During a nature-based mentoring program held many years ago, I met a native man, Paul Raphael. He was impressed with our description of how to live in indigenous culture, close to the earth. But, he said, it's not going to work - there are no elders here. "What do you mean" I responded. "What elders, where would we find elders?" I thought of elders as a relic of the past, picturing in my mind the likes of Sitting Bull - nothing I had access to. Paul then began telling stories of his quest of searching out elders for himself, and finding the old-time teachings from different people. And so I started to realize that throughout history, all over the world, the set of complex relationships of a community has been facilitated by the oldest people in that community, not books, not TV, not the current experiment of modern education. What has gotten us here today as modern human beings is the wisdom cultivated by the elders of each individual lineage and community in our past.

In this time of a lot of changes and new ideas being introduced very rapidly to our children, who is our link to the timelessness of values of our community? That rightful place is in the chair of the elder. So the question is, how do we reclaim that? Three approaches come to mind right away. I have some experiences with seeking elders myself. How do I approach someone who's older but doesn't experience themselves as an elder?

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