Relationship and Reciprocity

  The Irish get it. They remember and understand relationship and reciprocity. More than 170 years ago, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma responded to word about the Irish potato famine by digging scarce money from their individual pockets to send to the Irish.  This happened in 1847, at the very beginning of what would be Read More

The Real Time Context of COVID-19

We have heard many leaders say they “are deciding” when their people will come out of quarantine or self-isolation, when businesses will reopen, or when children will return to school. Social media is filled with people lamenting their restlessness, insisting they cannot possibly bear another day cooped up with family or isolated from friends, describing Read More

You know you belong to the Land

Indigenous understandings of the world and of life are woven deeply into the American experience in ways you simply don’t notice. Here’s an example, one that should give you a lift of powerful joy. It’s from the very end of the main number for which the movie “Oklahoma!”(1) is named. The scene takes place at Read More

Together We Are a Strong People

Today, Sunday the 29th of March, we finally saw the projected numbers for possible deaths that I have long known* were the reality we face. I expect these numbers gripped many Americans in a physiological shock response. Here is how to know if that’s what happened to you. In a shock response, you feel all Read More