MOTHER OLYMPIAD
Muhammad Ali and The Minoans

On my dream trip to Crete after honoring the Greeks for the “Best Olympics Ever,” and the World Tribes for their gifts to the roots of Olympic sports (www.nativevoices.org), I visited the ruins of the Minoan Palace of Knossos. Often depicted by their bull-leaping gymnasts, the Minoans were the heavy-weight champions of the most advanced, joyful, male-female balanced, peaceful ancient civilizations. Then visiting Iraklion’s Archeological Museum, I saw the official Greek Olympic Exhibit that held a missing piece of the Olympic origin puzzle, off the press radar screen.

The Minoans, the 4,000 year old grandmother of the Greeks, hosted the first Olympic Games on Crete, the word Olympic coming from Mt Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, and home to the Gods. According to mythology books four strong Cretan brothers helped the Mother Goddess Rea save baby Zeus (born in Crete cave) by playing "noisy games." The exhibit corroborated that “The Minoan Society appears to have formulated and encouraged the ideal of athlete behavior - rigorous training of body and soul. It is possible that the Olympic Games continue a long tradition and follow values first established on Minoan Crete.” As depicted on ancient vessels, the Minoans likely invented boxing (including gloves), wrestling (anointed with slippery olive oil), stadium running races, and along with the Chinese, tumbling/gymnastics.

Coincidentally, Olympic Boxing Champion, Muhammad Ali, helped return the gesture: Voted the “Greatest Athlete of the Century,” and beloved on Crete, he was part of a team of Olympians who helped restore those ancient values and integrity to the modern games. It happened after Rhodes Scholar, basketball’s Bill Bradley and I, (skier Suzy Chaffee), each went to Olympia in the 70’s, to find out why the ancient games were so successful for over 1,000 years. To help get the scandal-ridden modern games back on track, we joined with rower Jack Kelly (Prince Albert’s uncle, who called it “Shamateurism”), to unite world athletes to update the rules and level the playing fields to make the games financially accessible to all earth's children so that they could be welcomed into the (peace-inspiring) Olympic Family, and again open to the best.

Ali was also a part of the ceremony protecting the Salt Lake Olympics, led by Golden Gloves Boxer Roland McCook, Chairman of the Northern Ute Tribe, the Olympic Host. It worked. And thanks to the progress the tribes have made as a result of the Olympic Openings in Salt Lake, Australia, and Canada, Woody Vaspra, President of the World Council of Elders and I sent a Greek Olympic Protection Prayer around the world.

In this year that celebrates the origins of sport, Native American Olympic Team Foundation, a partnership of Olympians and Tribes, (to help preserve Nature’s playgrounds for all our children), salutes the people of Crete, who may have only a few drops of that male/female bull-leaping blood. But they still have the wisdom and spirit that gave us the model of human rights (in Geneva), Nature protection, sanitized medicine, indoor plumbing, AC, breast-revealing haute couture (pre-Paris), and a cooperative government without fortresses (great navy). They demonstrated the Olympic heights a country/civilization can reach by including the creativity of both sexes, along with the time and resources that peace brings.

Chosen by Apollo, the priests who interpreted the oracle (priestess) of Delphi's "Sacred Olympic Truce," which saved the games, perhaps the civilization, were from Crete/Minoan lineage. At the site of the oldest oracle, Dodona, in northwest Greece, messages were delivered by members of earliest Thesprotian tribe who drew their prophetic powers from the earth. The oracles became so important that Delphi was considered the navel of the world.

This year the people of Crete are quietly celebrating their granddaughter, Greece, giving birth to the “Most Unified Modern Games,” thanks also to the recent addition of team games, a war substitute developed by the balanced American Indian Tribes. But most praise goes to the Greeks for embracing a balanced team effort, with the brilliant input of the Chairman of the Greek Organizing Committee and Mayor of Athens, both women. We pray that these Athenian Games, where women also won the laurels, will always be remembered and emulated in Millennia to come, for living up to its historic potential, as the “Mother Olympiad.”

Contact: suzynativevoice@aol.com, Aspen, Colorado, USA tel: 970-922 5406