42 quotes found
“Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you werent looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surren...”
“If time could run backward, like a film in reverse, we would see this mess reassemble itself into lush green hills and moss-covered ledges of limestone. The streams would run back up the hills to t...”
“The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings”
“Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.”
“The creek that was once a fishery for Atlantic salmon, a swimming hole for kids, and a focal point of community life now runs as brown as chocolate milk. Allied Chemical and its successors deny any...”
“But I need to remember that the grief is the settlers as well. They too will never walk in a tallgrass prairie where sunflowers dance with goldfinches. Their children have also lost the chance to s...”
“We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santas sleigh, not been ripped from ...”
“Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild r...”
“Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers, m...”
“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to those who take care of us.”
“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is...”
“How generously they shower us with food, literally giving themselves so that we can live. But in the giving their lives are also ensured. Our taking returns benefit to them in the circle of life ma...”
“That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage.”
“Balance is not a passive resting placeit takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the raking out and the putting in.”
“Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection “species loneliness”—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our ...”
“Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands i...”
“The ceremonies that persist—birthdays, weddings, funerals— focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But...”
“Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animals—never damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another being—the eagle would look down on a di...”
“But I need to remember that the grief is the settlers’ as well. They too will never walk in a tallgrass prairie where sunflowers dance with goldfinches. Their children have also lost the chance to ...”
