Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

Indigenous peoples have creation stories that root us in our own places, that tell us who we are and what our relationship is with our Creator and the world around us. Forcing us into a different creation story begins our disconnection from the land. We have always been here: this is how we understand ourselves. And it is true, even if we did migrate from somewhere else more than one hundred thousand years ago. Our own creation stories are filled with migration and travel. But this land is where we emerged as peoples; this is where we developed our political systems and cosmologies. This is where we fell to earth or emerged from the ground or otherwise formed our identities as distinct peoples. Our words and our stories hold this knowledge. Our origin story is valuable because it not only tells us who we are; it tells us who we can become.