I had the great honor of organizing and receiving the grandmothers for a few weeks during the summer of 2013 for their Open Council in Stockholm. A wonderful meeting where the Sami people, our own indigenous peoples, were the ones who invited the Council.

The group met for the first time in October 2004 at the Dalai Lama’s Menla Retreat Center on Panther Mountain in Phoenicia, New York, during which time they declared themselves a council.
They came from different indigenous peoples from around the world, deeply touched by the planet’s precarious situation, they decided to create an alliance: The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. To support and nurture the goodness of all living beings.
The council that formed was put in motion from a shared vision, a prophecy. Like the seeds sown for eons by many people around the world. They represents a global alliance of prayer, education and a healing of our Mother Earth, all her inhabitants. Since then, Grandmothers have met every six months, visiting each other’s homelands. Their goals are to “build our relations and learn about each other’s cultures”
”We represent a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come. We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. We look to further our vision through the realization of projects that protect our diverse cultures: lands, medicines, language and ceremonial ways of prayer and through projects that educate and nurture our children.”
This year 2015, they have their 13th. Gathering in Gabon, Africa July 23 to 26, learn more here: event-info-13th-official-gathering.
See the documentary about the Grandmothers, For the Next 7 Generations.