newsletter 25

A Letter from the Chair

Happy New Year!

We are delighted to share our 2015 Annual Report, highlighting our accomplishments and reflecting our plans for the future. Please click to see the Annual Report.

 We have continued to work closely with Merced County’s Probation Department, Merced Boys & Girls Club, and other youth-serving organizations in the Central Valley and Northern California.We completed a short video, Unifying Spirit – Honoring Indigenous, with the American Indian tribes of Yosemite, funded by an America’s Best Ideas grant from the National Parks Foundation.

All pictures are excerpts from our book, “Voices From the Inside”

We have especially focused on our relationship with the Merced County Probation Department. Almost every week Ron goes to the Merced County juvenile justice complex, Iris Garrett, for lunch with the youth. He brings healthy organic food and they share lunch and talk about their experiences in Yosemite. Ron and his work with Probation was also featured in The Search for Freedom by filmmaker Jon Long.

Our new book, Voices From Inside Out, was developed jointly by Sacred Rok and the Probation Department youth whom are incarcerated. This inspirational book tells the stories of 22 young people who have come to Yosemite with Sacred Rok, and what it has meant to them.

With the support of our donors, last year Ron led twenty-six day trips and five camping trips with Merced County Probation, Boys & Girls Club of Merced, EMQ FamiliesFirst, Yosemite area Native American Tribes and Symple Equazion. These trips provide the opportunity for these young people to experience nature and to build ongoing relationships.

Ron has also made presentations to groups throughout the Bay Area, as well as showing his movie Return to Balance: A Climber’s Journey at the Yosemite Visitor Center on weekend nights during the spring and summer.

We are grateful to our many supporters and donors, who share our values and commitment to our future as an inclusive society connected to nature and its wonders.These projects have been supported by Clif Bar Family Foundation, The North Face, Patagonia, Yosemite Conservancy, Merced County United Way, and the National Parks Foundation. All of our trips are at no cost to the participants. We are 100% funded by donations (monetary and in-kind), grants, and contracts. We are especially grateful for the donation of a camper vehicle from Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford of Clif Bar, providing amenities such as refrigeration and hot water for our camping trips.

Thank you for the opportunity to share the healing experience of nature with the young people we serve as well as with the larger community.

And please let us know if you would like a copy of Voices From the Inside Out – you will love it! We ask a $20 donation if possible, thanks!

Nancy Goodban, Board Chair

Click here for Voices from our Youth

 

Donate to Sacred Rok for #GivingTuesday

Please join us in celebrating #GivingTuesday – a day where giving back takes center stage over the shopping and spending of the holiday season.  Sacred Rok reflects the importance of slowing down, paying attention to our surroundings, honoring the present, and respecting nature.

If you donate to Sacred Rok through PayPal’s Giving Fund today, they will add 1%.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/search-cause?charityId=117921&s=3

Thank you for your support!!

 

The Search For Freedom

As we continue our relationship with Bear Creek Academy Juvenile Hall we’re happy to share our part in a feature length film called The Search for Freedom; which has played in 80 theaters across the US and winner of numerous awards.

Here is the short:

RON KAUK SHORT from Jon Long on Vimeo.

In our commitment of being with the youth at Juvenile Hall we keep building our story through camping trips, day trips, and lunch outings, which your donations help us to do.

We humbly thank you for your generous donations because it is with your support that we can continue to follow our mission.

We also would like to remind you that we offer a series of prints, t-shirts, and books in exchange for your contribution. Please check our website for more details: http://sacredrok.org/donate-now/

Sacred Rok's New T-Shirt and Video

We are excited to share our newest T-Shirt with you. The Yosemite Bear was done by renown Yosemite Artist, Penny Otwell and we are very honored to be able to feature her work on our shirts.

The inspiration for this shirt came from this video: Unifying Spirit – Honoring Indigenous 

Sacred Rok continues to be committed to understand what it means to be a human being in the 21st century. In the collaboration with the indigenous reality of the First Nations people of Yosemite we are sharing this message together. Yosemite is recognized as a World Heritage Site and has always been the responsibility of the American Indian People to be caretakers.

In this video the voices of those who understand this responsibility can be heard.

Unifying Spirit – Honoring Indigenous  – please click the links for the 13 minute video

A behind the scenes glimpse at the production of Unifying Spirit with our native elders.

This video was funded through the generous support of the National Parks Foundation, through its Americas Best Ideas grant. It was made possible through the generous support of Subaru, The Ahmanson Foundation, Chapman Hanson Foundation, and Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation.

A minimum of a $50 contribution will send a youth to Yosemite for a day with Ron; an event that can be life changing. In return we will send you this Indigenous inspired, Sacred Yosemite Bear tee (Adult sizes S, M, L, XL).

 

Half Dome T-shirt

Half Dome T-shirt, art work by Jeremy Collins. 

A minimum of a $50 contribution will send a youth to Yosemite for a day with Ron; an event that can be life changing. In return we will send you this Half Dome inspired Sacred Rok tee (Adult sizes S, M, L, XL).

America’s Best Idea Grant – August 2014

Yosemite National Park just issued a press release about the America’s Best Ideas grant received from the National Parks Foundation.  Yosemite is partnering with Sacred Rok and the local tribal community to connect American Indian youth to Yosemite National Park.

please check it out: ABI Yosemite News Release

Coversations from the Sacred Kitchen

Everything we put in us has an impact but the body is also very powerful and resilient and has the capacity to endure a lot. But, we must nurture the body with food, water, thoughts and environment. We should do so with the the cleanest food, water and energy we can.

Clean food, real food, organic food and whole food will keep the body in a healthy way and we will perform better, function better, have better sleep, clearer minds and healthier bodies. We have moved very far in a very short amount time away from whole and real food. Dietary choices combined with lifestyle factors play a huge role in obesity, and it has been found that the prevalence of obesity increases significantly for those who consume fast food 3 or more times per week. People are simply overbooked and overtaxed and are overlooking health in exchange for convenience and cheapness. Refined foods and processed foods are chosen because they are simple to obtain and taste good enough. However, these foods are detrimental to our health and well-being. We have become addicted to these convenience foods and these foods are keeping us weak and sick in our bodies and our minds.

We have given up what we as humans innately know about what we need to eat and have placed that power in the hands of government and corporation. In turn we have received GMO’s, “conventionally” grown food laden with pesticides and herbicides, rancid vegetable oils, and higher obesity rates, heart disease, and more diabetes than ever before.

Just as the plants need water, we need water. We need to hydrate ourselves to keep our cells healthy and full, our body loose and limber. Water is cleansing and life giving – absolutely nothing can live without it yet we mistreat water so globally and with such abandon.  Many people would argue that one cannot waste water, but I disagree. Our mistreatment of water by putting additives in it, by using it in Fracking to carry slurry, using it to carry human waste, water parks, soda factories, watering pesticide laden plants is a waste of precious and limited clean water. We are abusing our life source. And unfortunately this has become the norm and this needs to change.

We buy bottled water because we desire the life source and the tap water in our homes doesn’t always taste so good, but this is a vicious cycle. The plastic is terrible for our environment. In the US alone 35 billion plastic water bottles are tossed in the trash – plastics constitute approximately 90% of all trash floating in the oceans – and this plastic will take 500 to 1000 years to degrade, turning into smaller and smaller pieces. In 2013 93% of Americans age 6 and older tested positive for the plastic chemical BPA. We are ingesting plastic whether we know it or not and it is making us sick. We should stop buying bottled water and instead invest in water filters for our homes and offices.

Something to consider is that all wild animals, still living in nature, know what to eat and how to get it. They do not need Burger Kings or supermarkets – everything they need is provided by nature – they have not lost their way. This is a good example for us to follow.

In this highly modernized world which has conquered almost every square inch of the globe it is a tall and difficult order to go back to the wild and reacquaint ourselves with what we left behind. However, we can use nature as guidance and inspiration on how to get back to what we once knew about living healthy and being whole. 

The choices we make in what we eat make a difference in our health and the health of our families. Leaving behind the fast food and the convenience food and going for the whole food and the real food is better for the environment, better for you and keeps more money in your pockets.

Sacred Rok’s camp kitchen has been an advocate of this way of eating and nurturing the body from the beginning. Each year we strive to bring the groups we work with the best food we can obtain and prepare. Our menus consist of organic grains, free-range and local meats and eggs, organic and locally procured fruits and vegetables, raw and local dairy as well as items picked wild in the Sierra. Part of our job in the kitchen is to not only provide this food and prepare this food but it is also to share an understanding about nutrition and what it is we are getting from the things we eat. We also share the process of preparing and help our groups realize that they too can eat this way at home. We look forward  to continuing this journey in 2015 and helping our Sacred Rok community grow in health and harmony with nature.

Conversations from the Sacred Kitchen

Everything we put in us has an impact but the body is also very powerful and resilient and has the capacity to endure a lot. But, we must nurture the body with food, water, thoughts and environment. We should do so with the the cleanest food, water and energy we can.

Clean food, real food, organic food and whole food will keep the body in a healthy way and we will perform better, function better, have better sleep, clearer minds and healthier bodies. We have moved very far in a very short amount time away from whole and real food. Dietary choices combined with lifestyle factors play a huge role in obesity, and it has been found that the prevalence of obesity increases significantly for those who consume fast food 3 or more times per week. People are simply overbooked and overtaxed and are overlooking health in exchange for convenience and cheapness. Refined foods and processed foods are chosen because they are simple to obtain and taste good enough. However, these foods are detrimental to our health and well-being. We have become addicted to these convenience foods and these foods are keeping us weak and sick in our bodies and our minds.

We have given up what we as humans innately know about what we need to eat and have placed that power in the hands of government and corporation. In turn we have received GMO’s, “conventionally” grown food laden with pesticides and herbicides, rancid vegetable oils, and higher obesity rates, heart disease, and more diabetes than ever before.

Just as the plants need water, we need water. We need to hydrate ourselves to keep our cells healthy and full, our body loose and limber. Water is cleansing and life giving – absolutely nothing can live without it yet we mistreat water so globally and with such abandon.  Many people would argue that one cannot waste water, but I disagree. Our mistreatment of water by putting additives in it, by using it in Fracking to carry slurry, using it to carry human waste, water parks, soda factories, watering pesticide laden plants is a waste of precious and limited clean water. We are abusing our life source. And unfortunately this has become the norm and this needs to change.

We buy bottled water because we desire the life source and the tap water in our homes doesn’t always taste so good, but this is a vicious cycle. The plastic is terrible for our environment. In the US alone 35 billion plastic water bottles are tossed in the trash – plastics constitute approximately 90% of all trash floating in the oceans – and this plastic will take 500 to 1000 years to degrade, turning into smaller and smaller pieces. In 2013 93% of Americans age 6 and older tested positive for the plastic chemical BPA. We are ingesting plastic whether we know it or not and it is making us sick. We should stop buying bottled water and instead invest in water filters for our homes and offices.

Something to consider is that all wild animals, still living in nature, know what to eat and how to get it. They do not need Burger Kings or supermarkets – everything they need is provided by nature – they have not lost their way. This is a good example for us to follow.

In this highly modernized world which has conquered almost every square inch of the globe it is a tall and difficult order to go back to the wild and reacquaint ourselves with what we left behind. However, we can use nature as guidance and inspiration on how to get back to what we once knew about living healthy and being whole. 

The choices we make in what we eat make a difference in our health and the health of our families. Leaving behind the fast food and the convenience food and going for the whole food and the real food is better for the environment, better for you and keeps more money in your pockets.

Sacred Rok’s camp kitchen has been an advocate of this way of eating and nurturing the body from the beginning. Each year we strive to bring the groups we work with the best food we can obtain and prepare. Our menus consist of organic grains, free-range and local meats and eggs, organic and locally procured fruits and vegetables, raw and local dairy as well as items picked wild in the Sierra. Part of our job in the kitchen is to not only provide this food and prepare this food but it is also to share an understanding about nutrition and what it is we are getting from the things we eat. We also share the process of preparing and help our groups realize that they too can eat this way at home. We look forward  to continuing this journey in 2015 and helping our Sacred Rok community grow in health and harmony with nature.