MY TEEPEE: EARTH’S GIFT by KUNG FU PANDA

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda is Kaska Dena from Yukon, BC, Canada. She was adopted in 1972 and lived outside of her Native American heritage for most of her life. When she became homeless and was forced to live in the woods she found a recoconection to her Native past.

Earth’s Gift: My Tepee

by Kung Fu Panda

Being homeless is no fun, but it became fun when I had the opportunity to make a real native plains Indian teepee in the backwoods at Camp Serenity. This all started in 2013 when I left a bad marriage. I had already chosen to make friends of the homeless community prior to becoming homeless. It was part of a survival plan when I knew that my marriage and housing were ending. I chose a safe group of unhoused individualsI and soon found that the slings and arrows of being on the streets is not a joke.

I found a campsite. Back in the deep woods while I was walking around on a trail, an idea came to me. What had once been huge trees were now fallen, stripped of branches and bark.T hat waseventually when Native American instincts kicked in. I thought rather than make a tent, I would build a teepee just like the boreal forest of northern I set out on a path to create the teepee in the woods that Mother Earth has provided all the Native Americans for a thousand years. I used sage and tobacco to bless the ground before putting up the poles in a tripod and fitting the rest of the poles up. The last pole faced the cloth I had with me and lifted the teepee. I was amazed to find all 8 poles for the teepee. All the material for the teepee was provided by Mother Earth. On the inside I lay pine bows on the ground. Then we moved in. It held three and was extremely warm.

Modern man can't do any better than what was done in the past for the sustainable living we so desperately want now. We could learn real lessons from the past by incorporating what used to be done into what we do now.

For example, tribes followed a very sacred path that was called “walking softly on the land.” It's about doing no harm and leaving it better than you found it when you show up to the land. This practice was a real thing years ago yet now we have so little that has survived from which we can learn from our Mother Earth provides all we need if only we could do things in a sustainable way on the land as we did for thousands of years.

Mother Earth provides all we need if only we could do things in a sustainable way on the land as we did for thousands of years. With adapted limited modern convenience, we could find real balance to a new modern age within the next 100 years.