I give thanks that I can stand. It is good, it is so. For all the blessings of our lives. It is good, it is so.

Welcome, beloved viewers, to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we’ll visit with Dr. Joseph Bruchac, whose ancestry is European and Abenaki, a people indigenous to the northeastern US and Canada. In Abenaki culture, animals are held in utmost respect.

They’re not just animals, they’re animal people, and are equal to and in some cases superior to human beings, because we say there were original instructions given by nature or by the Creator to all of us and human beings are always forgetting them. But the animals tend to remember, to take care of their young ones, for example, to be part of their own community and to be able to live in a way that will not destroy where they are for future generations.

The award-winning author of more than 70 books for children and adults, Dr. Bruchac also shares his indigenous heritage through poetry, short stories, novels, anthologies and music. He is most known for his bestseller, “Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children” and subsequent books in the “Keepers” series. The Native Writers Circle of the Americas honored him with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

He is also the founder and director of the Ndakinna Education Center in Greenfield, New York, USA which informs the public about Native American culture particular to the region and teaches children and adults about nature.

Now let’s hear from Dr. Bruchac to learn how understanding animals’ lives and traits through traditional wisdom helps us reflect on ourselves with a deeper sense of meaning and moral awareness.

The idea of totem, which actually comes from an Algonquian word, “dotm,” which implies family or relative, is a term that’s used now all over the world to talk about when some person or family or community identifies very strongly with a particular animal, sometimes to the point of saying that those animals were actually, physically relatives. So the totem animal usually relates to family or clan.

What is Dr. Bruchac’s family’s animal totem?

Certainly bears are very important to our family. We feel a very strong connection to them. The bear is an animal which is very loyal to its family, may be slow moving, appear to be peaceful. My two sons, Jim and Jesse, both have bear paws tattooed onto their calves.

And we’ve been told we’re a bit like bears ourselves. We have that kind of perhaps slow or deliberate nature. But we also can exhibit strength if we need to, but not for no reason. It has to be for a good reason, as with the bear.

In his book on animal totems called “Animal Speak,” Ted Andrews writes, “Meditating and working with bear will help you to go within your soul's den, your inner sanctum - to find your answers.”

And he knows the medicines. We say the bear knows the plants to eat when he is sick. If he has a headache, a bear will chew the tips of the willow tree, which contains the same chemical compound that you’ll find in aspirin. So we would follow bears around, I think some of the older people used to do this. They’d observe what a bear ate, and usually we could eat exactly what a bear ate, and if that bear was sick and we had the similar sickness, we could turn to that particular natural medicine.

The Abenakis and other indigenous groups in North America, such as the Iroquois and the Menominee, have many beautiful stories about animals. Here are two stories about bears.

I’ll tell you a very brief version of a traditional story that’s found throughout the continent, and the basic message of the story is about the importance of caring for your children. In this story among the Abenakis it said that a boy was lost among the Iroquois;

it said that a boy was abandoned by his father. Whichever the case it might be, that boy was adopted by the bears. And the bears began to take care for him. They adopted him as family, especially the mother bear. And as he traveled around with these bears, each time the bear cubs scratched him, hair grew on his body that grew thicker and thicker, until he looked like a bear himself.

And when he was finally found, in some cases a party of people find him, in other cases the father or the uncle who abandoned him finds him, immediately that father or uncle apologizes for his bad behavior, says he understands how he was wrong, and he’s seen what the bear has done, and wishes to do the same thing, to be as caring for the child as the bear was.

There’s a Menominee story in the Midwest about a girl who’s lost in the snow for several days, a little girl, everyone is sure that she’s died, and then she’s found sleeping with the bears inside the bears’ cave, completely safe and well. So that to me is an example of a story that teaches on a number of levels. It gives us respect for the animals, but it also reminds us of our place and our proper role.

Along with the bear, the wolf is held in high regard by the Native Americans. Both animals show great care in raising their offspring. Among wolves, all members of a pack are involved in the care of pups. If for some reason a mother or father is unable to look after their own pups, another member of the pack will adopt the youngsters or even serve as a babysitter. Despite this mixed social behavior in raising pups, wolf packs live by carefully defined rules, where each member knows his or her position, function within a hierarchical structure, and relationship to everyone else.

However, this system of governance is neither autocratic nor democratic, but both. As Ted Andrews notes, the wolf totem “can teach you how to use ritual to establish order and harmony within your own life” and to understand that “true freedom requires discipline.”

The wolves teach us that every adult has responsibility for every child in their community. We all have to take equal care. They teach us how to sing together. So there’s that, we regard the animals as teachers, and certainly as co- equals, and as I said, often as those who know more than we do.

Our next animal totem is the turtle. Turtles symbolize longevity as they live to a great age and are considered sacred in many cultures across the world.

In our traditions, often the turtle is the creature that holds the Earth on their back. Many traditional stories among, for example, the Haudenosaunee and other Iroquois people talk about how woman fell from the sky, carrying with her seeds from the sky tree, and that the water creatures, for there was no land then, saw her coming and started diving down to bring up Earth for her to stand on, and put it on the back of the turtle.

And as the Earth was spread out, it became the North American continent. So it’s often said, even in California (USA), where a similar story is told among our native people, when there’s an earthquake, turtle is stretching.

Turtle is moving around underneath there, and of course plate-tectonic theory, which is very scientific, talks about the moving plates beneath the Earth as if it were alive. So there’s something to that symbolically too. One of my books is called “Thirteen Moons On Turtle’s Back,” and it’s based on the fact that the turtle has 13 plates.

Every turtle has 13 plates on their back.

I’ve seen turtles all over the world and they all have those 13 plates on their back.

Sea turtles, yes, yes, and there are 28 smaller ones around the outside. There’s approximately 28 days from one full moon to the next and 13 within a given cycle of years. So this is one of my books, “Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back.”

Indigenous groups in the Americas like the Cree people love frogs very much as well. Among the Cree, the fourth moon is called “frog moon.” It’s a story of how the animals got together to talk about how long winter would be. And the beaver said “It should be as long as there are hairs on my back.” All the other animals had ideas, but the frog said, “No, it should be as many moons as there are toes on my foot.” So there are four moons of winter. And every year the frogs sing when spring comes to celebrate their victory in making winter not too long.

To conclude today’s program on the animal totems, we would like to present a lovely poem about toads by Dr. Bruchac entitled “Birdfoot’s Grandpa.”

The old man must have stopped our car two dozen times To climb out and gather into his hands The small toads blinded by our lights Leaping live drops of rain. The rain was falling, a mist around his white hair And I kept saying “Get back in, you can’t save them all. We’ve got places to go” But knee-deep in the summer roadside grass He just smiled and said “They’ve got places to go to, too”

Thank you, Joseph Bruchac, for informing us about the splendid traditions of your people, and for sharing your profound wisdom and understanding. May we all look more deeply into stories told by the indigenous peoples and put into practice the hidden lessons of the animal world!

For more details on Joseph Bruchac or the Ndakinna Education Center, please visit www.JosephBruchac.com or www.NdakinnaCenter.org Books and CDs by Dr. Bruchac are available at www.NativeAuthors.com

Kindhearted viewers, thank you for your company today on our program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May the inspiration we get from animals’ lives always help us better appreciate their loving presence!