One sentence

Sometimes when I think of all the places in the world I could have lived instead of this dried out prairie that seems as if it is trying to die with our culture, and i think if how people in my culture are not as appreciative as my ancestors and don't respect the Earth and throw their trash all over the damn place and don't teach their kids respect and people forget how to respect each other and then I think of how so many people here are still fluent, still active in the Lakota religion and way of life, still doing the native arts and crafts and how they still offer you coffee when you go to their house or ask you if you are hungry or will smoke a cigarette with you even if they don't smoke because it is tobacco and from the Earth and that is like honoring the earth and how we pray and honor is so high up on a Lakota's priorities that they always offer tobacco back to the earth and every prayer ends with the phrase Mitakuye Oyasin which means we are all related, which means that the air we breathe is relevant to the water that gives us life and that is relevant to the earth that feeds us and the animals and plants we share this Earth with, when i think of those things and think how I could have been born in Brazil with long beautiful legs or born in France where I could walk on cobblestone streets and eat warm bread from a bakery or how I could have been born into royalty, when I think of all that and what I have here on this dried up prairie, then I know I was meant to be born here, live here, and I was born to be Lakota.

*pic by my sister