We are the Land, We the Esto’k Gna

By: Christopher Basaldú, PhD 

We are all related.

Everything is connected. It’s all about relationships. Always. 

We, original human beings of these lands never perceived the land as a dead thing, something to own or to possess. The land was never something to poison or destroy for the sake of money. The Land, the Earth was always and will always be our Mother, a relative; someone to honor and to respect. Someone who loves us.

We are all related. 

That means that everything and everyone is related to everything and everyone else. This includes the land, or rather, the Place We come from, and every other living being and thing there in the Place we all share. Just as original people are connected to the land, their homeland, original indigenous peoples are connected to life and all that is living, together. Everything alive is also connected to Life itself, and that connection is through the land they live on, live with, live through,

Land itself, or our Mother Earth is alive with water, rivers, oceans, springs, resacas, and rain. The plants growing in the dirt are living through the water and light. We eat the plants, we eat the animals that eat the plants. Then We die. Our flesh feeds other living things. Our water and our bones return to the Land. Our spirits return to our ancestors. The Land, the Waters, the Air, the Light, the Stars; they are also the Ancestors. The deer, the bear, the herons, the turtles, the peyote; they are ancestors too. In our deep past, the animals, the plants, especially the medicinal ones and food plants taught us how to live well, and how to be better relatives to them and to others. Being a better relative, makes us better human beings.

Imagine! Our plant and animal relatives feed us, clothe us, shelter us. They give us life, literally. They are such good relatives. Our responsibility is to be good relatives to them too. We can say the same for the air, the water, and the land, our Mother. 

This interwoven web of interconnected relationships are collective, not merely individual nor individualistic. This web of life ties us all together; people, places, ancestors, histories, future generations, plants, animals, all of whom just want to life and to be happy. This web binds us together to support us, and to teach us, remind us to support one another. We know and understand the interconnected Web of Life through our sacred stories, our sacred histories.

These stories teach us that we should support not just our human relatives, but all of our relatives. That includes the Land, the Water, the Air as well. The knowledge of how to live on the land and how to respect our relatives is carried in the stories and songs and practices we teach and pass down generation after generation, Our Lifeways. The web of songs and stories and knowledge binds our human community to the web of life.

Our ancestors were never “primitive”. They lived in ways that respected and reinforced non-abusive, non-extractive, non-exploitative relationships with our living relatives including the Land and other peoples. They knew the very complex ways of knowledge to survive and thrive in the different places and seasons throughout their sacred homelands. We, the Esto’k Gna, the “Human Beings” learned and taught how to live together respectfully throughout our sacred homelands, that we called Somi Sek. This knowledge lives here, on this land, in Somi Sek. We live here in Somi Sek with all our ancestors and living relatives. The more human we are, the more we honor and live our relationships in a good and healing way; in a life-giving way.

The colonizer invaded our homelands and teaches the ways of life-taking. Colonization kills, steals, destroys, and rips apart life and the Land. To harm, to abuse, to destroy. or to pollute these relatives betrays them through deep and extreme disrespect. In doing so, we become so dishonorable, we diminish our humanity. We deny our own responsibilities to our relatives through such horrible disrespect, and we destroy our own futures.

Our memories live through the love of those we leave behind. Then it lives again through the  love given to the next generation. If we live our relationships in a life-giving way, then the next generation will do so as well, and so on and so on, as long as we remember how to give life. We do so through the relationships, the connections we collectively live with respect and reciprocity. The Land teaches us how to be truly human. We are born from the Land. We return to the Land. We are Esto’k Gna. We are the Land and the Land is us.

Ayema Payasel ( Give Life )