Warm at home, in the long cold days of winter,
how and why should it trouble our thoughts,
that eternal question of the haves and have-naughts?
We are not thoughtless or hard of heart.
We give what's fair, do our part,
and the privileges we claim as our share,
those we reserve without reservation—
Perhaps even unaware of our good fortune.
Perhaps, never having troubled deaf heaven
with our bootless cries , we walk well-heeled
through our blessed lives with ease,
or maybe we stride with shrewd purpose
in shoes made for long days of toil on our feet.
You have yours, and I have mine, and aren't most of us
just trying to get by? But still, the hungry—
they are always with us and isn't the worry always
that if we pause our labor too long to care too much
that we shall be counted among them?

How can equality be anything but a utopian dream
for those whose history and legends tell only
of statesmen and kings and whose concerns
are less and less over the justness of wars
as much as they are for the accumulation
of more, more, more?
Yet we live on lands where equality bloomed once before,
when Indigenous nations lived by beliefs
and followed ancient laws that said an orca whale
and a cedar tree are sovereign, sentient beings
with inviolable rights, just like you and me.
Those beliefs are not childlike or primitive.
They are the blueprint for a just and fair society,
which for Native nations is not a vision but a memory.

That sublime belief in the wisdom and goodness
of the giving earth, is not so elusive, is not
a birthright exclusive to tribes. Yes, it's mine,
but it's yours too, if you want it. If you want it,
you must tell new stories—true stories
on which to build new beliefs—true beliefs,
in the interconnection and value of all living things.

The supremacy of man is only fiction.
This is the secret every river knows, for water rises
and falls, and in a circle, eternally flows
from the cloud to the mountain
through the valley to the sea. Thus, is a circle,
a balanced, perfect, and natural state of being.
And who are we to interrupt it?
We do so at our peril.

When the forest burns, our eyes burn,
and our hearts fill with ashes. And when streams
are dammed and wanting of salmon,
doesn't our blood also want of vitality?
This is the folly of hierarchy, with man at the top.
We reap the fruit of inequity.
A harvest of terrible hunger.
Now is the hour of our reckoning,
a moment of dire lack.

Though unrehearsed,
we must summon the courage
and the will to act, to assure our children
a better path forward. And when we look back,
will we see that in fact
we were not recovering from natural disasters,
rather, we were the great disaster
from which nature must recover?

With hindsight for eyes, we must sail toward
a beautiful vision: an era that is trying but hopeful,
demanding, but healthy, whole, and equitable?
We will be steadfast in our course, carried
by the winds of change, into a more balanced way
of being, for while free will is at the whim
of our human nature, nature loves balance,
and so, our nature is humane.

These truths being self-evident,
if all are created equal, and life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness are our legacy,
then we must each wish that for the other
and repair this world we've borrowed from our children.

We must recall a time when we did not have
the things we think, we need
but had the whole living earth for free.
"As long as the rivers run, as long as the tide flows,
and as long as the sun shines, you will have land,
fish and game for your frying pans,
and timber for your lodges."
These were the promises
on which this state was founded,
these sacred homelands in which
the call of eagles resounded,
resplendent from the tops of towering cedars,
where none went hungry
when salmon were running,
in clear cool waters, these abundant
and generous homelands were given
in exchange for the promise
of a world, we could live in
a world that would keep giving,
to all in common,
for as long as the rivers run.