An Interracial Elders Weave™ | Elders Rites of Passage

”This may be one of the responsibilities of eldership: not to pretend that we possess all the answers, but to tell the young what our bodies remember. To warn them that progress can conceal repetition. To remind them that a dying system may become most dangerous when it feels its control slipping away.

I do not know whether America can be saved, or whether the America it imagined itself to be ever truly existed. Perhaps the more urgent question is what must be saved from its slow death: our humanity, our memory, our relationships, and our ability to imagine a world that does not require someone else to live beneath us."

- Watani Stiner, Elder for the 2027 Elders' Weave

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An Interracial Elders' Weave®

An Elders' Rites of Passage for All

For general information about the Elders Weave, you may want to read this page as well. The following builds on it.

As part of a broader movement to help recover eldering wherever it has been lost, we’re aware that for this movement to gain traction, we need thousands of expressions of initiatory experiences for elders that are contextualized within a wide variety of cultures and faith traditions. Thus we are taking the next step in creating another version of these rites and have more in our imaginations as well.

Up until now, the EROP and Elders’ Weave have primarily been attended by people who identify as white, with roughly 10% of participants being people of color. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but we’re aware that having spaces that are truly interracial, rather than made up primarily of any one group, creates some profound opportunities to address some of the larger issues facing our nation and our world.

In February of 2027, the first Interracial Elders’ Weave will be offered in California, with between 40-60% of the participants being those who identify as BIPOC. A racially diverse group of elders and team will guide it, including: a Sikh Indian-Canadian woman who worked as a therapist in First Nations communities in BC, a Lakota woman living in Oakland, an African-American man who is a revolutionary elder, restorative justice advocate, and a survivor of long-term wrongful incarceration, and two white elders who live in Oakland.

You can read more about our guides here.

Why is this needed?

Over the years, two tasks of elderhood have emerged as crucial: to “forgive everyone, everything” and to “speak the unspeakable.” A powerful example of this emerged at the Elder Weave in the fall of 2025. One of the participants was an indigenous elder from Canada who was a survivor of the atrocities of the Catholic boarding schools. He was interested in receiving an acknowledgement and apology for what the church had put him and many of his kin through. A white and Catholic-identified elder on the team was equally interested and willing to extend such an apology on behalf of the Catholic Church. A ritual emerged to support this moment, which was profoundly healing for everyone.

“Speaking the unspeakable” as it pertains to race, includes addressing the racism and genocide that created the US and contines today in structures that are often unseen by white folk.

“Forgiving everyone everything” is a posture towards the past and present that is more than mere words but embraces both accountability and the movement into right-relationship. As we intentionally gather a interracial community of elders to experience the Elders’ Weave, we know that these two framings will inform our container. Participants are those who are ready to do this work in a interracial context.

The Interracial Elder Weave is co-sponsored by the Elders’ Rites of Passage, Illuman of Northern California and Canticle Farm, and is also made possible with a grant from Kalliopeia Foundation. We are committed to paying for the costs through the gift economy rather than a set fee. The costs to food, lodging, and other expenses are roughly $1500 per participant for this 5 day event. We already know that many of the participants will not be financially positioned to contribute at this level, and are asking folks to simply contribute what they can.

Cathedral Meadow at Ekone Ranch: Image Credit Ekone Ranch