Impact, Leadership, and the Four Sacred Gifts

I had the honor of sitting with my friend Dr. Anita Sanchez, author of the 2019 International Latino Book Award, The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times (Simon & Schuster). Anita and I met when I invited her to speak at Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program, where she shared about the Four Sacred Gifts and their relevance for changemakers.

Since then, the Four Sacred Gifts have been a support and encouragement in my life. I wove them into my impact work as a tech co-founder and aid worker. And now I use them in the somatic trauma healing work I do with clients. 

I feel privileged to have received them from Anita, and it is my deep honor to get to share them with you.

Here's the full video along with an excerpt of our chat. Even if video is not your thing, I encourage you watch at least the first 10 minutes, to hear Anita share the Four Sacred Gifts and pass them on to you.

Elie: It's been about five years since we last did a video like this...Your book was just coming out last time. I'd love to hear about your journey with the Four Sacred Gifts.

Anita: The Four Sacred Gifts come from an Eagle Hoop prophecy where 27 elders from every region of the world came together. They listened to Spirit in their own ceremonies, their own language — dance, ceremony, meditation — and received from Spirit the Four Gifts to help all humankind restore harmony and balance with themselves, with other two-leggeds — human beings — as well as with all our relatives, the Earth, and the cosmos.

Since then, it's taken off. Tens of thousands of people have received the Gifts, tens of thousands have read the book, and there's even a song with the book .

The prophecy is that we're going to enter this very difficult time — it sounds almost apocalyptic — where the winter will be like no other winter. Where the trees will begin to die, the rivers are polluted, the air is not clean, and there's death. It sounds horrific. However, Spirit also said that a big part of this hardship is because two-leggeds, what we call human beings, have forgotten what it means to be in harmony and balance with all our relatives, starting with ourselves and then every part of the Hoop of Life...

The Four Gifts are gifts that you can go deep on, every one of them. The promise is: use these Four Gifts, and you will remember how to be a life-giving force in this Hoop of Life — how to be in harmony and balance with yourself, other people, all of Nature, and the Cosmos.

1. The Gift of the Power to Forgive the Unforgiveable

2. The Gift of the Power of Healing

3. The Gift of the Power of Unity

4. The Gift of the Power of Hope in Action

Everybody knows these gifts. That's because we are remembering our wholeness.

[Elie: I encourage you to watch and learn the Four Sacred Gifts directly from Anita in the first 10 minutes of the video.]

Anita: It's okay that we feel undone at times, or overwhelmed. But the key is to remember the practices. These Gifts and other practices you have — there isn't only one way…

Regardless of how you might view or judge some of those things, know that as a member of this Hoop of Life, all of it matters and is creating the way forward. Including crying, allow those tears to go onto the Earth and receive it so it cycles back, and we get it when we drink the water from the river and the springs.

I hope that people are sensing from me, that there is so much pain, and the pain that's arising is reminding me and triggering my own big traumas in life. But the difference is, there might be a trigger, but it's not a spiraling downwards.

When George Floyd was murdered, and it was so public, what it brought forward was, I thought I'd done a lot of healing on my father's murder, which was race related. He was dark-skinned, an Indigenous Mexican person. But then when George Floyd died, I realized. I was sobbing out in the yard. I could feel my shaking body.

All of a sudden, I could feel the 13-year-old who was just told my father was murdered. But I also heard, within my trembling body, a voice that said, "Anita. Anita. This will end in your lifetime."

As horrific as it was, I paused. It didn't take away the horrors of that, but it reignited purpose in what one can do. Not in spiraling downward — in what one can do.

To say, "No, this is not the Hoop of Life I want to expand, so I'll take my energy and bring it over here. I'm going to forgive, so I can create systems and structures that won't allow that to happen. So I can care for myself. So I don't come out of some past woundedness, but rather out of the joy of knowing that our children and our children's children, and other species can be alive and enjoy the good things that we've had in life as well.”

Even in the midst of something really horrific like that, including the horrors of being Indigenous — and I can't tell you how many conversations we have about that, all the burial grounds, and finding the children who were taken to residential schools — and at the same time, knowing the pain is there. It's only more because it took so long and at the same time, joyful in receiving back the bones of our ancestors.

And knowing that our ancestors are always here, supporting us to move forward, because it is our natural state, one of harmony, balance, wholeness, care for one another. And all of the other stuff that has taken hold — imbalance, patriarchy, consumption, destroying the Earth — it makes no sense. That's becoming understood.

To be able, every day, to start the day with joy. With gratitude. That's not Pollyanna. That’s being present to what is and providing us the energy to respond to that which is out of balance… 

I'd like to tell a story of the Choctaw Nation, the Indigenous People in the US, and Ireland. This relationship started in the 1840s.

They did now know each other, but the Choctaw people had heard about the people in Ireland, the famine, millions of people dying, people leaving the country. And they gathered all the money they could, which was $140, and they mailed it to a group in Ireland.

They said, "We know what it's like to starve. We know what it's like to lose your land. We know you may not ever be able to return. But we hope this helps to ease your suffering. That's important to us.”

Fast-forward to a year and a half ago, and a check for $1.7 million came from a group in Ireland to the Choctaw Nation, saying, "We have not forgotten. And we were reading about your Elders dying, COVID taking a toll, all the inequities you have in healthcare, education, clean water, and on and on. And we hope that this money that we've gathered will help ease your suffering."

They didn't even stop at that. They build a monument right outside the city of Cork, in Middleton — a sculpture of eagle feathers. It's gorgeous. My husband and I were there last month and able to do a blessing there. It's a physical reminding that this relationship is forever.

I wanted to share that story because the white people didn't become Indigenous. The Indigenous didn't become from the white direction. For the Hoop of Life to be a full hoop, it needs all the directions.

But that doesn't mean we can't care for each other, that we can't, through our own empathy, compassion, and love of beauty be able to support each other.

That's what's being called forward now. Knowing that there's work we all get to do. Nonetheless, these are unbreakable bonds. We are part of the Hoop of Life, we get to choose with every thought, with every breath, with every action, that we're going to be good medicine or bad medicine.

Good medicine is anyone or anything that puts into alignment the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. Bad medicine is anyone or anything that takes that out of alignment. And we're seeing a lot of that — out of alignment.

The other is also happening, and we can be part of that. We can be part of that good medicine…

It doesn't matter how small or big. if you're just talking to a couple of people in your family, it's important that we model that. That we give that love, but we give it to ourselves too. That's intrinsically who we are. We are unconditional love. And as we keep filling up, we're able to give to others and not deplete ourselves but have that reciprocity and continue to flow as a river...

We are part of nature.

And when we come from that world view, then everything is possible. We don't have to take on the mentality of lack, that we'll never get further, and all that will make us happy is more-more-more...

It's in the wholeness of who we are that we can move and expand and have impact in the way for ourselves and others that continues energetically to move out.

Elie: I'd love to ask you more about self-care. Your mentioned how self-care isn't just for us but for all our relations. I'd love to hear more about that and how you navigate that in your own work as a leader.

Anita: I can't think of a single thing where self-care is only about self. We define it as self. We have such empathetic hearts, we want to keep giving, but we get depleted.

However, if we fill that cup with water. My grandmother said — she loved vanilla and cinnamon tea, and she would drink from the saucer and her cup would stay full...So no one has to go running on not-enough, because that's just not true. We just have to change some of our patterns, so that they're healthy ones.

When you are caring for yourself, you are caring for your children…When you fall short, it's okay. Forgive yourself and go again. Be in unity with others who can help remind you and model it for you...

I imagine every generation says, "This is a really important time to be alive." And it is. It's no accident who is here. With all the challenges that are happening from the environment to social justice, to health, to everything. This matters.

And I see little ones to Elders that are very much engaged, but not in a depleting way. But "Okay, let me remember, the vision, the hope, the dream, so that can fill me up."

We need to have peace and justice go hand in hand, and remember what that vision is, so that pulls us. Rather than retaliation, resentment — which creates more of it.

Elie: As that old story falls away, we start to see ourselves and each other for who we truly are. And it's a call to leadership like no other. It's powerful.

Anita: A big call to leadership. Let's pause. Any decision is not better than no decision. Don't go into action unless you know it's going to be a life-giving one. Pause. And that we can do from an individual level, in our families, and up into the largest corporations, governments, and globally.

To be in these questions is very powerful. And when we listen individually and collectively, and move from there, that's where we're seeing such amazing things.

Elie: The wisdom of the pause…It's essential.

Anita: In Indian Country, we remind each other, we are human beings, not human doings. Which means we must tend to the being.

Because we're in a time that the doing matters, but let's do it out of a place that's full and healthy. It's in that quiet, in that pause. And sometimes it's only for a few minutes. Sometimes it's like giving yourself a whole month. But whatever it is, multiple times a day. Doing that is so counter to mainstream culture. The reality is, it's also really pleading with us as more challenges happen, to pause.

I love ending with that. The pause is a life-giving energy rather than adding to all the challenges and disruptions of our connectedness.

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To learn more about the Four Sacred Gifts, read Anita’s book, The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times here www.FourSacredGifts.com  or take her online course https://foursacredgifts.com/course. Check out Anita’s podcast, The 2-Legged Experience , or contact Anita via her website https://foursacredgifts.com/  to find out more about her annual journey to the sacred headwaters of the Amazon, www.anitaandkitamazonjourney.com

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