In indigenous ways of knowing, it is understood that each living being has a particular role to play. Every being is endowed with certain gifts, its … - Robin Wall Kimmerer

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 making life, the chain of reciprocity. Living by the precepts of the Honorable Harvest — to take only what is given, to use it well, to be grateful for the gift, and to reciprocate the gift

Our lands around were wanted by settlers, so in long lines, surrounded by soldiers, we were marched at gunpoint along what became known as the Trail of Death. They took us to a new place, far from our lakes and forests. But someone wanted that land too, so the bedrolls were packed again, thinner this time. In the span of a single generation my ancestors were "removed" three times—Wisconsin to Kansas, points in between, and then to Oklahoma. I wonder if they looked back for a last glimpse of the lakes, glimmering like a mirage. Did they touch the trees in remembrance as they became fewer and fewer, until there was only grass? So much was scattered and left along that trail. Graves of half the people. Language. Knowledge. Names. My great-grandmother Sha-note, "wind blowing through," was renamed Charlotte. Names the soldiers or the missionaries could not pronounce were not permitted.

the language of “it,” which distances, disrespects, and objectifies, I can’t help but think is at the root of a worldview that allows us to exploit nature.