Maria Yraceburu was called forth by the Winds of Change Naylin iskinihi Naakai Ts'ilsoose, in 1954. The 13th grandchild of an Apache HolyMan, Yraceburu maintained a close relationship with her grandfather until the age of seventeen, when he crossed after announcing "Now it's your time." The traditional spiritual foundation she was given not only brought about a "keener sense of earth connection" but also enhanced Yraceburu's growing sense of responsibility to those she met in college and her environment. Much of Yraceburu's writing is intimately inspired by these foundations of her youth. The emotional upheaval of her father's death when she was thirteen, as well as "non-logical" education system heightened Yraceburu's sense of needing another way. Yraceburu while considered bright by her teachers, was also labeled as honest and determined. It was at this time in her young life when Yraceburu started her exploration into psychology and traditional healing. She says: When I was a child I liked to help my grandpa. . . I didn't know anyone else who understood things like my grandpa, and it gave me a lot of options because it made me into an overview seer. I looked for eight options always as we are taught by the Wheel of Life, and I arranged lectures so others could hear what the elders had to say. . . Ritual brought me the greatest satisfaction. Just to be involved in ritual, connecting, dancing with the wind and dreams of potential..."
At the age of 17, with a growing desuire to share traditional EarthWisdom from her family and a rising contempt for the identity of victimization, Yraceburu established a series of rites of passage, created for women suffering from post traumatic stress. After two children, Yraceburu returned to her roots. However, after three years of working in ceremony Yraceburu began teaching "someone found out what the traditional way of asking to apprenticeship was," Yraceburu took on her first student, setting up a Womens Moon Lodge, secured a weekly class venue for those looking for a different way of living, and began the next stage of her life evolution.
It was at this time that Yraceburu's work that she wrote her first book and signed with Moonlight Publishing. Yraceburu reported in an interview with Joe Montoya that "it was a healing autobiography that was never meant to be published. . . The publisher went out of business. But the experience itself made me feel that what I thought, my inner life, my thoughts as I organized them, were important. That what I knew could help others.) She wrote her first article for a friends newsletter, and her first short story for Arielle Ford's anthology Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Teenage Soul in 1999. In 2002, Yraceburu's first book was published by Bear and Company, who also published her second book Prayers and Meditations of the Quero Apache (2004). This series of prayers, composed of a series of lyrical affirmations or "prophecy prayers," focuses on the growing connection of humans to earth and spirit.
For its mesmerizing prose and gripping, dreamlike energy, Prayers and Meditations was supported by the AA Community and featured in many self-help book and gift stores. Three years later, in 2007, Yraceburu published her first book of contemplative essays, Wisdom of the Rainbow Serpent, a series of shorts that many critics consider an expansion and refinement of the ideas originally presented in Prayers and Meditations. In Wisdom of the Rainbow Serpent, Yracebur once again draws upon the life experience, connection, and wonder of her own childhood in nature, to craft a touching expose about the enduring nature of earth-spirit-human relationships. The idealist Maria Yraceburu -- is a powerful, intelligent halfbreed who grows increasingly determined to open perspectives because of cynical thought carried by those that surround her.
For her work on Wisdom of the Rainbow Serpent, Yraceburu was given a monthly column in the internet ezine Planet Lightworker. In addition, Yraceburu is a recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the Third World Counselors Association and The President's Humanitarian Award. She also received a nomination for the 1972 Who's Who in American Colleges. In 1999, she was asked to write the keynote paper for the 21st Millineum Congress held in Italy.
Perhaps the single most striking quality in Yraceburu's attributes is honesty, or what Gregg Braden, author of The Isaiah Effect called "honest and sacred!" Alberto Villoldo, renowned anthropolgist, author, and student of incan shamanism, comments further on the multifaceted appeal of Yraceburu: "Maria Yracébûrû is a gifted visionary and bridge between the ancient medicine ways and modern times. She is the living voice of the spirit that has animated the Native Americas.
Yraceburu's teachings are compelling because they capture complex emotions and expose divisive possibilities in an amazingly simple manner. Her other major works include teaching, conduction ceremony and writing. Her latest passion is to raise funds to establish the Taanaahkaada Sanctuary.
The spiritual director of Yraceburu EarthWisdom, where she facilitates classes, workshops and rites of passage, Yraceburu is at work on bringing community together in the traditional extended family model. Then, and only then, will she feel that she will have fulfilled her purpose, living out her life with wife, Lynda Yraceburu, a Gypsy healer and earthspirit photographer, spending time with the loved ones.
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