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TLINGIT FAMILY REUNION: A Voice from Tsetsibus Has Called Us Back.
There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings....The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of the spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
- from Chief Sealth's letter to President Franklin Pierce
We, the half-breeds, return to the rainbow circle of our grandfather, the hummingbird of our lives who taught us to dance on this red cedar earth for the joy of breath.
I am sure my return in my autumn years to the land and water of my grandfather and grandmother, and my grandfather's grandparents, stems from witnessing after my grandfather's death and burial in this grave some understanding that no matter how many miles or years you travel down the road of life, that that road is essentially the core of yourself.
You are the road you travel until you regain the air of pure song. It is not just the road your spirit delights in taking risks on for the view it offers or the emotion expressed, but the road that originates from the depths of your nature. Its source and direction you come to see is never found beyond the skin of your senses and magic of your brain. And this grandfather we have come to honor told us as children that the heart shows you the way out of darkness and that this road started in your mother's womb that has its origins in the womb of the earth that received its blessing ways and its origins from the deepest nerve cords of the sea.
What remains of my generation and our families, after the tragedies and diseases ravaged us beyond naming, is simply the desire to come home to a place lit by the bones and tracks of ancestors.
We are here in the land of our Coast...