Sublime

My mother once told me a story about a woman with a bird for a heart, who ran everywhere she went. She couldn’t stop moving. Said she was restless. Our people once lived near lakes in the north. We farmed and harvested wild rice, fished. Stayed put. My mother said that woman put the bird in our people’s hearts, and that’s what made us go wandering

Joy Harjo: “Memory is a living being that moves in many-layered streams. It is not static. It is not a backwards look. It moves forward, sideways, and in a spiral.”

From my perspective as a Native American woman, I have always been taught from an early age by my parents, grandparents, and relatives to respect all beings. I have been taught that I am part of everything that exists—from the elements of air, fire, water, Mother Earth, and the ethers, the stones, and the stars in the heavens.17 This interconnected

incorrigible