One week ago, I sat rapt at the feet of US Poet Laureat Joy Harjo. Before she began the reading, Joy told us we must acknowledge the keepers of the land. Wherever we may go, the keepers of the land must be sought out, respected, revered. Growing up in Hawai’i, I learned early on what it meant to be a steward of the earth: our state’s motto is Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono. May the life of the land be perpetuated in righteousness. It is not my job to be owner or dominator, but steward. Someone who understands right relationship to the earth, and the role I must play in maintaining its health.
Just after Joy charged us to look to the keepers of the land, she said: “Ultimately we are ALL keepers of the land. Because we are the land.” A silence of recognition and reckoning moved through us. To understand that we must be keepers, stewards, not just out of some kind of moral or ethical or humanitarian obligation, but because there is no separation between us and the land—because without a healthy earth, we have nothing—that is an electrifying power.
We received these words from a poet, a woman who knows the way words work to create meaning, to transform, to shape reality. They haven’t left me. I am finding my way to the earth again and again. Yesterday, it was in this forest of tree beings, calm and alert amidst the chaos of Iowa, corona, impeachment, the hurts and doubts I nurse in my heart.
