Ya-te

When asked who are you? And what is it I do?
Those are questions that will take a lifetime to answer. We are always evolving and learning more about ourselves each and every day. We are always exploring more and more into the life we lead.
My journey started at the beginning, a new born baby. Born from a war nobody wanted, “Vietnam”.  Born from an ancestry that the society around me was afraid of.  So with this I was taken to a country thousands of miles away from where my journey began. Placed with a family that was not my own and raised in a way that was foreign to my being and my heart.
With abandonment in the beginning it was only natural that anger would follow. Anger led to hatred, hatred led to violence, alcohol, drug abuse and attempted suicides. With this in my heart I created a path. After my third major motorcycle accident I faced the precipice of choice, do I follow the path I have been on? Or do I find another way.
The path I was on I knew would only lead to jail or death or both.
The challenge was to find a new way to see, a new way to live. I began the journey to find my own answers by first finding the questions that I was asking of life. I searched for teachers, for my parents, for a culture, a place to call home. I found that most ways easily learnt are so changed by the agendas of people. “All the requirements of membership” I was being asked to sacrifice myself to belong. I was not willing to do this so I turned to the only thing left. I chose to learn from the natural world and universe that surrounds us every day of our lives. The very source of life itself, in its purest form, without the fears and doctrines of others. This is the path I have chosen to walk.
Over the past 15 years I have been teaching others how to learn from this way. I have been asked to speak at many conferences, festivals and private functions. I have also facilitated workshops and retreats as well as individual counselling not only here in Australia but also in the United States and Canada. My goal is to help create an understanding between all peoples and beliefs through the understanding of who we are and how we all came to be. To learn to understand that there are many true ways to live in this world. Each of them with a common source and a common truth.
To live, love and be.
Unfortunately there are some people out there that attack anyone who is trying to make a difference in this world in a good way. They don’t challenge the words spoken they attack the speaker personally and some times quite vindictively. Throughout my life I have always searched for my truth. Sometimes in places that most would not go. I always have claimed to be nothing but myself.

I Do not claim to be a member of any native nation or tribe.
I am fully aware that I cannot do this and will not be accepted as even having native blood by some until I can prove on paper my bloodlines. As I have not been able to find my birth parents yet I am unable to do this. My search continues for myself and the completion of my own journey.

I Do not teach nor sell any traditional ceremonies in any form.
All that I teach people is of no particular culture. As I grew up in the western world and that the teachers I thought I needed were not available to me. I chose to find my own answers my own way.
It is this way that I offer to those that wish to learn it. Not the ways of another.

The name that I carry is a name that I was given in the way I was taught my fathers people earned their names. A name is far more than what people use to get your attention or to refer to you. All words have power and meaning. The very way you refer to yourself has the most power over you. It will create the very foundation of how you see yourself. Also it can show others in a simple way your nature and heart. Your name is also your journey. Your journey into knowing your name is the journey into knowing yourself and your path for the people. I honour this name because if I used the name given to me by the society that took me from my mother I would be honouring that act. I did not choose the name Standing Bear the name chose me. This part of my name is only half of the story. The rest of the story is still being written.