"Celebrating the Story of North America"

  
3 SCRIPTED STORIES
to choose from

   '   

1. "Death and Rebirth: The Story of North America"
    30-min rehearsed play for kids and adults
    SCRIPT (right click to download)


2. "North America: Our Home"
    45-min rehearsed play for kids and adults
    SCRIPT and accompanying SLIDES
    (right-click to download)


3. "Coming Home to North America"
    60 - 90 min unrehearsed play for kids or adults
    (4 SCRIPTS to choose from)


 

  

 
  • A 2001 book by Tim Flannery, titled The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples, provided the inspiration and scientific grounding for all these stories. Connie Barlow wrote a lengthy review of that book for the Summer 2002 issue of Wild Earth magazine. Click here for a PDF of Connie's article.

  • Click here for a magnificent oratory, written by Thomas Berry, that can be used for group reading before or after the North American ritual/experience. Title: "In Praise of North America"

  • The 18 August 2005 issue of the prestigious science journal, Nature contains an advocacy article that proposes "rewilding" close-kin of some of the large mammals that went extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene, 13 thousand years ago. Only by understanding the deep-time story of North America does this radical proposal in wildlife conservation make sense. Hence the importance of conveying the story, including in ways suggested here. To access this amazing article, you can view or download it at http://rewilding.org/pdf/Pleistocene-Re-wildingNorthAmerica1.pdf.

    • INTENTION: We North Americans are largely ignorant of the magnificent deep time story of this continent, a story that begins some 70 million years ago near the end of the dinosaur era. The map to right shows how North America looked 70 million years ago, when the "Bearpaw Seaway" divided North America into a western land mass (which had a land connection to Asia) and eastern land mass (which had a land connection to Europe). The yellow "star" denotes where the meteor struck Earth 66 million years ago, which wiped out the (non-avian) dinosaurs.   

       LEFT: "Mammoths, Overkill, and a Deep-Time Perspective on Pleistocene Extinctions"

    Connie Barlow summarizes the world-wide paleontological evidence in support of the Overkill Theory of "extinction of the massive", proposed by Paul S. Martin, in this "Coming Home to North America" program delivered as a keynote presentation in 2004 in Lexington Kentucky (EarthSpirit Rising Conference).

    Click to watch the 8 minute VIDEO presentation by Connie (2004)

    Click for Connie's published essay on using a deep-time perspective for coming into a "native" relationship with the continent of North America.

    .

    PHOTOS & TIMELINE of
    North America Storytelling Beads

    		     RIGHT: Connie Barlow's 5-minute video celebrating our Pleistocene past, based on her 2001 book, The Ghosts of Evolution.

    • Watch VIDEO

    		    


    WWW www.TheGreatStory.org

    RETURN TO HOME PAGE