Renewing the Sacred Fire: Meet Ofelia Rivas of the O’odham Tribe

A Conversation with Ofelia Rivas
facilitated by Robert Toth

$15 per session or $55 for all four 

Through sharing traditional stories and her life experience Ofelia will interweave the central concepts and beliefs that form the foundation of a Native American worldview grounded in a relationship with Nature and a spirituality that recognizes the sacredness of all being.

For centuries indigenous people throughout the world lived in ways that maintain a balance between humans and our relationship with all other beings. Over time, anthropocentric cultures ignored the indigenous wisdom and disrupted the balance. Native perspectives reach deep into the heart of an emerging consciousness that is both ancient and new.

In 1947 John Collier, Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, wrote:  “They had what the world has lost. They have it now. What the world has lost, the world must have again.  The deep cause of our world agony is that we have lost the passion and reverence for human personality, and for the web of life, and the earth which the American Indians have tended as central, sacred fire since before the Stone Age. Our long hope is to renew that sacred fire in us all.“

Forty-five years later, Ewert Cousins, theologian and scholar of world spirituality, wrote about his experience living with the Sioux on the Rosebud Reservation.  “Although I did not realize it at the time, I had entered a world of primal consciousness of such basic things as space, nature, and the animal world, time, family, and tribe that was decisively different from my own. I became increasingly aware of human values that the Indians preserved and that we had lost: their love of the land, their organic harmony with nature. As we look toward the twenty first century with all of the ambiguities and perplexities we experience, Earth is our prophet and the indigenous peoples are our teachers.’

Ofelia Rivas writes of herself: “My people are the O’odham from the desert, O’odham means people. The O’odham oral history teaches us where and when we originated and how to live on the land and follow our way of life called the Him’dag.  The traditional O´odham hold their alliance to Mother Earth. No written documents required.  I carry the words from my traditional elders and ceremony leaders that call for solidarity to defend the sacred places of our people for our survival.