WUNRN
PEACEWALKER TRACES ANCESTRAL
HISTORY,
RITUALS, TRADITIONS, COMMUNITIES +
Peacewalker Follows
Her Dreams
29 December 2009
Audri with an Egyptian Friend
Audri Scott Williams describes herself as a mother, a grandmother, a peacewalker, and a lover; also as a vision-keeper, a motivator, a human rights activist, an author, and a producer. The vision she keeps has led her around the world since the year 2000. She followed it on the Trail of Dreams Ancestral Journey, a walk from Pennsylvania to Georgia in 2000 and then in Ghana, West Africa in 2002; to six continents between 2005 and 2009 on the Trail of Dreams World Peace Walk; and now back to the US, where she is preparing to launch the 13-Moon City Tour that will end in Washington, DC, late in 2011.
Audri’s various peace pilgrimages have several things in common. First, they
promote healing within and among disparate groups. Second, they engage people
of all generations as leaders. And third, they spring from her visions and are
nourished by the wisdom of surviving traditional cultures and peace heroes of
the past. She earned a Master of Liberal Arts degree in the Indigenous Mind
Program at
Audri says, “My time at the feet of elders from East, West and
Heart over Head
Audri is a woman of considerable intellectual and professional
accomplishments. At the age of 32, she was the only African American woman in
the state of
“I had three sons, I was working on a PhD, my husband and I had founded a theater company, and I was fast-tracking myself for bigger things. Then my heart sent me a message.
I had a heart attack. The doctors didn’t identify the problem right away. They tend not to look at heart trouble in younger women. After 3 ½ years of trials and tests, finally one of the doctors told me, ‘You are here to do something, and you’re not doing it.’
And I knew exactly what he meant. I had four angel grandmothers from the time I was a little girl. Those four old ladies have been bossing me all my life. I don’t remember ever not being aware of them, but when I was 16 I asked them to go away so I could be like everybody else. They honored that for 30 years. I knew they’d come back.
I was always where I needed to be, but when it was time for me to shift I was holding on to what I had. Then one day in the car I heard a voice coming up from inside of everything. By the end of the day I had written a letter of resignation. The decision created so much stress in my relationship that my marriage of 20 years eventually dissolved. And the more I walked my heartfelt path, the stronger my heart became. Today, fully immersed in my calling, my heart is healthy and I do not take any medications.
I was here to do something, and it had to do with peace and
reconciliation. It took a few years to allow the vision to come forward.
1997-98 was pivotal. It was my first opportunity to participate in a
traditional ceremony. Mamm Fatu Seck , 103 years old, came from
In 1999 I was invited to
To Walk the World
As we were cleaning up after the second Youth Summit in 2005, I had a dream about walking around the world for peace. I woke up streaming tears. I saw energy, peace, and love but I also saw it as much bigger than me. The calling was so strong I knew I had to at least show up. I held it until the volunteers and I had packed up, then I shared it, and several said right away they wanted to take part. The dream gave a specific date, six months away, and the specific countries. It was a very precise dream, including the fact that the money and the network would not be in place. The seven walkers included my mom, just turned 80 and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, in a wheelchair. We also had 3 ½-year-old Zenobia. They were both our special trail angels.
Everyone was drawn to Zenobia. And taking my mother along was one of the smartest things I could have done. She became Mama Natalie to communities all over the world.
My challenge was to stay focused on the vision and not what I saw before me. I was promised, ‘Everything you need will be provided in your moment of need.’ I had to focus on knowing that what I had been promised was true. There was never an If. It was, “We are going to do our part and the universe will do the rest. It’s going to be interesting to see how all this gets worked out!’
The Trail
of Dreams World Peace Walk took us nearly 32,000 miles, from the
We had our moments! We arrived in
In 2007 we were in
2010 – 2011, the USA
Audri describes the impetus for the 2010 walk this way:
“I was sitting in a cave when the light came into it, in a moment that
seemed like eternity. That was one of the mystical, magical, Godly things that
took me to
Of the cities that asked us, the Trail of Dreams World Peace Walkers, to come and do peace work, 13 have emerged. The vision said that 13 would select themselves and we will effect a shift in whatever issues these cities are experiencing. Beginning on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, we will go to Miami, Florida; Macon, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Dallas and El Paso, Texas; Los Angeles and Oakland, California; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; Newark, New Jersey; Harlem, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; and back to Atlanta, Georgia. The challenge now is that I am getting calls every day from more and more communities that want to participate!
So I am facilitating the process born out of the global walk, speaking in various places to raise revenue. I will be spending time in each place, finding partners and resources and also praying for the city. I’m using the lessons I’ve learned to go forward.
One thing I have learned is the importance of ritual and tradition. We’ll begin each stage of the journey with a shared ritual, incorporating something in each community that is symbolic of the healing that community needs.
I’ve also learned that people everywhere feel isolated, alone, out of touch.
We weren’t just wearing out shoes; we were building a worldwide network of
contacts. While we were in
This walk is a people’s walk. It is scheduled in alignment with the lunar
calendar, which is, according to ancient tradition, the calendar of
cooperation. It also aligns with the sacred feminine, which is important to the
walkers because one of their goals is to touch the heart of
Seeing with New
Eyes
Audri playing the flute.
Coming home to the
That’s why this process will center on stories and visions. I want to get people visioning and dreaming with me beyond their day to day problems. In each place we’ll aim to make everything visible and facilitate an opening. We’ll bring 30 or so key community organizations together to look at the whole wheel and see what’s at the hub. How can they share the visions and the resources, the heartaches and the tough stuff, so they have a vital network in place when we move on?
I want to shift from a problem focus to a vision focus as a way to hope and change. I want to flip the script, to leave a spiritual template for what each city would look like if it were whole. First we share stories and get to the fundamental issues, what we have in common. Then we identify the core issues and decide how to address them together instead of going after the same resources and politicians, the strategies that haven’t worked.
I’m hoping to find a funder who will contribute video cameras, so in each place, four young people who represent the diversity of the community can document the local process, telling the story through their own eyes. This will begin to train their eyes so they gain a visual connection to what’s going on – a different kind of eyesight. We’ll take our time to find the right four in each place. In the final stage, when we pull it all together, they’ll have a key role as the documentary team.
Red Clay in the
We’ll find the grandmas in each city, the feminine icons, and make them team members too. Linkages between the generations are missing in destroyed communities.
The documentation is central because young people, and women too, bring a different lens and a different voice to this process. It will also be a chance for community members to see themselves on the screen as larger than they are. They can be a part of the process at the same time as they’re separate from it. It will be a co-creative process, giving voice to the voiceless, visibility to the invisible, allowing me and others to accompany the people of each place and be their witnesses. At the end I want to be able to tell a good story, a representative story that comes from the people, in such a way that the whole country can hear it.
Last time we were broke two weeks into the walk. The fact that we touched all the bases and made it home shows that people care. Now we want to find our way through this new challenge to make an impact. It’s never a solo flight. Our success is always a measure of our capacity to collaborate.
Our roots are strong enough now. We can accept sponsorship without being owned. We’ll just keep checking to be sure that spirit, and not money, is shaping the journey.
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