World Peace and Prayer Day
Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Spiritual Leader, Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, was directed to begin a spiritual journey and he committed to organize World Peace and Prayer Day in the Four Directions that would be held annually on the summer solstice, June 21. As leader of the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota (Sioux) Nation, he has invited the people of the world to return to their sacred sites on June 21 to pray to the Creator to heal the Earth and to heal relationships between people. In 1996 Chief Looking Horse led a Unity Ride of Bigfoot Riders from the Wahpeton Dakota Reservation, Saskatchewan to Grey Horn Butte (He Hota Paha) Wyoming, called Devils Tower on current maps. Over the past sixteen years the event has been hosted in Ireland (2001), Durban, South Africa (2002), Australia (2003) and Japan (2004).
In 2005 the WPPD ceremony then returned to Paha Sapa, the Sacred Black Hills for another wopila (thank you). The Wolakota Youth Council embarked on a large scale project called Prayer Run for World Peace 2005. This project included both First Nation tribes and many non-native youth from all cultures across the nation. Starting in May 2005 groups from the four directions started their run. Los Angeles, CA in the west, Manitoba, Canada in the north, Long Island, New York in the east and the southern group from Mexico and El Paso, TX. The youth concluded their run in the Black Hills to participate in the 10th annual World Peace and Prayer Day. There was also a Prayer Ride for World Peace that started from Cypress Hills Saskatchewan. A Horse Bundle was carried by the riders on a route that brought them across Montana and through many Tribal communities. As many as 15 youth stayed on their horses all the way to the event. It was a beautiful sight to see the horses and runners come in to the beginning of World Peace and Prayer Day. They brought all their prayers in one hoop of unity.
2006: A Prayer Run for World Peace started in Vancouver, British Columbia that spanned 2,262 miles to the site of World Peace and Prayer Day in Eklutna, Alaska, hosted by the Inuit.
2007: The Wolakota Youth Council also sponsored a Youth Prayer Run for World Peace that started in El Paso, TX and traveled over 1,600 miles to Mexico City, Mexico to the site of Teotihuacan for the ceremony that was hosted by the Mayan.
2008: The ceremony journeyed to New Zealand to Whangarei. The tribal communities of the Whangarei area mainly affiliate to the overarching tribe known as Ngati Wai who were the hosts. (http://www.wppdaotearoa2008.blogspot.com)
2009: The Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, CA hosted the WPPD ceremony.
2010: The fifteenth year of World Peace and Prayer Day was held at the Burgandy Brook Farm in Palmer, MA. It was hosted by Blue Star Equiculture and honored the Horse Nation.
2011 will be held at Bdote, Minnesota USA, which is the American Indian sacred site at the confluence of the Mississippi River and Minnesota River at the border of Minneapolis and Saint Paul Minnesota. The four day event June 18–21 will include speakers and spiritual leaders from previous WPPD events around the world and an attempt at the World's Largest Group Hug on June 19, 2011 (http://www.worldpeaceandprayerday2011.org)
Read more about this topic: Day Of Prayer
Famous quotes containing the words world, peace, prayer and/or day:
“In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
“I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.”
—Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
“The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)