Words from Ila Abernathy of the Akwesasne tribe

I am grass growing and the shearer of grass, I am the willow and the splitter of laths, weaver and the thing woven, marriage of willow and grass.  I am frost on the land and the land’s life, breath and beast and the sharp rock underfoot; in me the mountain lives, and the owl strikes, and I in them; I am the sun’s twin, mover of blood and the blood lost, I am the deer and the deer’s death; I am the burr in your conscience: acknowledge me.

(found this in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States)