I’d like to be a person my ancestors are proud of, and I’d like to be a person that my descendants thank. I think most of us would. —Winona LaDuke, 2017 Geography of Hope Conference Presenter
This past March I attended the semi-annual Geography of Hope Conference in Point Reyes, California. This year’s topic was Ancestors and the Land: Our Past, Present and Future. Many of the presenters were Indigenous People. Native American author and activist Lyla June Johnson gave the moving speech excerpted here. I was touched, because the speech referred both to our past “American Identity” Issue and the “Mindfulness OS” that we need to navigate the challenges of climate change. An Athabaskan man from the Bering Sea was travelling the world sharing a message from his village. It was such a moving, unexpected moment, my wife Gail composed a prose-poem about it. “This is a time of unprecedented threats to clean water and air, national parks and forests, and to productive farmland,” conference founder, Steve Costa, says. “Clearly in the coming months and years, we will be called upon again and again to act to protect our fragile ecology. We will be called upon to decide what kind of ancestors we will become.”
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