Quotes from Robin Wall Kimmerer

The storytellers begin by calling upon those who came before who passed the stories down to us, for we are only messengers.

The student told me that, when she came to the United States, the greatest culture shock she experienced was not language or food or technology, but waste.

When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action.

To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen.

We have enjoyed the feast generously laid out for us by Mother Earth, but now the plates are empty and the dining room is a mess. It's time we started doing the dishes in Mother Earth's kitchen. Doing dishes has gotten a bad rap, but everyone who migrates to the kitchen after a meal knows that that's where the laughter happens, the good conversations, the friendships. Doing dishes, like doing restoration, forms friendships.

It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness"—estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.

Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world. The visible became invisible, merging with the soil.

How do we show our children our love? Each in our own way by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons.

We need to unearth the old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones, for we are storymakers, not just storytellers.

They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.

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

A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live.

All those nutrients field the growth of more new plants, in an accelerating cycle. This is the way for many ponds–the bottom gradually fills in until the pond becomes a marsh and maybe someday a meadow and then a forest. Ponds grow old, and though I will too, I like the ecological idea of aging as progressive enrichment, rather than progressive loss.

As it grew closer, they could see that it was a woman arms outstretched, long black hair billowing behind as she spiralled toward them.

use your gifts and dreams for good

Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are ubiquitous in Native cultures, but it's hard to recall a single one in English. Perhaps this helps to explain why we seem to be caught in a trap of overconsumption, which is as destructive to ourselves as to those we consume.

If you didn't know better, you might not recognize raindrops and rivers as kin, so different are the particular and the collective.

But the world has a way of guiding your steps

The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don't yet know. But what we see is the power of unity.

Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth.

Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers

The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world

All amphibians are tethered to the pond by their evolutionary history, the most primitive vertebrates to make the transition from the aquatic life of their ancestors to life on land.