Silver City, N.M.- The final event of F! Week at WNMU was topped off by none other than the amazing Lyla June from Taos, New Mexico performing her special fixture entitled, “Repairing The Root of Life with Lyla June: Affirming The Sacredness of Women.”
Introduced by Benita Harry, President of the Native American Student Organization, June was presented with a certificate from the organization for being a voice for the people.
Lyla June is a graduate of Stanford, class of 2012, with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Anthropology. She is of Navajo, Cheyenne, and Scandinavian descent. Among her many other amazing accomplishments, she is the co-founder of the Taos Peace Reconciliation, and has helped with the movement of the 100 Mile Prayer Walk that brings awareness to the exploitation of the people by coal, oil and mine corporations. She has also helped create the Regeneration Festival that participates around the world in 13 different countries in the month of September.
June introduces herself as a part of the Black Charcoal Streak clan and the Salt clan.
She starts off by speaking on what her mission is, and June said that she was, “Here with a prayer to help at least one person today.” She also stated that she was going to attempt to serve the people, hopefully inspire, and use her stories to help people.
“We are all beloved in the eyes of the Earth and the Creator,” June said.
Lyla also mentioned how her speeches are mixed with music because it’s more fun and exciting than just speaking at an audience for two hours straight.
June then started speaking on the importance of women, and how honoring Mother Earth is affirming the sanctity of women. June also believes that women and mothers are the intuitive guards and leaders of life. She then stated that the patriarchy doesn’t help men either, contrary to popular belief.
Her speech then took a turn to a much more serious topic that still isn’t widely spoken about: rape. Lyla stated that “Rape is an important tactic used to immobilize women.” She said that it is a part of the dark that makes men hate the women in their family because of their failure to protect. But the bright side to her shedding light on this subject was that, “None of us can lose our sacredness, no matter what is done to our bodies. We are perpetually sacred.”
Within her speech, Lyla June had many inspiring words that came from a place of such deep love for her fellow humankind, and in that, she spoke on how she was saved through forgiveness and wanting to show humanity that they need to be all that they are.
Lyla spoke on how in her college years she was a drug dealer, the one everyone knew about, and she also said how “she was destroying human bodies for profit for three years,” and that she had probably caused so much anguish from the rapes that she may not have known about. She has been sober for four years now, and with that she sang a song of thanks to Creator about her lifestyle change.
She then touched on the witch hunts that happened in Europe where 9 million women were persecuted for simply being healers from the Earth to others. She performed another song entitled, “Motherland” in Welsh, an ode to the women of Europe.
June then recited a poem for the water and its importance in everyone’s lives and how it relates to womankind.
Her closing statement before her last poem was, “As women, as potential mothers know that you’re sacred. And if you’re not sure how, then ask Creator.”
She closed the event with a poem entitled, “It Is Dawn,” about a new day coming and how there is hope on the horizon coming.
This event and F! Week was sponsored by The Center for Gender Equity.
