D., (Robert D. Reed Publishers, 2006).

Dr. Einhorn suffered extreme physical, emotional, and ritual sexual abuse as a child, at the hands of her parents. She brings that story to us and asks, "If you were me, would you forgive your parents?" The rest of the book is comprised of the responses of 53 well-known and respected people, such as Daniel Quinn, Pete Seeger, Hurricane Carter, Bernie Siegel, Patch Adams, and Arun Gandhi, along with Tamarack.

This book is an indispensable healing companion for anyone who has suffered abuse of any kind, as well as a potent healing guide for professionals who work with abuse victims. The author was awarded 2004 Heroine of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Peace by the World Forgiveness Alliance.

Chapter entitled "The Gifting Way, How Abundance Came to Me," in Cakes and Ale for the Pagan Soul: Spells, Recipes and Reflections from Neopagan Elders and Teachers, edited by Patricia Telesco, (The Crossing Press, 2005).

Edited by Patricia Telesco, and with contributors who represent a who's who of community leaders, including Margot Adler, Starhawk, Dorothy Morrison, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, and many more. Take a seat on the communal hearth and let these bards regale you with tales of hope, transformation, love, struggle, and victory. The bounty herein will fill you with warmth, sustenance, and inspiration that every spiritual seeker needs.

Forward for Lois Einhorn's The Native American Oral Tradition: Voices of the Spirit and Soul, (Praeger Publishers, 2000).

Einhorn, a rhetorical scholar, explores the rich history of the Native American oral tradition, focusing on stories, orations, prayers, and songs. Because American Indians existed without written language for many generations, their culture was strongly dependent on an oral tradition for continuity and preservation. Not surprisingly, they spent many hours perfecting the art of oral communication and learning methods for committing their messages to memory. Einhorn thoroughly examines the important aspects of this unique oral tradition from a rhetorical perspective, covering individual speakers, nations, and time periods. In the first half of the book, the author examines how the Native American oral tradition has affected their cultural assumptions, principles, values, beliefs, and experiences. These chapters focus primarily on characteristics of the Native American oral tradition that transcend individual nations. The second half of the book includes translated transcripts of representative speeches, stories, prayers, and songs. In accessible and compelling prose, Einhorn discusses the sanctity of the spoken word to Native Americans, concluding that their oral tradition helps to account for the survival of their people and their culture.

Articles

The following is a partial listing of my published articles. In addition to these, Tamarack has been a field editor for Wilderness Way magazine since 2005, and the magazine has carried his two regular columns, Wilderness Way Tips and Awareness Quiz, for the past eight years.