Quotes About Respect

beginning with where our feet first touch the earth, we send greetings and thanks to all members of the natural world.

map of balance and harmony.

I love to hear elder Tom Porter hold a circle of listeners in the bowl of his hand.

Respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all.

In English, you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an it, or it must be gendered, inappropriately, as a he or a she.

Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animals—never damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another being—the eagle would look down on a different world. The salmon would be crowding up the rivers, and passenger pigeons would darken the sky. Wolves, cranes, Nehalem, cougars, Lenape, old-growth forests would still be here, each fulfilling their sacred purpose.

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

Someone's already been this way this morning." "Someone is in my hat," she says, shaking out a deerfly. Someone, not something.

My mother had her own more pragmatic ritual of respect: the translation of reverence and intention into action.

the Thanksgiving Address was spoken to greet the day: "Let us put our minds together as one and send greetings and thanks to our Mother Earth, who sustains our lives with her many gifts.

Leave this place better than you found it," she admonished. And so we did. We also had to leave wood for the next person's fire, with tinder and kindling

In her house, we learned that everything we put in our mouths, everything that allows us to live, is the gift of another life. I remember lying with her at night as she made us thank the rafters of her house and the wool blankets we slept in. My grandma wouldn't let us forget that these are all gifts, which is why you take care of everything, to show respect for that life.

In the indigenous view, humans are viewed as somewhat lesser beings in the democracy of species. We are referred to as the younger brothers of Creation, so like younger brothers we must learn from our elders.

These are ceremonies of practical reverence.

We might look to the Thanksgiving Address for guidance on weaving the two. We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people.

It is said that the people were instructed to stand and offer these words whenever they gathered, no matter how many or how few, before anything else was done. In this ritual, their teachers remind them that every day, "beginning with where our feet first touch the earth, we send greetings and thanks to all members of the natural world.

Losing their names is a step in losing respect. Knowing their names is the first step in regaining our connection.

The Wisdom of the Elders

humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn - we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance

to see you kids eating my berries." I knew the difference: In the fields behind my house, the berries belonged to themselves.

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

Robin Wall Kimmerer

to be indigenous is to protect life on earth

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