October 31, 2026

You Are The Land

We are the land. That's the simplest way to put it. What is good for the land is good for us.

Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan and a traditional chief of the Onondaga Nation within the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, said these words during a 1991 PBS interview with journalist Bill Moyers titled The Faithkeeper. At the time Lyons had spent years carrying Haudenosaunee philosophy into United Nations chambers, pressing the world to recognize that the natural world was not a resource but a relative. He wasn't describing some future ideal to work toward; he was naming a fact about this exact moment, the relationship between a person and the ground beneath their feet right now. For anyone starting the day already racing ahead to tomorrow's tasks, it's a reminder that the land under you this morning is not separate from you at all.