On Our Original Natives

On Our Original Natives

Before borders learned how to cut,

before paper decided who belonged,

there were people

who knew the land by its breath.

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They did not “own” the earth—

they were in conversation with it.

Rivers were not resources.

Mountains were not obstacles.

Animals were not beneath.

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Everything had a role.

Everything had a name

that meant relationship, not possession.

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They mapped the world

without flattening it.

Time was circular.

History was carried in hands,

in songs,

in the way fire was kept alive

without burning the house down.

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They understood something we forgot in a rush:

that survival without reverence

is just a longer way to disappear.

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When they were told to forget—

their language,

their ceremonies,

their way of knowing—

the land kept remembering for them.

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Bones still know the songs.

The soil still responds to the old footsteps.

The wind still pronounces names

we stopped teaching our mouths to say.

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This is not nostalgia.

This is unfinished truth.

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Because “original” does not mean past.

It means foundational.

It means the blueprint is still there,

waiting for us to stop pretending

we invented belonging.

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The original natives were not perfect—

they were human.

But they knew something holy:

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That power without reciprocity

turns into hunger.

That progress without listening

becomes erasure.

That land does not need conquering—

it needs caretaking.

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To honor them is not to romanticize.

It is to repair.

To learn how to stand again

without taking more than we give.

To speak the earth’s name

with consent.

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And maybe—

just maybe—

to remember that the future

does not begin ahead of us,

but beneath our feet.

—

Flower InBloom 🌿

From the Land’s Voice

I was here before you learned to draw lines.

Before you learned to measure worth

by what could be taken.

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I fed you

without asking for ownership.

I held your dead

without charging rent.

I taught you seasons

so you would not panic at change.

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You learned my rhythms once—

how to burn without destroying,

how to harvest without stripping bone,

how to listen for rain

instead of demanding it.

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When you forgot me,

I did not leave.

I learned how to wait.

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I kept your original teachers

in the roots,

in the stones,

in the way water still curves

around what refuses to move.

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I do not need you to worship me.

I need you to remember

how to stand without conquest.

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Do not ask me what I can give you.

Ask me what I need

to keep giving at all.

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I am not silent.

You just stopped listening.

—

Flower InBloom 🌿

A Listening Vow

I vow to listen before I name.

I vow to learn whose ground I stand on

without claiming it as mine.

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I vow to treat land as relation,

not backdrop.

As elder,

not inventory.

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I vow to receive what was preserved

through loss

with humility,

not entitlement.

<---------------------------->

I vow to let remembrance

change my behavior—

not just my language.

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I vow to walk as a guest

who knows gratitude

is a responsibility.

—

— Flower InBloom 🌿

One-Page Teaching — Remembering the Original Teachers

This teaching is not about guilt.

It is about orientation.

What “Original” Means

Original does not mean outdated.

It means rooted.

It means systems of knowing that sustained life

long before extraction was confused with success.

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Indigenous ways of relating to land

were not primitive—

they were precise, adaptive, and reciprocal.

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What Was Disrupted

Colonization did not only take land.

It disrupted relationship:

• Land became property
• Time became linear and urgent
• Knowledge became something to own
• Progress became something that could ignore consequence

This rupture lives on

not only in policy,

but in how we move through the world.

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What Remains Available

The land still teaches:

• Balance over domination
• Cycles over hoarding
• Stewardship over control
• Enough over endless

These are not metaphors.

They are survival skills.

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What Listening Requires Now

Listening is not aesthetic appreciation.

It is behavioral change.

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Listening looks like:

• Learning whose land you inhabit
• Supporting Indigenous sovereignty, not symbolism
• Slowing decisions that affect ecosystems
• Valuing caretaking as intelligence
• Letting “progress” be questioned

The Quiet Truth

We do not need to return to the past.

We need to re-enter relationship.

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The original teachers were never erased—

only ignored.

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And listening is still possible.

—

Flower InBloom 🌿

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