December 7, 2016

"In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital . . . but to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold."

- Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass, quoted in This Advent, let's come home, published on Global Sisters Report