Enough (In The Name Of Your Grace)

This song is to honor our ancestors both Indigenous to Turtle Island (aka America) and beyond. Those who fought to hand down prayerful ways that uphold all life. It was through this prayer and ceremony that many of us were able to save our own lives, get sober, get out of bad situations, and remember who we are. May this song help all remember that Creator and the Ancestors are only a prayer away 🙂 Some say when our grandparents pass they come back as our animal relatives: sheep, horses, goats and other animals. Thus, we treat them the same way we would our own grandparents. 
This song was also written for the Native American Community Academy DSIA project to help prevent substance abuse and youth suicide. I started doing drugs when I was 11 years old. I experienced gender violence since I was very young, which led to self-blame, and self-hatred. Through prayer, I was able to find people who could help me understand that what happened to me was not my fault. That there was a planet worth living for, worth fighting for and worth being sober for. I celebrate 9 years of complete sobriety this year. May all who need that support find it and may we live strong for those who didn't make it through the onslaught of colonization. 
All proceeds from my bandcamp (lylajune.bandcamp.com) are routed to www.7genfund.org, a non-profit supporting Indigenous grassroots community projects. Buy this song now and you could support their programs: Community Vitality, Land Defenders & Water Protectors, Thriving Women, Tradition Bearers Fellowship, and Flicker Fund! 🙂
Videography by Jackie Frank 💪🏽
LYRICS: 
When I was young I had some big dreams
Wanted to bring peace and help my family
From a small town, I could feel the gravity
Weight on my shoulders made it hard to spread my wings
But I knew I could do it, knew I could push through it
Could do anything if I put my mind to it
Native youth had it hard as children growing up
But with prayers in our hearts I knew we could overcome
Got 1000 ancestors behind me
We marching on yes here come the army
Got 1000 ancestors behind me
We marching on yes here come the army
When I turned 13 the world shattered my dreams
All I had left was a bunch of broken pieces
So many years hiding in the dark
I almost drowned, but I never gave up
Creator heard my prayer in the depths of my despair
It took a couple tries, but I stood back up
Put down the liquor, put down the drugs
I’ve been sober nine years some how we overcome
Got 1000 ancestors behind me
We marching on yes here come the army
Got 1000 ancestors behind me
We marching on yes here come the army
Now everything I have I owe to the Creator
Fell to my knees didn’t know if She would answer
But She came through clutch at the time when I needed Her
Now I’m flying high, yes, I’m a believer. 
It’s what got me through, it’s what got me through
Your love, it’s what got me through, what got me through
To you
Creator
Creator 
To you
Creator
Yeah, to you.  
Message from elder in Diné Bizaad (Navajo Language)

1000 Ancestors

June and Davis are both former drug addicts who have come together on North Star to express a shared experience with faith, transformation and liberation from toxic shame. Pleading to the Creator, "Help me see me through your eyes, so my broken wings can fly," the song illustrates their right to walk a good path in life: holding on to the sacredness of who they are in the face of any voice that tells them otherwise.

North Star (feat. Quincy Davis)

It is very difficult to translate Navajo into English. Sometimes a single word can require an entire poem.

Wake Up Time (Hozhó)

Original mashup of various advocates of trans lives because trans lives matter.

Excuse My Beauty (Queen Yellowhair) feat. Stephanie Yellowhair, Alok Vaid-Menon & Natalie Wynn

On a fateful Albuquerque night, two souls prayed to bring a real message to the People.

Diné Rise

Songs of Resilience, authored by Sherri Willeto and Whisper "Wysper Lite" CK. Edited and mastered by Lyla June with Hotoa'e Compassionate Media Group. 

Mother Law Restoration (Feat. Sherri Willeto)

Land Of Giant Dragon Flies

Hozho is generally translated as "beauty." It means so much more.
 

It is dawn.
 
The sun is conquering the sky and my grandmother and I
are heaving prayers at the horizon.
 
"Show me something unbeautiful," she says,
"and I will show you the veil over your eyes and take it away.
And you will see hozho all around you, inside of you."
 
This morning she is teaching me the meaning of HOZHO.
 
There is no direct translation from Diné Bizaad,
the Navajo language, into English
but every living being knows what hozho means.
 
Hozho is every drop of rain,
every eyelash,
every leaf on every tree,
every feather on the bluebird's wing.
Hozho is undeniable beauty.
 
Hozho is in every breath that we give to the trees.
And in every breath they give to us in return.
Hozho is reciprocity.
 
My grandmother knows the meaning of hozho well.
For she speaks a language that grew out of the desert floor
like red sandstone monoliths that rise like arms out of the earth
praising creation for all its brilliance.
 
Hozho is remembering that you are a part of this brilliance.
It is finally accepting that, yes, you are a sacred song that
brings the Diyin Dine'é, the gods, to their knees
in an almost unbearable ecstasy.
Hozho is re-membering your own beauty.
 
My grandmother knows hozho well
For she speaks the language of a Lukachukai snowstorm
the sound of hooves hitting the earth on birthdays.
For my grandmother is a midwife and she is fluent in the
language of suffering mothers
of joyful mothers
of handing glowing newborns to their creator.
 
Hozho is not something you can experience on your own, 
the eagles tell us as they lock talons in the stratosphere
and fall to the earth as one.
Hozho is interbeauty.
 
My grandmother knows hozho well
for she speaks the language of the male rain
that shoots lightning boys through the sky,
pummels the green corn children,
and huddles the horses against cliff sides in the afternoon.
She also speaks the language of the female rain
that sends the scent of dust and sage into our homes
and shoots rainbows out of and into the earth.
 
The Diné know what hozho means!
And you know what hozho means!
And deep down we know what hozho is not.
 
Like the days you walk in sadness.
The days you live for money.
The days you live for fame.
The days you live for tomorrow.
 
Like the day the spaniards climbed down from their horses
and asked us if they could buy the mountains.
 
We knew this was not hozho.
But we knew we could make it hozho once again.
 
So we took their swords and their silver coins
and melted them
with fire and buffalo hide bellows
and reshaped them into squash blossom jewelry peices
and strung it around their necks.
Took the helmets straight off their heads
and turned it into fearless beauty.
Hozho is the healing of broken bones.
 
Hozho is the prayer that carried us
through genocide and disease,
It is the prayer that will carry us through global warming
and through this global fear that has set our hearts on fire.
 
This morning my grandmother is teaching me
that the easiest (and most elegant) way to defeat an army of hatred,
is to sing it beautiful songs
until it falls to its knees and surrenders.
 
It will do this, she says, because it has finally
found a sweeter fire than revenge.
It has found heaven.
It has found HOZHO.
 
This morning my grandmother is saying
to the colors of the sky at dawn:
 
hózhǫ́náházdlíí'
hózhǫ́náházdiíí'
hózhǫ́náházdlíí'
beauty is restored again…
 
It is dawn, my friends.
Wake up.
The night is over.

Wake Up Time

The People's Knowledge is Lyla June's first album, a compilation of knowledge reflected through song and poetry.

Lyla June

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