The woman you meet in this episode, Goody Cook, is a beacon in an array of quiet, powerful worlds.

She is a magnetic, joyous, and loving presence, and the public conversation we offer up here was part of a several-day gathering where a fantastic group of young people,

who I'd describe all as social and spiritual creatives, had gathered

to be nourished, to explore the depths of what community can mean, to become more grounded

and whole. They have taken to sitting at the feet of this Mohawk, wise woman, mother, and

grandmother, and I very quickly understood why. In the realm of this Mohawk, wise woman, mother and grandmother, and I very quickly understood why.

In the realm of professional accomplishment, Goody is globally renowned in the field of midwifery.

Her practice and teaching are based in ancient ancestral knowledge and have taken an esteemed

place in research and advances in the science

of environmental reproductive health. She's founder of the National Aboriginal Council

of Midwives of Canada. Her work in her country is at heart, as she says, about the reclamation

of the transformative power of birth.

And Goji Cook is helping our world and new generations recover the natural human experience

which my generation in time had begun to lose of cross-generational companionship and care.

Her own grandmother delivered her into the world in her big, quiet

iron bed, as Goody recounts, and took care of her extended family from womb to tomb. This entire

weekend I attended, and this conversation you'll hear sitting in a room of mostly young people,

was an exercise in the art of

Eldering, which Goody Cook calls nothing more and nothing less than generational wealth

transmission.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. I interviewed Goody Cook at the All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne, Vermont.

She had just published a new book called Worlds Within Us, Wisdom and Resilience of Indigenous Women Eld elders. Among the women featured in that book

...