"Far out beyond the surf they felt it. Beyond the reach of any canoe, half a sea away, something stirred inside them, an ancient clock of bone and blood that said, "It’s time." Silver-scaled body its own sort of compass needle spinning in the sea, the floating arrow turned toward home. From all directions they came, the sea a funnel of fish, narrowing their path as they gathered closer and closer, until their silver bodies lit up the water, redd-mates sent to sea, prodigal salmon coming home."

"The earth is so richly endowed that the least we can do in return is to pay attention."

"If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again."

"Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story."

"Our histories are inevitably braided together with our futures."

"Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop."

"To become indigenous is to grow the circle of healing to include all of Creation."

"To be indigenous is to protect life on earth."

"The South, zhawanong, the land of birth and growth. From the South comes the green that covers the world in spring, carried on the warm winds."

"By honoring the knowledge in the land, and caring for its keepers, we start to become indigenous to place."

"Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world."

"Wabunong—the East—is the direction of knowledge. We send gratitude to the East for the chance to learn every day, to start anew."

"To carry a gift is also to carry a responsibility."

"We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don't have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of the earth's beings."

"I don't have much patience with food proselytizers who refuse all but organic, free-range, fair-trade gerbil milk. We each do what we can."

"Wild things should not be for sale."

"What's good for the land is also good for the people."

"Reciprocity helps resolve the moral tension of taking a life by giving in return something of value that sustains the ones who sustain us. One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence."

"The teachings tell us that a harvest is made honorable by what you give in return for what you take."

"We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands."

"A harvest is made honorable when it sustains the giver as well as the taker."

"Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need. Take only that which is given. Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share. Give thanks for what you have been given. Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever."

"The taking of another life to support your own is far more significant when you recognize the beings who are harvested as persons, nonhuman persons vested with awareness, intelligence, spirit—and who have families waiting for them at home. Killing a who demands something different than killing an it. When you regard those nonhuman persons as kinfolk, another set of harvesting regulations extends beyond bag limits and legal seasons."

"The need to resolve the inescapable tension between honoring life around us and taking it in order to live is part of being human."

"We are told to take only that which is given."

"Imagination is one of our most powerful tools. What we imagine, we can become."

"If you ask permission, you have to listen to the answer."

"I’ve heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks, because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could well be otherwise, less generous than it is. But I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity."

"It is said that the Creator gathered together the four sacred elements and breathed life into them to give form to Original Man before setting him upon Turtle Island. The last of all beings to be created, First Man was given the name . The Creator called out the name to the four directions so that the others would know who was coming. Nanabozho, part man, part manido—a powerful spiritbeing—is the personification of life forces, the , and our great teacher of how to be human. In Nanabozho's form as Original Man and in our own, we humans are the newest arrivals on earth, the youngsters, just learning to find our way."

"If we allow traditions to die, relationships to fade, the land will suffer."

"Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All of our flourishing is mutual."

"Being a citizen does mean sharing in the support of your community."

"Reciprocity is a matter of keeping the gift in motion through self-perpetuating cycles of giving and receiving."

"We are all the product of our worldviews—even scientists who claim pure objectivity."

"A theory, to scientists, means something rather different from its popular use, which suggests something speculative or untested. A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations."

"Science and traditional knowledge may ask different questions and speak different languages, but they may converge when both truly listen to the plants."

"Sustainable harvesting can be the way we treat a plant with respect, by respectfully receiving its gift."

"Most people are indifferent, unless their self-interest is at stake. Then there are the chronic complainers. [...] Fortunately, there are those in every organization, few but invaluable, who know their responsibilities and seem to thrive on meeting them. They get things done. These are the ones we all rely upon, the people who take care of the rest of us, quiet leaders."

"In weaving well-being for land and people, we need to pay attention to the lessons of the three rows. Ecological well-being and the laws of nature are always the first row. Without them, there is no basket of plenty. Only if that first circle is in place can we weave the second. The second reveals material welfare, the subsistence of human needs. Economy built upon ecology. But with only two rows in place, the basket is still in jeopardy of pulling apart. It’s only when the third row comes that the first two can hold together. Here is where ecology, economics, and spirit are woven together. By using materials as if they were a gift, and returning that gift through worthy use, we find balance. I think that third row goes by many names: Respect. Reciprocity. All Our Relations. I think of it as the spirit row. Whatever the name, the three rows represent recognition that our lives depend on one another, human needs being only one row in the basket that must hold us all. In relationship, the separate splints become a whole basket, sturdy and resilient enough to carry us into the future."

"For me, writing is an act of reciprocity with the world; it is what I can give back in return for everything that has been given to me."

"Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings."

"Nanabozho did not know his parentage or his origins—only that he was set down into a fully peopled world of plants and animals, winds, and water. He was an immigrant too. Before he arrived, the world was all here, in balance and harmony, each one fulfilling their purpose in the Creation. He understood, as some did not, that this was not the "," but one that was ancient before he came."

"If citizenship is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species. If citizenship means an oath of loyalty to a leader, then I choose the leader of the trees. If good citizens agree to uphold the laws of the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing."

"To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen."

"To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don’t speak the same language, I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask."

"A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself."

"Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do."

"Respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all."

"The ultimate reciprocity, loving and being loved in return."

"This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone."