Religious Cult or Family of Love? My First Day with the Twelve Tribes at Mount Sentinel

The sign above their restaurant in Nelson.

"The Twelve Tribes is a confederation of twelve self-governing tribes, composed of self-governing communities. We are disciples of the Son of God whose name in Hebrew is Yahshua. We follow the pattern of the early church in Acts 2:44 and 4:32, truly believing in everything that is written in the Old and New Covenants of the Bible, and sharing all things in common."
- found on their website

The people who own the Yellow Deli in Nelson have lots of rumours circling about them, many of which I’ve heard from other planters and friends. They [the people who own the deli] are part of a community called the Twelve Tribes and, according to the other planters, they all live together and claim absolutely no personal property. Everything belongs to the group. People’s comments about them range from the direct “I’m pretty sure they’re a cult” to more subtle “They’re kind of weird, but their food’s really good!”

They do all dress very similarly. That’s the first thing I notice. They wear very loose clothing. No makeup or jewelry. Women wear shirts covering the shoulders and either puffy pants or skirts. All the men have long hair and beards, often sporting large round glasses. They sort of resemble multiple John Lennons.

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A drawing of The Yellow Deli in Nelson. Found this on their website, but it appears the whole transparent thing doesn't work very well with my background...

Wednesday afternoon, I’m sitting at the Yellow Deli by myself when one of the girls around my age comes to clear the table next to me. She smiles and asks how my meal is, and I say it’s delicious. Restaurant talk.

“Excuse me,” I say quietly, and she looks up, still smiling, “Are you part of the Twelve Tribes?” She nods her head. “Is it called that because of the twelve sons of Israel?” She nods again.

“I mean, we haven’t traced our lineage all the way back to discover which specific son we’re related to,” she shrugs, “but we do our best to recreate the ancient church; the way the church was originally intended to be in the book of Acts. And it’s beautiful really.”

“Yeah?” I ask, imploring her to tell me more.

“Yes, absolutely,” a grin spreads across her face and in her eyes, “I used to be so lost and confused with no idea where I was going with my life. I didn’t even have any motivation to live. And then I found home. Or rather, they found me. We are all one community – all living together with our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sharing everything. Everyone lives entirely for each other; we give up everything for each other entirely out of love. I’ve never felt so loved and taken care of by so many people before.”

“How many people live there?”

“Right now we’re about forty,” she answers, “but we’re growing and will continue to grow – everyone’s welcome. We are all the sons and daughters of Yashuah and everyone is welcome home.” After a moment, she asks, “What’s your name?”

“Anneke.”

“That’s a beautiful name. Do you know what it means?”

“I think something like ‘grace’ or ‘gracious gift’, but I’m not really sure.”

“Wow. That’s incredible.”

“What’s your name?”

“Elianah.”

“That’s really pretty too. It sounds kinda like an elf name.”

She giggles quietly. “It means ‘my God has delivered me’,” she adds.

“That’s beautiful,” I say, “thank you for sharing that with me.”

She leaves and comes back after a few moments holding what looks like small newspapers and a card.

“Here, you can have these, if you’re interested,” she says, setting them on the table in front of me, “this one’s a coupon for a free yerba maté – you’re welcome back any time. This one has some more information about who we are and what we believe. You’re can flip through the pages if you like. And finally, this is an invitation to our Sabbath celebration. Every Friday night, after the deli closes, we go back to our farm for a meal and lots of circle dancing together. Everyone’s welcome to come and someone can bring you back to town afterward.”

One of the pamphlets Elianah handed me.

The invitation to the Sabbath Celebration.

The back of the invitation

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Two days later, I come back to the deli to write, debating whether or not to come (or more likely waiting for them to invite me again before officially deciding to come). While sipping on tea with my journal open in front of me, a very small girl with long, dark dreadlocks and a sweet demeanor shyly places a muffin in front of me. From her clothing, she is clearly a member of the tribe.

“If you get hungry,” she says quietly, a French accent faintly distinguishable, before slipping quickly back into the kitchen.

One of the older women there stops to speak to me for a bit and invites me to the Sabbath celebration. As I’m leaving, Elianah comes back upstairs to wave and smile at me.

“Hi, it’s lovely to see you again!” I grin at her.

“You too! Are you coming to the celebration tonight?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I nod.

“Oh that’s so wonderful!” She says happily, “the vans leave here around 4. We can give you a ride there and back!”

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At 4:00, I arrive at the deli. It’s closed, but there are still quite a few people inside. One of the women is sitting on a bench outside, so I go to join her and we chat for a bit about the gathering and the community in general.

“We’re just normal people living together,” she shrugs.

In the vehicle I’m getting a ride in, there are two other guests as well. Along with Elianah, a man named Stephen, a man named Yosiah (one of the community leaders) is driving, and Yosiah’s wife (whose name I forget). In the ride there, they ask me about tree planting. Yosiah, quick with math and accounting, quickly calculates how much the highballers must be earning in a day.

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Pulling into the farm, I quickly survey the area as we go up the lane. The farm is situated at the base of a mountainside, with a couple barns, a large house, and several fields and pastures in the open clearing before the hill. On the hill, multiple smaller cabins are visible through the thick covering of trees. It looks like every building is made of wood.

“A long time ago, our entire community was just in that one house and it was about half the size,” Elianah tells me, “but as we grew, some of the men pulled together all the supplies we needed and built onto the house. We kept on growing and building and now we have two barns for the animals, that community house for gatherings and meals, and many different cabins where people sleep.”

She invites me with her to the single women’s cabin because she needs to change out of her work clothes.

“Typically, we would live communally,” she explains as we make our way up the trail past a couple of the cabins, “but that’s really difficult and expensive to make a building that large on a mountainside, so we live in cabins instead.” She begins pointing out cabins as we pass, “that’s a couples’ cabin. That’s another couples’ cabin – there are four couples who live in that one. That large one is the single men’s cabin,” and so on until we reach the single women’s cabin. It’s quite small but surrounded by several tall and sweet-smelling bushes. Inside, it is furnished in a very comfortable, simple fashion. It feels like a simple little summer cabin that a small family might have. There is a boot room, a bathroom, a small living room, one bed downstairs, and a large open upstairs with four beds. The only two doors in the cabin are the front door and the one to the bathroom.

The other women who live in this cabin are Laurienne (who’d I’d met in the restaurant), an older woman named Aiya (who’s been here over 25 years), and another girl around my age named Sara (who was born into the community).

Laurienne’s father is coming to visit tonight and she is so excited. It’s the first time someone in her family is coming to visit since she first joined six months ago. Since her entire family lives in Quebec, it is difficult for them to make the trip. Aiya is frantically trying to make the cabin look extra special when he comes.

“I want your father to be very happy when he comes,” she says, rearranging doilies and books, “but really – I want you to be happy, Laurienne, and that’s the truth of it. Elianah, why don’t you go pick a nice bouquet? I found the most beautiful flowers growing over behind the cannery the other day. You can show Anneke around in the process.”

Before heading toward the cannery, we first take a detour toward the barn so Elianah can show me the animals. Opening the door, a white and orange cat runs up to lean affectionately against our legs.

“These are the goats,” Eliannah says, leaning over one of the stalls one by one. In one stall, there are two little baby goats playing together. There are two other stalls with a total of three more goats. In the corner, one goat is standing up on a platform where one of the boys is milking it.

“Ever milked goats before?” he asks without breaking pace. When I shake my head, he continues, “we milk them twice a day. They love it. When we open the stalls in the morning, they push each other to be milked first.”

Moving on, we see their chickens and Elianah points up toward the larger barn where the cows are kept.

Eventually, we walk toward the cannery. Walking inside, Elianah shows me a small dresser filled with various sheets of beeswax from the bee boxes outside. Walking over to what looks like a giant mixing bowl, she explains how the wax is spun to separate the honey from the wax once it is collected.

Finally heading toward the meadows behind the cannery, we find the wildflowers Aiya was talking about and begin picking. While collecting flowers, we talk about life here in the community. After four years here, Elianah finds it strange that she ever ate food that she didn’t know where it came from. Here, everything they eat comes either from this exact farm, from another Twelve Tribes community who sends it to them, or from another small organic grower in the area.

“We were talking about you, you know,” she laughs, “in the deli. Lorienne really wanted to talk to you, but she was too shy. She was like ‘I wanted to invite you but I was too scared so I just gave her a muffin’. Then a little while later, Batok [Sara’s mother] noticed you when you went to the washroom and told me to invite you. At that point, I didn’t realize it was you from the day before until I came out and saw you.”

At some point, we hear singing coming from behind a patch of bushes.

“That's Aiya,” Elianah giggles, then lifts her own voice in song, singing along to whatever Aiya was singing. The two of them share a laugh from either side of the bushes.

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When we bring the flowers back into the cabin, Elianah snips all the stems of her bouquet at once, making them all the same size, and slips them into the vase.

“Aiya taught me how to make bouquets,” she says, adjusting them slightly, “I used to pick them all short like you did. Here. You can slide yours in around the side.”

“But yours looks so good,” I laugh, moving some of the flowers around to slip mine in, “mine will look so dopey beside yours.”

I hadn’t meant to make any sort of point, but she immediately reacts with a firm, “No.” And then she adds softly, “I don’t think my flowers would look nearly as good without yours there as well.”

She asks if I’d like to borrow a white shirt and I realize suddenly that the dress I’m wearing is quite fitted with thin straps over my shoulders – very different from the loose and modest clothing all of the other women here wear. Not wanting to cause any sort of scene, I take the shirt and slide it on over my dress.

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Walking back down to the large community house, there are two different matés  on the go with fresh goat and cow milk as well as honey to pour in. All the chairs in the common room are arranged in a large circle. On one end, several people are fiddling with instruments

They all greet each other with a sort of half hug, saying “Shalom” and asking each other how their day was. Smiles all around. Everyone is wearing a braided leather cord around their heads, adults and children alike. The women also wear a cloth over their hair with the leather cord placed gently on top.

The sound of the harps, guitars, wooden flutes, and recorders flow out beautiful tunes, to which everyone knows the words and raise their voices in song. They are songs of praise and worship and love for both this god Yashua and each other.

During the circle dancing, Eliana takes my hand and ask if I’d like to dance. There’s no shame in my not knowing the steps; people are happy to call out the proper foot movements as they occur.

At one point, I notice Laurienne with a huge grin on her face as she sits next to a man whose face looks starkly similar to her own. That must be her father coming to visit. He is also grinning widely and frequently joins in the dancing, clutching Laurienne’s hand as she guides him through the steps.

Afterward, while sitting in a circle, people announce what they are thankful for. Primarily, this is each other and the community of love and openness they have.

“When I’m going through my day, I don’t worry about whether I’m doing okay or if I know how I’m going to get through the next week. I worry about if my brother’s feeling okay or if my sister is in a better place spiritually. When I concern myself purely with the needs of my family, how will my needs ever not be met? Four years ago, I was wondering if I even wanted to live. Today, I can’t decide whether yesterday was the best day of my life or today. Every single day is the best, most beautiful day of my life.”

“That’s Gilain. We found him in the homeless shelter in Kelowna,” Elianah whispers, leaning in close to me, “six months ago, we sent out two men from the community to meet people in Kelowna and that’s where they met Gilain, who wanted to come back with us.”

“There are people who laugh at how we look similar,” another person in the group continues the reflections, “but we know that we feel so, so whole and complete when in the brotherhood and sisterhood of our family.”

There is a prayer, in which everyone stands in a circle and lifts their hands high into the air. People shout out praise and gratefulness toward “Yashua” while various “amens” echo around the circle.

We break the circle to go out to the campfire while the meal and gathering room are prepared. During this time, Elianah tells me more about life here at the farm and how often they have guests. People frequently ask my name, where I’m from, and how long I plan to stay for, so willing to share their stories of love within the community and how they found it.

“We were talking about you in the café, you know,” Batok says to me warmly. Batok is a short woman in her fifties who joined the community slightly over twenty years ago. She wears large round glasses and kind, relaxed expression. “I noticed you and said to Elianna ‘you should go talk to that sweet girl writing in the corner’. I had no idea she’d already invited you a couple days earlier!”

We are standing around a large fire that Yosiah had started. People were laughing about how he just loves to start the campfires.

“I know,” he laughs, “some people tell me I should be a firefighter – I tell them ‘no, no, you have it backward!’ I like to start the fires!”

“Pyromaniac,” someone else laughs, to which Yosiah laughs easily and tosses another log on top.

Figuring it couldn’t hurt, since I haven’t booked any extra nights at the hostel or arranged to stay with any friends, I ask Eliana, “Hey, do you think I’d be able to spend the night. Like, would that be okay?” She nods her head excitedly.

“Oh yes!” she says, “I was going to ask you. We have an extra bed in the single women’s cabin, but what about clothes or toothbrushes or anything? We have lots of extras if you don’t mind using ours.”

And that is that. The official start of my weekend at Mount Sentinel with the Twelve Tribes.

For dinner, we have a rich, home-grown, home-cooked meal of fish, fries, bread and butter, salad with goat cheese on it, dessert was cherry coconut ice cream with carob on top. All the cheese, butter, and milk is from their goats and cows. The fresh butter sinks right into the warm, freshly made bread. The vegetables are from their own garden. The fruit is either from their own tribe or sent in from one of their other communities around the world. The fish was sent from a Twelve Tribes community up north. The honey is from their own beehives.

They treat me so generously a guest, deliberately serving me and the couple other guests before anyone else, but they also freely ask if I can help with various things. This feels so natural and at ease; welcoming. They ask if I can help move tables or wash dishes with everyone else, to which I willingly agree.

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Back at the cabin late at night, Elianah hands me some pajamas and asks if they will do.

“You can use this toothbrush,” she says, handing the brush to me along with a tube of toothpaste, “This toothpaste was made by one of our sister communities in Winnipeg. So was the soap in the shower – we have two different kinds. One is peppermint and the other is almond. You can use whichever one you want; they work as both soap and shampoo. I like to rub a little bit of olive oil in my hair afterward to give it some shine. We have another community in Spain that makes pure, organic olive oil and send it to us. Feel free to use any towel you like.”

After showering and brushing my teeth, I climb upstairs to the bedroom. Sitting atop the bed Elianna and directed me to, I notice a little basket filled with fresh strawberries, oranges, one of their Green Drinks, a Green Bar, a cookie, and a small card.

The inside of the card in the basket. It reads: "Welcome Ahnichah! We are so happy you are here for a few days with us. Make yourself at home and let us know your needs so we can care fo you. Love your new friends at Mt. Sentinel Farm"

"You are so sweet!" I exclaim, reading the card while crawling into the bed.

“We’re really glad you’re here,” Elianah replies with a huge grin, “I don’t think it’s coincidence at all that we all noticed you in the deli. You were sent to us.” While we’re both lying in bed, she tells me more about the history of the Twelve Tribes, starting from when it began in Chatanooga, to the persecution of Twelve Tribes children in Germany, to the imprisonment of one of the school teachers, to how people find the community, to how she herself found the community.”

“I rode in on a bicycle,” Elianah giggles, “Four years ago. I had just been through the most horrible breakup that I thought was the absolute end of me. Him and I were soul mates and we were determined to find a place where money doesn’t exist; only love. We slept in abandoned houses, tents, homeless shelters, anywhere. We did horrible things – like stealing from those we thought didn’t deserve what they had. I was so, so selfish. When we started slipping apart, it was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. When I got pregnant, I hoped a baby would bring us together again, which was a crazy thought – the child would need us, not the other way around. We were both so selfish. When I miscarried, I had to leave. But I would come back at night and watch him sleep because I didn’t know how to be without him. We were one. When I finally got on my bike and rode to Nelson, I wanted to die. I had no life left. I was sitting in the park when some other people came and invited me to a Rainbow Gathering. We were all biking and, when we approached the driveway of Mount Sentinel farm, a car pulled in front of us and I just turned into the driveway because my bike didn’t have breaks. I came all the way up the lane before my bike finally stopped, with all of the other bikers following behind me. The whole community came outside to see who we were and why we were biking into their home. We all ended up staying the night – I stayed in the single women’s cabin while all the other bikers stayed on the front lawn. They fed us supper too. There were twenty of us and they found food for each and every one of us! The next morning, I went on with the other bikers to the Rainbow Gathering but had a horrible time. I knew I would – after seeing this community, I knew I wouldn’t feel at home anywhere else. Then, just as the gathering was starting to end, suddenly two people approached me. They were from this community! They had seen me and knew I belonged with them, so they sent two of their members to come find me again. They just said, ‘would you like to come home with us?’ and I just burst into tears, because that’s all I wanted. I came back to the community with them and never left. We have such a strong bond. It’s the most loving, connected family I’ve ever been a part of.”



Elianah sets the alarm for 6:50 so we have time to milk the goats before heading to the big house for morning prayers and breakfast. Then we drift to sleep.

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