Mary Thunder/Blue Star Church

[Laurel]

Oh, man.    

http://www.marythunder.com/

Sorry if this site has been posted, sliced, diced, autopsied and ridiculed before, but if it has, one round was surely not enough.  Sweat lodge photos.  The Dalai Lama (?).  Crystal skulls.  A church member with "Sparky" in his/er "Indian name."  To quote many a livejournal user:  TEH STUPID!  IT BURNS. 

[Laurel]

Eeek, that really was a department of redundancy department post--she's news to nobody but me.  Sorry folks.

[frederica]

There is a lot on her on this site, go to search. I think she was actually endorsed by Leonard Crow Dog.  She has a long history of fraud, and has ties to many others. frederica

[Laurel]

This'll teach me to read a few more pages before I post.  Sorry again.

[debbieredbear]

Hey, no probelm, Laurel. MAybe some of the lurkers needed to see this anyway.

[TRIBALMOONS@yahoo.com]

errrrrrrrrrrrr this is what got me,


AHO, MITAKAYE OYACIN!

Maybe she needs to copy and paste a little better!! or take a spelling course!

[tahcha_sapa]

There is a lot on her on this site, go to search. I think she was actually endorsed by Leonard Crow Dog.frederica

Mary Grimes hung around the Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, area in the early 80's. She used to brag that she had boinked Leonard Crow Dog. No kidding. She actually bragged about it to anyone who would listen. As if anyone wanted to know. Or even cared. Man, anyone who knows Leonard knows that he'll boink almost anyone -- so it's not as if Mary Grimes was an exceptionally spiritually receptive/powerful person. Hell, she's not even a native. She just gladly opened her legs to Leonard when he nudged them.
One of the main guys in the Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, area who provided Mary Grimes with a platform early on was a white guy named Walt Fowler. Walt was a non-native married to an Oklahoma woman -- a Kiowa, I think. She made crafts and Walt displayed and sold them in the living room of his little house in Fort Worth. Next thing you know, there was old Walt -- recently retired from the USPS with a pension and a lot of time on his hands. One of Walt's companions at the time was another white guy named Glenn Bavosett. Glenn had done time in a federal prison, and when Glen and Walt got together in Fort Worth, they saw an opportunity to sell their art and crafts by promoting themselves as natives. Better yet, they got a permit to build a sweat lodge and run sweats in a wilderness preserve. Just like real Indians. Hell, Walt was even getting native bones from local university anthropology departments to rebury them. They were in business. So, the millieu in which Mary Grimes stepped into was filled with other non-natives who were also playing an elaborate con.
So, into this scene steps Leonard. He boinks Mary and suddenly, voila!, she believed she acquired a spiritual prominence accorded to neither Walt nor Glen. She parlayed that boinking into her spiritual empire. She out-conned Walt and Glen by giving it up to Leonard.
She STILL sundances at Leonards from time to time. Man. What a riot filled with cons, sex and money. All in the name of Lakota spirituality.

[Cat]

Spirituality through injection..thats a new one!! LOL!!!! Does Leonard not care that she is using his name in this way??? If she still Dances there I am sure he has heard the rumors etc etc...
C

[bls926]

I took a look at that website. She is so full of it . . . and people actually believe the stuff she peddles. Idiots! The story of her grandson's birth in 1998 made me go WTH? Seems like most of the women involved were sundancers. Didn't realize so many white women sundanced. She referred to Leonard Crow Dog as "Uncle Leonard" when talking about her sweat lodge. I see she has/had a connection to Twyla Nitsch, too. How has she been able to do so much with her phony background?

In 1994-Thunder attended the UN Indigenous People's Working Session as a delegate in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1997, she traveled to France, at the Invitation of the Dalai Lama to speak about Peace & Women.

she was named again as a Delegate to the Spiritual United Nations from the USA & asked to chair the Human Rights, Human Relations, & Spiritual Concerns for Women Committee. She is in the process of developing a survey about Women's Roles in the World Religions.

WTH?? This is a joke, right? All this stuff she has in her bio can't be true.

[Epiphany]

Lots of info through out the forums on Mary Thunder Grimes.

Some of her book Thunder's Grace: Walking the Road of Visions With My Lakota Grandmother can be previewed here: http://books.google.com/books?id=CMd1AAAAMAAJ&q=thunder%27s++%22mary+thunder%22&dq=thunder%27s++%22mary+thunder%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7sx7UayuKaKriALr3oGYBQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA

She says she was born Mary Elizabeth Crickmore June 1944, Indianapolis Indiana. She claims heritage through her father, she says she knows very little about her mother.

Papaw finally took me aside to answer my questions. He told me we had Indian ancestors, Cheyenne and Mohawk. He said that he believed my mother had been part Indian also, as well as being part Irish.

Her claims of having a difficult childhood - raised by foster parents, paternal grandparents, and her father and step mother might be true, records show that her father was in military the first few years of her life and he then remarried.

Her paternal great grandparents are listed as white in census, from Indiana.

[Autumn]

In 2005, Thunder was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, as part of 1,000 Women of Peace.

http://www.marythunder.com/MaryElizabethThunder/MaryElizabethThunder.htm

The statutes of the Nobel Foundation do not allow information about nominations, considerations or investigations relating to awarding the prize to be made public for at least 50 years after a prize has been awarded.[10] Over time many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing.[11] Nominations from 1901 to 1956, however, have been released in a database

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize

[Epiphany]

The 1,000 Women of Peace project was created by a group of people in 2005, they chose 1,000 women including Mary Thunder, the project claims they nominated the women, the project was not chosen for a Peace Prize.

So, she's one of 1,000 women that some group says they nominated.

[Autumn]

On Mary Thunder's website: http://marythunder.com/People/DalaiLama/SpiritualUnitedNations.htm (this information is very old, however, since I think it was first written in 1999), she says:

In April, 1997, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama held a Spiritual United Nations (S.U.N) gathering & gave a week of teachings on the Four Noble Truths of   the Buddha.

And also:

In 1997, Mary Elizabeth Thunder traveled to France, at the Invitation of the Dalai Lama to speak about Peace & Women. On stage with his Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama & an audience of 8,000 people who had come to hear spiritual representatives from all over the World talk about Unity & Diversity for all World Religions, Mary Thunder spoke her message & shared her heart about Peace & about being a Woman.

Here's the shocker.  There are two photos on her site with Mary and the Dalai Lama together and the Dalai Lama was actually in France in April 1997, according to this YouTube Video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfDD_ZSOXck and the Dalai Lama's website:  http://www.dalailama.com/biography/travels/1990---1999

1997
   
March 20 – 29
   Delhi (21) & Taiwan (22-27)
April 11 – May 3    Delhi (12-13), Spain (13-16), France (16-21), USA (21-25) & France (Apr.25-May1)

And this is from the monastery's website:  http://centrebouddhistekarmaling.rimay.net/institut-karma-ling/presentation/histoire/naissance-de-karma-ling.html  http://translate.google.com/translate?&ie=UTF-8&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://centrebouddhistekarmaling.rimay.net/institut-karma-ling/presentation/histoire/naissance-de-karma-ling.html

> 1997: Second visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the United Meeting Traditions
Since its inception, the Institute hosts a tradition of inter-religious and cross-disciplinary encounters. In 1997 in particular, for five days, 5,000 people will attend the teachings of His Holiness and a large meeting international traditions with representatives of the major religions and indigenous traditions around the world.

So, it went from 5,000 people on the monastery's website to 8,000 people on hers.

There is also this:

The S.U.N. Gathering was brought together by Lama Denys, the gracious host & head Lama from Karma Ling, also the Dalai Lama's committee on World Peace, & by UNO, UNESCO & The Decade of Indigenous Peoples.

There is such a thing as the International Decades of the World's Indigenous People at the UN and it first started in 1995, but whether they sponsor meetings such as the above is unknown.  I can't find any evidence that the Dalai Lama has a Committee on World Peace:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/Pages/InternationalDecade.aspx

This is also interesting:

The Delegation from the America's was made up of Grandmother Sarah Smith who represented Canada, Tlakaelel who represented Mexico, Grandmother Anna Haala, Jeffrey Hubbell, Morgan Eagle Bear, Sparky Shooting Star, & Mary Elizabeth Thunder, who represented the United States, women, & was the one who had brought them all together. The invitation from the Dalai Lama & Lama Denys came to Thunder through her friendship with Tsultrim Allione, of Tara Mandala Foundation in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Thunder was then able to bring elders & friends into a delegation, with the help of Jacqueline Gelzer & Marisabel Olivares who helped sponsor several of the Elder's travel to France.

This is Lama Tsultrim Allionne:  http://taramandala.org/about/lama-tsultrim/

And one of her teachers, Sparky Shooting Star:  http://taramandala.org/teacher/sparky-shooting-star/

Sparky Shooting Star leads sweat lodges and vision quests for Lama Tsultrim Allionne, plus is a minister in Mary Thunder's BlueStarChurch. 

And as far as the Spiritual United Nations (S.U.N.), I came up with this (which I think both were created after 1997):

http://www.anopendooroflove.org/SUN.html  (not likely at all)

and this http://spiritualunitednations.info/index.php (which does have ties to the United Nations through Sharon Hamilton-Getz):

It is represented in the United Nations headquarters in New York by the Chairperson of the NGO Committee "Spirituality,Values, and Global concerns" - Sharon Hamilton - Getz.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sharon-hamilton-getz/7/ba5/a2a
http://www.csvgc-ny.org/content/view/13/27/

NGO is a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the UN:  http://csonet.org/index.php?menu=81

IMHO, however, the S.U.N. mentioned by Mary Thunder has no relation whatsoever to Sharon Hamilton-Getz's SUN, but is something she just made up, which she is very good (or bad) at doing.

[Defend the Sacred]

There have been a number of frauds who have snuck into some of the UN-related Indigenous meetings, gotten their photo taken, then used it in their promo materials. I don't know what the screening and security process is, but some of these incidents were just frauds in regalia posing on the street next to actual delegates. I don't know if any of the frauds have gotten onto the actual committees and caucuses, but I think at least one or two of them might have. This is also getting worse with some newagers and neopagans trying to misappropriate the word, "indigenous" or "indigeneity" - thinking that if they are into any kind of (what they believe to be) earth-based and/or ancestrally-inspired new religious movement that they can now claim to be Indigenous People. It's sneaky and dangerous and I think we need to keep an eye on anyone who is trying that.

As for the Dalai Llama... basically anyone who has the means to travel and the stamina to wait in line for a few hours can meet him. He will visit pretty much any sizable religious event that is dedicated to peace. He regularly "meets" with thousands of people at once. If anyone who has briefly met him at one of these things thinks that means they're special, they're missing the entire point of what he does. AND... he may be the head of his Buddhist lineage, but that doesn't mean he knows anything about spotting NDN frauds. As he's dedicated to responding with peace and compassion to even the most messed-up individuals, he would probably smile and welcome people even if he knows they are frauds.

[bearheart]

Wow, I have heard of this Mary Thunder. My wife was seeing a counselor for PTSD after the tragic death of her brother. Dr. Carolyn Ball who lives in Myrtle Beach suggested my wife seek out the services of this lady who ran a healing ranch in Texas. Mary Thunder Grace. This is that person, Ms. Ball claims to have danced the Sundance with Mary Thunder for 4 years. Knowing what I do of Native ceremony, things did not add up and so it was never per-sued Thank Goodness. I was able to convince my wife to seek another counselor due to some of the stories I was hearing about Mary Thunder.Dr. Ball is a huge fan. Then came along Roy Spotted Eagle Glass who I did believe and was suckered into anyway. Healing ceremonies and all the other rubbish. Guess it was a lesson I had to learn anyway. But at least I did not travel to Texas.