--The Native American perspective, ...., is that the world operates as a whole, and that the meaning of knowledge depends on its context. Everything-from every action, plant and animal to the cosmos-has to be analyzed as a whole, according to its surrounding environment, spiritual context and relationships
-Mourning Dove (Salish) 1888-1936
...... everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.
Wooden Leg (late 19th century) Cheyenne
--The old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities...
Dakota:
-- We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
Kiowa:
-- Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.
Oglala Sioux:
-- To touch the earth is to have harmony with nature.
Unknown
-- Not every sweet root give birth to sweet grass.
Teme Angami Anishinabai
--If our land dies, we die. This land is our Crown. This land, along with the seasons affecting it, is our touchstone to past life and the gateway to future life, both human and non-human.
Stan McKay,first Aboriginal Person to be Moderator of the United Church of Canada
--Indigenous spirituality around the world is centred on the notion of our relationship to the whole of creation. We call the earth our mother. The animals are our brothers and sisters. Even what biologists describe as inanimate, we call our relatives.
This calling of creation into our family is a metaphorical construction that describes the relationship of love and faithfulness between human persons and the creation. Our identity as creatures in the creation cannot be expressed without talking about the rest of creation, since that very identity includes a sense of interdependence and connectedness of all life.
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