Infrared satellite imagery, optical telescopes, and the Hubbell space telescope bring vastness within our visual sphere. Electron microscopes let us … - Robin Wall Kimmerer

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 own intelligence, its own spirit, its own story. Our stories tell us that the Creator gave these to us, as original instructions. The foundation of education is to discover that gift within us and learn to use it well.

The waste beds continue to leach tons of salt into the lake every year. Before the Allied Chemical Company, successor to Solvay Process, ceased operation, the salinity of Onondaga Lake was ten times the salinity of the headwaters of Nine Mile Creek. The salt, the oncolites, and the waste impede the growth of rooted aquatic plants. Lakes rely on their submerged plants to generate oxygen by photosynthesis. Without plants, the depths of Onondaga Lake are oxygen-poor, and without swaying beds of vegetation, fish, frogs, insects, herons—the whole food chain—are left without habitat. While rooted water plants have a hard time, floating algae flourish in Onondaga Lake. For decades high quantities of nitrogen and phosphorous from municipal sewage fertilized the lake and fueled their growth. Algae blooms cover the surface of the water, then die and sink to the bottom. Their decay depletes what little oxygen is in the water and the lake begins to smell of the dead fish that wash up on shore on hot summer days.

As Gary Nabhan has written, we can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without “re-story-ation.