Let us sit down here…on the open prairie,
where we can’t see a highway or a fence.
Let’s have no blankets to sit on, but feel the ground with our bodies,
the earth, the yielding shrubs.
Let’s have the grass for a mattress,
experiencing its sharpness and its softness.
Let us become like stones, plants and trees.
Let us be animals, think and feel like animals.
::::: Listen to the air, You can hear it, feel it, taste it, smell it :::::
Woniya wakan—the holy air—which renews all by its breath.
Woniya, wakan—spirit, life, breath, renewal—it means all that.
Woniya—we sit together, don’t touch, but something is there,
we feel it between us, as a presence.
A good way to start thinking about nature, talk to it.
Talk to the rivers, to the lakes, to the winds
as to our relatives.
– John Fire Lame Deer –
