Council Member Emily Baer started a Kindness Initiative asking folks to share stories of kindness they encounter in Erie. The project was later amended to also include gratitude.

From Council Member (formerly Trustee) Baer: The power of gratitude is well documented. It stimulates the regions of our brains that regulate stress and produce feelings of pleasure. Similarly, gratitude plays an important role in our community. It’s an integral part of many indigenous cultures. As we enter Native American Heritage Month, I was reading the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It’s a recitation that sets gratitude as the highest priority. It’s called “The words that come before all else.” In the Anendaga language. The Thanksgiving Address is recited when people come together, to start the school week or before particularly contentious meetings where varying opinions are shared, for example. In the address, the orator gives thanks to fellow people, the earth, water, plants, the Creator, the four winds. And at the end of each section, they say, “now our minds are one” and then they go on to the next section, thanking teachers, the moon, the stars, … and on, again repeating “now our minds are one” at the end of each section. It’s such a beautiful representation of the power and purpose of gratitude: to bring us together on the common ground of our blessings. Indigenous Author, Robin Wall Kimerer, reminds us that “Gratitude incites a cycle of reciprocity” and “Appreciation begets abundance.”

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