A Gift is a Responsibility

This week I share with you the wisdom of Robin Wall Kimmerer from her incredible book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

While we can use today to learn, to remember, and to mourn, I encourage you to read Kimmerer's perspective on our responsibility:

"Many Indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability...It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird's gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift.

"Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it? Stories...give us guidance, both to recognize the world as a gift and to think how we might respond...We may not have wings or leaves, but we humans do have words. Language is our gift and our responsibility."

In the conversations we have, the stories we share, and the tales we pass down, we are using the gift of our language and voice. That gift carries an enormous responsibility to consciously consider what values, behaviors, and images we are offering to the world.

You can purchase Braiding Sweetgrass here.

In 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather, president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, refused to accept the Best Actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando for his performance in The Godfather, because of the treatment of Indigenous people by the film industry. She was both booed and applauded.

You can find the rest of Marlon Brando's typed speech here.