Worlds are made of lies and dreams (p 200) - Linda Hogan

I always think of Lewis and Clark, their story. It is not really their story at all. It is the story of Sacajawea who knew the way, took them along, saved them from mishaps, kept them fed, negotiated their entry into different tribal territories. The story, really, is hers. And she was still just a girl. Yet, women have been omitted from Native histories and so little is found that it is an effort to find information, even for scholars. So I like to center stories that are also history, with women as integral forces within the story.

Nowadays, it seems we are always trying to match the world to ourselves instead of ourselves to it, the way it truly is. Yet human smallness is only too apparent. In such great universes as ours, we should try to match ourselves to the outside world (p 206)

Even when we have been sent away from that place or have not learned our own languages, we still have it; from subtle gesture and learned ways of being, it is passed down to us. This is "How It Is." The knowledge is in the manner of being, even when the words are not spoken. Our philosophies come of being from a place and a community, of knowing a place and respecting its boundaries.