Quotes from Robin Wall Kimmerer

When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival.

I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers.

not 'What can we take?' but 'What can we give to Mother Earth?' That's how it's supposed to be

However alluring the thought of warmth, there is no substitute for standing in the rain to waken every sense - senses that are muted within four walls, where my attention would be on me instead of all that is more than me.

On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

to be indigenous is to protect life on earth

As the land becomes impoverished, so too does the scope of their (ecology students, any young people) vision. When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can't imagine the generosity of geese?

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.

the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world

In the way of linear time, you might hear Nanabozho's stories as mythic lore of history, a recounting of the long-ago past and how things came to be. But in circular time, these stories are both history and prophecy, stories for a time yet to come.

Gratitude doesn't send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That's good medicine for land and people alike.

One thing I've learned in the woods is that there is no such thing as random. Everything is steeped in meaning, colored by relationships, one thing with another.

After the gods experimented with arrogance, they gave the people of corn humility, and it takes humility to learn from other species.

tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger, when it is belonging that we crave

And we think of it as simply time, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it. Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story.

This was an exercise in personal forestry. But it was also an exercise in the creation of personal art. I could have been painting a landscape or composing a cycle of songs.

It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird's gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music.

for we are storymakers, not just storytellers

I suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.

The Skywoman story, shared by the original peoples throughout the Great Lakes, is a constant star in the constellation of teachings we call the Original Instructions. These are not "instructions" like commandments, though, or rules; rather, they are like a compass: they provide an orientation but not a map. The work of living is creating that map for yourself. How to follow the Original Instructions will be different for each of us and different for every era.

You don't show your love and care by putting what you love behind a fence. You have to be involved.

Carbon dioxide is the raw material of photosynthesis, and is readily absorbed into the moist leaves of the mosses.

I don't know how the eighth fire will be lit. But I do know we can gather the tinder that will nurture the flame, that we can be shkitagen to carry the fire, as it was carried to us. Is this not a holy thing, the kindling of this fire? So much depends on the spark.