Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

The Lakota phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ describes Reality by addressing it as “All My Relations.” All humans, all animals, all plants, all the waters, the soil, the stones, the mountains, the grasslands, the winds, the clouds and storms, the sun and moon, stars and planets are our relations and are relations to one another. We are Read More

Circling Back Home

Twelve years ago this month, we had to leave our beloved ranch in Northwestern Nebraska. The programs that we ran on the land there were life-changing for people who participated. While it was incredibly hard to leave, we had no choice because of the financial consequences of the wildfire that had swept through the ranch Read More

Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous Knowledge, often known by the acronym IK, is an extremely powerful concept. The term may refer to three different but related things: — Indigenous Knowledge can refer to a body of information: what people know. — Indigenous Knowledge can refer to a process of coming to know something: how people know, considered from the Read More

Nature is not a resource

Canada recently announced it is holding an international summit in April concerning the protection of nature. I was excited about the announcement because I believe that nature needs all the protection it can get nowadays. I eagerly clicked on the announcement. When I read the first sentence, I froze. It reads, “Nature is our most Read More

Research In Service to the Land

Last year, organizers for the 2016 meeting of the American Indigenous Research Association asked me to share my experience in science as a Native woman. As I started preparing the paper, which I delivered at the end of last month, I asked myself: “What do I wish I had known, going in, that could have Read More