The Linnunraata: Our Kinship with Swans

The Linnunraata, a Finnish folktale, describes the Milky Way as the migratory path of white swans, also known as “Soul Carriers” who bring a human soul to the body at the moment of birth, and carry the soul away at the moment of death towards Lintukoto, the home of the birds. A beautiful story that folds us back into the feathered wings of a universe that mothers us.

Read More

Polar Bear Son: in Kinship with the Wild

Polar Bear Son is a deeply moving Inuit folktale with themes of reciprocity and interdependence. An elderly woman who raises an abandoned baby polar bear as her son. When she grows too old to care for herself, he hunts for food for her.

Read More

Braiding Sweetgrass and the Goddess of Creation

SkyWoman, a Haudenosaunee Creation story about the first woman who falls from the sky clutching seeds and plants which she plants on Turtle’s back where they grow and blossom. . . Sky Woman is a story about an outsider, an immigrant, a celestial stranger who falls from the sky into the world of earthly creatures who help her. Sky Woman shows us the power of reciprocity to bridge differences, and the abundance everyone receives when two worlds meet.

Read More