The Four Sacred Things

DECLARATION OF THE FOUR SACRED THINGS

"The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity. To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible. To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives."
-Excerpt of The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk

First dance film of the Return Dance Project, filmed May 2021 on the Bonneville Salt Flats: sentient, sacred, stolen lands - homelands of the Goshute, Shoshone and Ute people. As the Great Salt Lake disappears, diverted to feed lawns, industry, and agriculture, we came to treasure and celebrate the elements of life, to bring our feet to this land and dance in connection with Her.

Choreography and concept by Lorin Hansen
Filming by Noah Waldman
Music by Fatoumata Diawara & Roberto Fonseca
Dancers: Mallory Howard, Rayna Wiles, Zé Renee, and Eva Macias

A dancing prayer for humans to return to the Earth and cherish the sacred elements that sustain all life.