Zelda Hotaling

Zelda Hotaling grew up within Haudenosaunee culture, with family on the Kahnawake Mohawk territory near Montreal, and learned the ceremonial ways of her people first from her elders. She has made drums, rattles and other traditional instruments for close to thirty years, and from her home and studio in Castleton-on-Hudson, in New York's Hudson Valley, she works as an intuitive reader, drum maker and ceremonial guide.

Her best-known work is the Sacred Dream Circle Project, which began with a vision in 2012: a series of seven-foot hoops in the manner of dream catchers, woven from metals and thousands of crystals in sacred geometric patterns. People sit with the circles in guided meditation, often to the sound of crystal bowls, rattles and drums, and she has written a short book explaining the symbols in each one. She also leads day-long drum-making workshops, seasonal drumming circles around the solstices, house blessings with smudging herbs, and private sessions by phone or in person that can include intuitive reading, mediumship, ancestral clearing and throwing the bones. She has taken part in Kripalu's Amplify Voices of the Global Majority series and its Rewilding Summit, and keeps guest rooms at her home for visitors who come to sit with the circles.