In 1970 the American Indian Student Association at the University of Minnesota satirized the archaeological establishment by submitting a proposal to the National Science Foundation that called for the exhumation and scientific analysis of human remains in a pioneer cemetery.

They said he had tuberculosis, but it was a mysterious death—one of the first I heard of—that fluttered the nerve endings of our collective subconscious. Someone was walking on our graves.

If you take a vacation with a close friend and it’s not the best goddamn time either of you has ever had in years, it was a flop, and marks the end of the good times between the two of you forever.

“You can feel it on that one, like a tingle. You ever feel something like that? Like you can just feel the ghosts of the raped around a certain kind of man?” “I know what you mean,” Trace says. She does. She has felt this, often.

I don’t want to divide the world up into categories anymore, I want to understand.

My writing utopia supports both introversion and community. It’s urban, but also oceanic. We heal our shameful histories with honesty and reparations. Everyone has a guaranteed minimum income. In my writing utopia, we center creativity and joy. We don’t bend to the needs of capitalism.  We know that imperialistic story structures will never destroy the empire.

I get that sometimes, the strange sense of waking up and being shocked to realize that I am me and not some other person.

Language is pitiable when weighed against experience.

As I approached the doorway to Earth, I was hesitant to enter. I kept looking over my shoulder. I heard the crisp voice of the releaser of souls urge me forward. “Don’t look back!” And I remembered how Earth is a heavy teacher yet is so much loved by the creator of planetary beings.

The Kingdom of God is a call to revolution

I don’t think there’s virtue in labor for the sake of labor, in endlessly harvesting beyond one’s needs.

The land we stand on feels solid, but the continents float on molten magma like dumplings on a simmering stew.

Abraxa loves them both, wishes them only good. They’ll leave me, she tells herself, and then the thought rearranges itself like a warm wax lamp: they’ll let me go.

Native trees like native people do not understand or care for the profit motive.

I keep trying to make everything fit in my head, and the best I can figure is: We’re all we’ve got. You know? We have to take care of each other.

Relationship building. > Empire building.

Cancel all uncreative, uninspiring time-sucks.

I was convinced that I’d never have any friends, so I had this idea of being one to myself. I could be honest and loyal and supportive. I could listen to myself and make myself laugh.

I know what it is like to be from an extraction zone. What it is like to grow up in the place where the taking begins.

Their evil is mighty but it can’t stand up to our stories.