Whether on ceded or unceded land, to live respectfully within land means to recognize the interconnected nature of land and all who inhabit it. And it means to recognize the interconnected nature of time – that the memory of “what was” is alive here and now. Your blood and bones tell the stories of countless generations of beings, their evolutionary path, and the wisdom, wounds and scars they carried. It is alive in you. All that the land has experienced is alive and expressed in it – through the plants, the stones, the animals and insects, and through you. There are direct treaties or agreements and laws of conduct that are written between peoples on shared land. And there are treaties or contracts we share (in heart) with the ancestors, spirits, and with the land itself… This is my acknowledgement of these connections, contracts, and agreements.