Winter Sky Sunrises and endless Horizon, Mountains, Forests, Prairies and Waters were traded for cities, skyscrapers and highways, built and named by corporations, governments and militias to populate with executives, politicians, engineers, administrators, marketers, managers, soldiers and subordinates — the wealth of the corporate-nation city-state dependent on the slow, then fast, destruction of all the Land and Waters and Beings on Earth

the Earth, on which i stood to take this photo this very Morning — and, the Atmosphere, which made the Trees, the Snow, the Clouds, and the Sky colors possible at all, this very Morning.

steel towers, stone temples, asphalt streams, and concrete rivers built to ensure that our feet rarely touch the Earth, that our eyes rarely witness Living and Being;

that we look up or that we look down, but, that we barely look around, that we rarely look within and that we that we never look beyond — so that we forget to remember.

the cities were designed and engineered for doing — which is the opposite of Being;

doing, which is a euphemism for undoing;

undoing, which is actually destruction — and which is ultimately,

a forgetting.

Forgetting to remember where we came from.

Forgetting to remember what we are made of.

Forgetting to remember what we were made for.

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Our Elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the Earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be for mourning. For the passing of Polar Bears, the Silence of Cranes, for the Death of Rivers and the Memory of Snow.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer

from her Northland College 2015 commencement address

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