Indigenous people of the Everglades have led prayer walks for decades with a public ceremony drawing 26 people this Saturday, Nov. 8. In recent years, science, such as the Blue Zones studies by National Geographic, has shown how aspects of such traditions are demonstrated in areas with the greatest wellbeing.
Though Garrett Stuart spoke not one word of the Blue Zones, on Saturday, Nov. 8, he led a ceremonial prayer walk in the Everglades for the healing of the attendees with their intention set on the healing and protection of the earth. Aspects of the walk mirror the aspects of Blue Zones—communities that experience long life through collective and individual wellbeing.
Stuart, a Collier County resident of Ochopee, brought aspects of his Lakota heritage, along with guidance from long time prayer walker Betty Osceola, a member of the Panther Clan of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. They wove together their ancestral wisdom and practices with many of the aspects discovered in these “Blue Zones,” or areas of the planet where people live long, healthy lives, without using such language.
The recent prayer walks held each month for more than a year have been an aspect of bringing awareness to the risks of the potential use of radioactive fertilizer waste as road base in Florida roads. A private road project was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency despite decades of the EPA deeming the material, called phosphogypsum, too dangerous to be stored in anyway other than stacks—where they now mount to a billion tons in stacks with millions of gallons of acidic water on top of each…