I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.

We have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?

a real partnership in which all parties help all others to be more fully themselves

There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.