Re-enchant
The thought of the living world: encounters with contemporary Indigenous voices that name another way of belonging to the world. Each piece deposits a word in the lexicon.
-
Gratitude as an Ecological Repair Technology Robin Wall Kimmerer and the Potawatomi Art of Giving Back to the Earth Aug 12, 2026 -
Silence as Ethics: The Absence That Transmits A Meditation on the Absent Word in Galsan Tschinag Aug 3, 2026 -
Utupë: The Breath of Ancestors and Memory as Resistance What Davi Kopenawa Teaches Us About the Invisible Living Jul 31, 2026 -
Thinking in Patterns: The Intelligence of Living Systems Storytelling as the Weaving of Relations, According to Tyson Yunkaporta Jul 22, 2026 -
Xawara: The Epidemic as the Forest’s Wrath Reflections on the White Man’s Disease Through the Words of Davi Kopenawa Jul 14, 2026 -
The Breath of the Living Sun Eusebio Laos, an Asháninka specialist, describes a world where water is neither element nor resource, but the breath of a star held to be alive—and where breathing is sharing the same breath as plants and beasts. Jun 22, 2026 -
Giving Your Strength Without Losing It Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi, Matsés hunter and healer, describes a world where vital energy is a substance that can be breathed from one body to another—and where those who give much to those who have little lose none of their own. Jun 22, 2026 -
Asking the Master of the Waters Carlos Nangkitiar Kunchim Tsanim, an Achuar man from the upper Pastaza, describes a world where fish, game, and gardens each have their own invisible owner—and where nothing is taken without first addressing him. Jun 20, 2026 -
There Is No Power in a Square Having grown old in a log house with right angles, Black Elk, Oglala Lakota medicine man, told John Neihardt why his people were dying: 'there can be no power in a square.' The sacred hoop against the box. Jun 20, 2026 -
To Whom Does the Kené Belong? In 2017, the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Council publicly denounced the piracy of their geometric art. Their declaration does not claim copyright: it defends a collective knowledge that no one owns alone. Jun 19, 2026 -
Postponing the End of the World Ailton Krenak, Krenak thinker of the Rio Doce, inverts the formula: the end we fear as a future has already come to pass—and what keeps the world from ending is dreaming, practiced as an institution. Jun 19, 2026 -
The People of Merchandise Davi Kopenawa reverses the gaze: it is not the Yanomami he describes, but the Whites—a tribe he names after the passion that binds them, the love of accumulated objects. Jun 18, 2026 -
Too Small, Too Poor The same verdict rains down from outside on Epeli Hauʻofa’s Oceania and Fernando Huanacuni’s Andes: too small, too poor. Both reject it—but one answers by expanding the world, the other by ceasing to measure it by what it accumulates. Jun 17, 2026 -
A Sea of Islands Where the colonial map sees tiny dots lost in a vast blue void, Tongan thinker Epeli Hauʻofa teaches us to see the opposite: not 'islands in a far sea,' but a sea of islands, where the ocean connects rather than divides. Jun 17, 2026 -
Living Well Is Not Living Better In the Aymara highlands, the term suma qamaña does not denote the comfort one gains, but a life of fullness, in balance with all forms of existence. Fernando Huanacuni Mamani distinguishes it, word for word, from 'living better,' which accumulates. Jun 17, 2026 -
A Sky That Can Grow Old In the High Altai described by the Tuvan writer Galsan Tschinag, the sky is not an outside: it is addressed like a father, prayed to, wept over—and an overwhelmed elder may reproach it for having grown so old it no longer hears. Jun 16, 2026 -
The Law Written in the Earth For the Kággaba (Kogi) people of the Sierra Nevada, the law that orders the land is not written in words: it is inscribed in the codes of the earth itself. The 'Ley de Origen,' made public by their organization to speak to the State. Jun 16, 2026 -
The Land That Teaches For Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, intelligence is not hoarded: it is generated through doing, in contact with Aki, the land. There is no degree in Nishnaabewin. Jun 15, 2026 -
The Body of the Land For David Mowaljarlai, Ngarinyin elder of the Kimberley, the continent is not a territory to be divided: it is Bandaiyan, a single living body lying on its back, of which we are the organs. Jun 15, 2026 -
The Gift That Circles Among the Potawatomi, it is the honoured guest who gives. Robin Wall Kimmerer calls this gesture *minidewak*—'giving from the heart'—and sees in it another way of holding the world: not as property to possess, but as a gift to pass on. Jun 13, 2026 -
Where It Took Place For the peoples Vine Deloria Jr. speaks of, the sacred clings to places, not to history: every site on their ancestral land carries the stories that shaped the people. A 'sacred geography' against a religion of time. Jun 13, 2026 -
We-Two Tyson Yunkaporta, of the Apalech clan, writes in a pronoun French has no word for: *ngal*, the dual first person. One never thinks alone—knowing is an act of relation. Jun 12, 2026 -
Life Is Not Useful Ailton Krenak, Krenak thinker of the Rio Doce, refuses to measure existence by its yield: life has no utility—it is *fruição*, a cosmic dance to be savored. Jun 12, 2026 -
Biiskabiyang Returning to oneself, as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson proposes: reclaiming what we left behind, unfolding from within outward. She asked elders about governance—they spoke to her of trapping. Jun 11, 2026 -
The Remembered Earth Once in his life, wrote N. Scott Momaday, a man should focus his mind on the remembered earth—surrender to a single landscape, regard it from every angle, linger over it, inhabit it through memory. Jun 10, 2026 -
Urihi What the Whites call 'nature,' says Davi Kopenawa, his language names *urihi a*—the living forest-earth, inhabited, and which cannot be carved up without dying with it. Jun 10, 2026 -
Ovoo Among the Tuvans of the Altai, as told by Galsan Tschinag, one dismounts before a pile of stones to greet the master of a place—a gesture a hurried world has sought to erase. Jun 9, 2026 -
Kamuy Chiri Yukie, the first Ainu to transcribe her people’s songs, gives voice to a world where the owl, the bear, the fire are persons who visit the human realm. Jun 9, 2026 -
Akinananti Chonon Bensho, a Shipibo-Konibo artist, and Pedro Favaron name a labor whose form is love and joy, and whose end is the good of all—not efficiency. Jun 8, 2026 -
Yorro Yorro David Mowaljarlai, Ngarinyin elder of the Kimberley, names creation not as a past act but as a present that never ceases. Jun 8, 2026 -
Puhpowee Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and Potawatomi citizen, captures in three syllables what science cannot name. Jun 6, 2026