Change is no threat to culture.

The surface of the Earth itself is an immense loom upon which the sun weaves the fabric of existence.

If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.

Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.

On paper I would be a rather bold individual in our culture.

You know, once something freezes, it's solid. That's the key to the arctic - they didn't fear the cold, they made use of it.

A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. ... Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.