Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be homecomers -- not necessarily to go home but to go someplace and dig in and begin the long search and experiment to become native.

... the forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run.

If we don't get sustainability right in agriculture first, it won't happen anywhere.

When we conduct agriculture, we are, therefore, altering the ecological arrangement that was responsible for our genesis as a species. I think that this is the reason that this alienation has allowed us to see and regard land mostly as a resource. So we have created a problem for ourselves from the word "go," for land is not a resource any more than humans are resources.

It is doubtful that the dissection of living animals and plants could be done by those who believe them to be holy. A pantheist would not view trees as so many board feet in the manner a Christian would. A pantheist would be less likely to measure the number of acre feet coming over a waterfall than his Christian descendent, centuries later who had become a scientist. That which is sacred would be handled with a certain reverence.

Politicians are simply reflections of the public.

A necessary part of our intelligence is on the line as the oral tradition becomes less and less important. There was a time throughout our land when it was common for stories to be told and retold, a most valuable exercise, for the story retold is the story reexamined over and over again at different levels of intellectual and emotional growth.