Day 51: Tana Blackmore

November 20, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“We’re so inundated with what we should be doing — all the conditioning of what we should be and how we should be and what we should look like — and that conditioning, if we can set that aside and allow a person to have the opportunity to be touched by what is naturally theirs … in that moment they are inspired.  Something is stirred; there is a seed planted that will grow, and that’s what I’m after.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Tana, for agreeing to be part of this project; and before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Tana Blackmore: Well thank you for having me.  What a privilege to participate.   What you’re doing is so inspirational!

Toni: Thank you.

Tana: My name is Tana Blackmore, and I live in Montana.  It’s where I was born.  I have a ranch there, and I raise buffalo and Paint Mustangs; and I have a nonprofit foundation that I have overlaying that called Sacred Ground International.  I’m also a designer, a consultant, and because of that I have another company called Native Vogue where I design beautiful jewelry and weavings that come from natural fibers being the bison hair wool and bison horns — and that’s a whole story into itself as to why I’m doing that — but I have a public foundation and this beautiful ranch in Montana that is the basis of most everything that I do.

Toni: Well thank you so much for that, Tana, and based on everything that you’ve described that you do — and whether it’s in your professional life or your personal life — when you think about inspiration, who do you believe you inspire and how might you do that?

Tana: Well, the goal is to inspire everyone I meet.  And because I have such a diverse life — I wear so many different hats — that it truly is my goal personally to inspire everyone I meet in any way that I can.  And that begins, of course, with me, because if I’m not inspired, if I don’t have that inspiration flowing from me, then I can’t inspire anyone.  So the goal is first of all to inspire me and let that inspiration then flow into the world.  And I truly believe that if we are living in our own inspiration, that which inspires us, that which is our truth, then indeed we inspire everyone.  I inspire my community.  I inspire the ranchers, the farmers.  I inspire the groups that I talk to.

My walk of life is that I work every day on this ranch, and I communicate with people from all over the world on a myriad of subjects from conservation to animal husbandry to children to youth groups to you name it – and to designers and to people who are working in different industries.  It’s all about nature and natural, so again my general public is everyone I meet.  The things that I do, may they indeed inspire others to do what they love, what is truly theirs.

Toni: How do you think that the way that you inspire others by keeping yourself inspired and being inspired  yourself, which is a great point, and then that helps you to inspire others, all of those people that you mentioned and groups that you mentioned; how does that translate then into helping them explore their potential?

Tana: Well, the basis of everything that I do … And an early lesson early on was that which is natural, nature … because I live in nature, I grew up in nature, and I returned to nature after many years of working in the industries, in the commercial world.  I returned to nature.  I returned back to the family ranch, and there once again I found my own personal answers, that which is natural for me.

So my inspiration comes from assisting other people in finding out what is naturally theirs.  What is their truth?  And the modality that I use is indeed to be able to put people literally in natural situations or through media through our film, through our different outreach programs, that we be able to touch people with nature.  Because I hold that when people are in nature, when they’re exposed to nature, when they are exposed to that which is natural, they have a moment where they feel a connection; and it is that connection that awakens and plants that seed of what is natural for them.

We’re so inundated with what we should be doing — all the conditioning of what we should be and how we should be and what we should look like — and that conditioning, if we can set that aside and allow a person to have the opportunity to be touched by what is naturally theirs, that moment when they look at a sunrise, that moment when they’re walking in the park, that moment when they see a beautiful picture, that moment when they are out by the ocean, that moment they connect with who they truly are, and in that moment they are inspired.  Something is stirred; there is a seed planted that will grow, and that’s what I’m after.

Toni: That’s amazing.  And I can imagine the gift that you give to people by having them and by teaching people how to understand to get back to nature and be exposed to nature; that’s really amazing.  And that leads me into this question:  For you, I think some of this has come out already, but if you could expand on what you need to stay inspired, to be inspired?

Tana: That’s interesting, because I was about to answer that one way, and I’m going to answer it in another.  What inspires me is nature, is beauty, and that which is truly who I am.  If I allow that, then I am indeed inspired and I love — and it is part of what I do — is to share all of my stories of my life, my adventures, my work with the buffalo, my walking with buffalo, my work with the mustangs, my work with the myriad of people, all of their different lives and so forth is so vast … all the artists, and so forth.

What continues to inspire me is my sharing my stories and watching what it does for other people.  By putting people on the land, by sharing my stories, by talking to groups, by writing, by any form of media, print, whatever I put out there.  It is the response back to me that continuously puts me in awe and inspires me to do more, tell more of my stories, tell more of my truths, get more real, tell them what really happened, tell them where it really came from, tell them about my spiritual insights, tell them what I was doing when I had that.

Because when I tell the truth, when I tell my stories as things really happened for me, that quiet moment where I had this amazing insight, that inspires them to have a quiet moment that they too may have an insight.  Or perhaps they’ve had that, and they didn’t think it was real and so they didn’t run with it, they just went back to the same old modality of how they’ve been walking.  So the more real I am, the more I do, I’m inspired by the feedback.

I was recently in a show, and my jewelry and my blankets were there.  Now these blankets and jewelry, they’re very, very unique because they’re made from bison byproducts — the hair which is very rare, and bison horn jewelry — and it’s really beautiful.  And when I told my story again and again and again to the public that was there to see all that I had created, I watched their eyes, I watched their excitement, their enthusiasms, because I was telling a story about nature, about renewable resources, about sustainability, about the bison, about something that they really admire and have a very romantic view of.  But what was inspiring the most was that it was touching them and they felt a spark, they felt that it opens up something inside of you.  And their feedback just inspired me to keep right on going, to keep sharing my stories of my life and my adventures.

Toni: How does that inspiration that almost … The word I wrote down and you’ll hear in other interviews, that’s what I do, words come to me when people are speaking, and what word came to me just now was “glory.”  And when you are experiencing that feedback and you are educating others to your story — but then also educating them to the sustainable resources and the land and what you do – how does that help you, then, to continuously explore your own potential?

Tana: Oh, it’s very humbling.  One would think that one would stand there with such great pride when one is getting feedback from a wonderful talk, when you have amazing applause or you sat at a small group and everyone is suddenly asking you questions because they are so thrilled and excited about your life and all of my adventures and all the things that I do.  There’s a very, very humbling moment in there.  And in that humbling moment, I am driven back inside of me.  I’m driven back into those quiet moments that I spend where I go back and find that which is authentically me, that which I can bring back out into the world to stay real, keep my feet on the ground, and inspire others.  Again, from my potential, to stay humble, keep my feet on the ground, continue to look into sunrises and sunsets, surround myself with beauty – those things that I dearly love.

There is a statement that was given to me 15 to 20 years ago:  Do only that which brings you peace and joy.  Let no one and no thing keep you from it.  Those words are incredibly humbling.  They appear almost unattainable, and yet they have been the foundation of me and how I live my life and what I strive for and that I create opportunities for other people to feel that spark that they, too, may also pursue only that which brings them peace and joy.  And why they would do that?  Because when they do that, they do find freedom.  There is enormous freedom in being who you really are, and we don’t know that yet.  We don’t experience that because we don’t go there often enough.

Toni: It’s interesting, because as you know with our introduction, these interviews are randomly chosen.  People are just showing up from all over the world, like yourself, with fantastic stories to tell and perception and insight to inspiration.

But that theme of finding who you are and experiencing that freedom just keeps showing up from people all over in different walks of life.  And you’ve just said it again; we don’t know.  That’s something that’s a learned behavior, almost.  It’s kind of what I heard in your interview as well, that you had an inspirational moment that took you to that place where you had to find your true self and find that freedom for yourself.

Tana: You know, all across the world we are watching cottage industries being birthed.  People who are doing something now because out of sheer necessity; and sometimes out of sheer necessity many wonderful things are birthed.  And there’s a grass roots movement where people are finally standing up and saying how they really, really feel.  All of that comes from someplace, and that comes from that place.

It’s so very, very important that people understand that their first true responsibility and obligation is to find out what it is that they love and truly pursue that in some form, some way.  And in order to find that, to me it almost feels like they need an opportunity to bump into it.  “Oh I love that!”  “Oh I did that!”  I had that experience.  And when they have time in nature, when they can experience what is natural, then what is natural in them opens up and they have moments where they feel that; and that can, indeed, be allowed to grow.

When I talk about how I raise buffalo and I started my herd from just this tiny little group and I used to literally go out and sit with them and stare at them, and who are you and what are you about – I knew nothing about buffalo – and how they taught me, how I responded to them showed me who I am.  How I respond to a sunset shows me something.  All of a sudden, I just have to do something, and I began to paint – color, sunrises, and sunsets.

When I returned to the ranch, I was exposed to so much color, I just wanted to express that.  I wanted to share that.  People, you’ve got to come here!  Go for a walk, go watch these buffalo, go sit with my Paint Mustangs, go touch one of those soft muzzles and feel them.  You just feel something that just comes alive, and suddenly you want to do something.  Take that and run with it!  What is that?  What is that?  “Oh, I could just love on the land forever!”  Well, that’s not the answer, but it certainly is an echo of some natural thing inside of us.  It starts to show us a feeling that we don’t ordinarily feel.

We feel like we have to do this and this and this and this … it breaks the pattern, that pattern that you’re talking about.  We had a train wreck of responsibilities that run round and round and round in our head, and we have those moments through photography or art or music people are inspired, that they surround themselves with those things they love because it will grow … it will grow.

Toni: Tana, I have to tell you that this has been a very inspiring interview, and people will benefit greatly from this interview.  And I appreciate the information and the truth that you shared in this interview, and for that I thank you.

Tana: Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

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For more information about Tana Blackmore:  www.sacredgroundintl.org, www.nativevogue.com

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