We cannot own anyone else, people, the lands, or resources. We are here to care for each other. - Joy Harjo

Many people assume that all Indian people lived a long time ago in a certain in a certain way and wore certain clothes, so if you don't look like that now, you're not really Indian people; but all cultures change. In our case, the change has certainly been abrupt and shocking, and we have had to a struggle to maintain the heritage within that terrible upheaval...Maybe all artists now must struggle to understand the connections between the world of heritage and the present world. Those worlds certainly do converge and maybe poems are points of convergence or, in some sense, paintings of that convergence. Maybe the artist has always worked to find those connections, but I think the struggle is especially important in these difficult times when the illusion of separation among peoples has become so clear...*For me the illusion is that we're separate. That's the illusion.

I have no more land. I am driven away from home, driven up the red waters, let us all go, let us all die together and somewhere upon the banks we will be there.

When the world as as knew it ended, we stood up again in the ruin, and found a way to keep walking through tears.