Minnesota First Nations
A Moment with the Elders: Mary Lyons
10/24/2025 | 3m 17sVideo has Closed Captions
In this Moment with the Elders from Season 17 of Native Report, Mary Lyons, an elder from the...
In this Moment with the Elders from Season 17 of Native Report, Mary Lyons, an elder from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, shares her wisdom and stories.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Minnesota First Nations is a local public television program presented by PBS North
Minnesota First Nations
A Moment with the Elders: Mary Lyons
10/24/2025 | 3m 17sVideo has Closed Captions
In this Moment with the Elders from Season 17 of Native Report, Mary Lyons, an elder from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, shares her wisdom and stories.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipWhat is my favorite traditional way?
It's living up to its existing.
I tell you, you know, I get up in the morning because what people don't understand is that when your body rest, your spirit serves at night, everybody's night fire.
You just have to trust and believe.
These young ones use these, you know, they're just.
They're just here.
And it's like you're kind of like a a dried up sponge, you know, shrivel.
And anytime it expands, think expands because it has something other than the purity of those water.
And so those first teachings and those downloads of memories, because within those teachings they say, you know, prophecies in our schools, it says, you know, there comes a time when we will enter in the purest of waters, and then we'll seek the most changeless of worlds.
And then when you're entering or ending the seventh fire into the eighth fire is that you will be born in the most dangerous of worlds, and you will seek the most healthiest of water.
He will find it.
What you need to do is you need to rebuild or refine or even be introduced to that real feeling, that connection, those links, your ancestral links when you go, I don't know my ancestors, you do because you're in you're you're you're here and you.
This is when children say, I don't have that, I don't I don't have what they have that you do because you're in you, we say this to your kids and adoptive kids and that they're when they.
You're even children that I hate using that word.
That one kid said to me, you know, my parents to want me.
They threw me away.
You know, they'd rather be partying or alcohol or doing drugs.
They like that than they like me more.
And I said, here's a lesson.
You argue with the darkness.
Your light will go out.
What you have to do is become brighter so that darkness start seeing that there a way to get out.
You were born into this world to know that you're a student and you're here to learn and to walk out the you're not here to fix anybody other than yourself.
There was a time in that mixture.
We never had that freedom of speech.
We never had that freedom.
So the thing is, say your pain when you're angry at something, don't be angry at the world.
Say I hurt because.
And I identify that very.
You.
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