Louise McDonald
Louise Wakerakats:te McDonald illuminates the journey for many to regenerate love for themselves, their children, and their people. A condoled Mohawk Bear Clan Mother, she pulls the threads of ancient matrilineal knowledge from Sky Woman’s origins to the present. Louise activates ceremony as a way of being and knowing over the life course – truly as a pathway away from violence, abuse, and illness to health. She leads youth and their relations through the Ohero:kon Rites of Passage during a four year process to steadily incorporate Haudenosaunee values that will guide them as adults. Louise opens sacred space linked to natural cycles for girls and women in the Moon Lodge, a place where prophetic dreams are shared and made real. As part of the Konon:kwe women’s circle, she brings back the institution of Mother Law to develop a responsible future. Always starting from a place of “perpetual gratitude,” Louise has co-created a renewed Haudenosaunee narrative for resilience and resistance. Louise embodies the head Corn mothers “to keep her hand on the pulse of her people and her stewardship is guided by knowing the land and the greater universe it is connected to.”