Fighting for a better future
We're engaged in an epic struggle for survival.
Our story begins with challenges at the heart of our youth losing connection with nature and their true identity as human beings.
Once upon a time on Earth, youth were groomed to be the next generation of leaders for their communities to make decisions that benefit the environment and others. Our communities around the world are engaged in a struggle of scarcity, approval from the masses for survival, and are becoming more android by the minute through addiction to social media and technology. Majority of our cultures are on the brink of extinction—due to loss of lands, languages, and traditional ways of life that connect back to nature and the ancestors.
As a result, many youth today—in our indigenous, rural, and underserved communities and beyond—have lost touch with the natural world and the traditions and teachings of their ancestors. Too often, they are disconnected from their physical and emotional wellbeing and surrounded by hopelessness, alcohol/drugs, and violence. Whole communities are suffering from the lack of social and cultural traditions that connect us to one another and our environment. Even our Earth itself is suffering from this disconnection: we are facing unprecedented challenges caused by climate change, human conflict, and environmental destruction.
To address these challenges, we share our powerful teachings of Guardian Art that rewilds the Guardian spirit in individuals, and we need more than ever before to harness the teachings and ancient wisdom passed down to us through the generations of our collective heritages.
We come from First Nation ancestry and have first hand experience with the struggle to protect the gifts of our ancestors. Guardian Art – Art of the Hero is a spiritual discipline and fighting art that has passed, from master to apprentice, through thousands of years of indigenous culture—we have taken up the fight to protect these teachings and pass them on to future generations.
We’re doing more than just teaching an ancient fighting art to young people. We’re creating outreach programs and cultural preserves that protect the teachings of our ancestors, and use those teachings to work toward a better future for all people and for the earth that we share. Through our programs, we’re giving a new generation of youth the skills, knowledge, and connection to heritage that will enable them to lead future generations to live in harmony with the land and to honor our diversity.
We’re building cultural preserves on our ancestral lands, and hosting retreats for young people where they can reconnect with nature, hold ceremonies, and train in the higher levels of Guardian Art. We see these preserves as places rich in wild life force, where people gather to celebrate heritage and practice traditions of past, present, and future. We also travel coast to coast through our Overland Outreach Program, bringing our programs directly to many of the remote and rural communities that will benefit from them most.
Our retreats and outreach programs offer indigenous and other at-risk youth a chance to reconnect with nature, learn ancient skills, expand their minds, and build a sense of community. The experience is transformative. When we get youth out of their everyday environments and take them to places immersed in nature and heritage, we see clear sight, deep focus, and a Guardian perspective emerge. With this comes a deeper respect for one another, for themselves, and for our earth.
Using the sacred teachings and traditions of our ancestors, we’re helping young people to restore deep connections with the natural world and with their heritage. We hope that by bringing youth, mentors, and scholar elders together in our cultural preserves we can share traditions, brainstorm ideas and create paths into the future that honor the land and sea as well as our communities and cultures. Our dream extends beyond North & South America, it involves uniting the world through its future generations to become leaders that think and act for all human beings and for the nurturement of our earth.
Diamond House
The symbol for Guardian Saga represents our hope for the future, for a new era of life on earth. This symbol depicts the earth star—our collective life force—inside of the diamond house. The diamond has eight openings which represent the directions of the compass, or the many directions we come from as individuals. For the first time in human history, we are truly living in a global network.
People are coming together from all directions, from all over our sacred earth, and connecting in new ways. We believe that by honoring the directions we all come from—the diversity of our heritages—we become stronger and the life force that connects us all shines brighter. At Guardian Saga, our dream is to train and inspire a generation of hero-guardians to fight for a future in which our earth star shines bright and we all thrive.
Medicine Wheel
As indigenous people of North America, we draw inspiration from the medicine wheel, a sacred symbol representing the four directions and the importance of interconnectivity and balance in nature and within our own selves.
While the colors and the interpretations of this symbol vary among our different native cultures and tribes, the wheel celebrates diversity while emphasizing the need for unity between our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strengths.
Our belief is that the world today is facing a great turmoil—crises caused imbalances in our relationship with the earth and with one another. We believe that the solution lies in the teachings of our ancestors. In the tradition of our sacred medicine wheel, Guardian Saga’s goal is to help communities come back into balance—to build a better future for all of us and for our earth.