{"author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer","total_quotes":35,"quotes":[{"text":"The creek that was once a fishery for Atlantic salmon, a swimming hole for kids, and a focal point of community life now runs as brown as chocolate milk. Allied Chemical and its successors deny any role in the formation of the mudboils. They claim it was an act of God. What kind of God would that be?","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","contamination","theft"],"id":22072,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren’t looking because you were trying to stay alive. 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, or natural resources. 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. These are the meanings people took with them when they were forced from their ancient homelands to new places.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["home","land","native-american","stolen"],"id":22449,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"Caring is not abstract. The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["caring","compassion"],"id":33954,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"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. I would be speaking Potawatomi. We would see what Nanabozho saw. It does not bear too much imagining, for in that direction lies heartbreak.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["balance","heartbreak","respect"],"id":56676,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa’s sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","theft"],"id":70156,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"The ceremonies that persist—birthdays, weddings, funerals— focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they’re about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["ceremony","cycles","human","land","life","reverence"],"id":79694,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"Instead I just stand there, tears running down my cheeks in nameless emotion that tastes of joy and of grief. Joy for the being of the shimmering world and grief for what we have lost. The grasses remember the nights they were consumed by fire, lighting the way back with a conflagration of love between species. Who today even knows what that means? I drop to my knees in the grass and I can hear the sadness, as if the land itself was crying for its people: Come home. Come home.There are often other walkers here. I suppose that’s what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they’re trying to remember what it would be like to love the world.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["heartbreak","love","nature"],"id":84313,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["care","plants"],"id":84527,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","theft"],"id":85333,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","despair","grief","healing","nature","restoration","theft","wound"],"id":87343,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":35,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}