The trees, the animals, the birds — they all have something to say to us if we will listen.
Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, delivered this to the UN General Assembly at a moment when Indigenous nations were fighting for basic recognition on the world stage. He was not speaking poetically — he was making a claim about reality, about what happens when humans stop paying attention to the living systems around them. For Lyons, silence is not emptiness. It is the condition required to receive information that has always been there.
Reflection
Think about a specific place outside where you have spent time recently. When you were last there, were you actually paying attention to what was happening around you, or were you thinking about something else?