The First Word Gives Origin To The

Although My Grandmother Lived Out Her Long Life In The Shadow Of Rainy Mountian, The Immense Landscape Of The Continental Interior Lay Like Memory In Her Blood

To Encounter The Sacred Is To Be Alive At The Deepest Center Of Human Existence. Sacred Places Are The Truest Definitions Of The Earth; They Stand For The Earth Immediately And Forever; They Are Its Flags And Shields. If You Would Know The Earth For What It Really Is, Learn It Through Its Sacred Places. At Devil’s Tower Or Canyon De Chelly Or The Cahokia Mounds, You Touch The Pulse Of The Living Planet; You Feel Its Breath Upon You. You Become One With A Spirit That Pervades Geologic Time And Space.

Once In His Life, A Man Ought To Concentrate His Mind Upon The Remembered Earth, I Believe. He Ought To Give Himself Up To A Particular Landscape In His Experience, To Look At It From As Many Angles As He Can, To Wonder About It, To Dwell Upon It. He Ought To Imagine That He Touches It With His Hands At Every Season And Listens To The Sounds That Are Made Upon It. He Ought To Imagine The Creatures There And All The Faintest Motions Of The Wind. He Ought To Recollect The Glare Of Noon And All The Colors Of The Dawn And Dusk.

The Turn Of The Century Was The Lowest Point For The Devastation Of Indian Culture By Disease And Persecution, And It's A Wonder To Me That They Survived It And Have Not Only Maintained Their Identity, But Are Actually Growing Stronger In Some Ways. The Situation Is Still Very Bad, Especially In Certain Geographical Areas, But There Are More Indians Going To School, More Indians Becoming Professional People, More Indians Assuming Full Responsibility In Our Society. We Have A Long Way To Go, But We're Making Great Strides.

The Landscape Of The American West Has To Be Seen To Believed And Has To Be Believed To Be Seen.