Where do we go when the world is burning?

Here is my quick answer: Stay with the Land. Stay with the feeling. Let them shape us - on the level of our tissues and dreams - so that we may reshape the socio-political conditions we inherited into something regenerative, reciprocal, and attuned.

Root into the reverent practice of learning from life. A practice that asks us to let aliveness move through us rather than around us; to weave ourselves into solidarity with the Land, and be shaped by the stories of anti-colonial lifeways kept by beyond-human kin and Indigenous elders. A practice that asks us to resist the impulse to turn away from grief before it has transformed us.

.:.

The air across the Great Lakes region has been thick with smoke. Nearly one thousand wildfires were sparked across Canada by heat and drought brought on by centuries of settler colonialism and racial capitalism.

As the smoke passed through, I watched footage of members of the Namaygoosisagagun First Nation fleeing fires in the final minute without the slightest extension of government assistance, and deer darting out from the moving threshold of flames to save their lives. The fires have torn through forests and devastated the homes of First Nations communities upwind of me. By design, the English language does not have words to capture a heartbreak like this.

It felt as though this grief would suffocate me if the smoke didn’t do it first. 

You see, the lack of language does not mean we cannot stay with the feeling. 

We can, and we should.

We feel because feeling fuels resistance. We feel so that we may one day live in a world filled by languages, wails, songs, ceremonies, and silences that can give voice to these intricate braids of love, sorrow, responsibility, and the body of "we."

Between rising authoritarianism, climate chaos and the doom that fills me, my animal body often wonders whether it is time to flee. When the thought arises, a particular grief constricts my throat, and all I want to do is sink as deeply as possible into the soils beneath me. Of course, I think of the trees - who root and resist in place no matter the condition.

I wonder: Is there anywhere to flee to anyway?

Staying is not the same as surrender.

The Earth is our home. And there is nothing like wildfire smoke to remind me just how ludicrous it is to seek safety through borders of nation-states. 

Perhaps staying does not always mean remaining physically in one place. Communities have always migrated, sought refuge, and contributed to survival this way. Even trees communities shift ranges over generations. But there is another kind of staying that feels essential in this moment: staying with the Land as our teacher, staying with the grief instead of rushing toward numbness, staying with the stories that remember life beyond empire, and staying loyal to the unabashedly miraculous web of relations we are all born into.

To stay with the Land is to re-align ourselves with life, to re-member the relational covenants of humans as relatives to all other beings that co-create this planet. To stay with the feeling is to refuse the emotional disciplines of colonialism that teach us to distance ourselves from suffering in order to preserve some detached, faux comfort.

If we allow ourselves to be shaped by the Land, by grief, by joy, and by the countless stories of human and beyond-human kin who have never abandoned reciprocal ways of living, then perhaps we can begin to shape the socio-political conditions we inherited into something else.

We are remiss to decenter these human capacities.

We have got to stay, convene with beyond-human mentors, reconnect to Land-based lineages, listen, dream.

It is our birthright to dream.

A Two-Spirit Elder from the Thunder Bay area who closed a panel discussion at the first annual Wisconsin Two-Spirit Powwow by wishing us all “a good wisdom sleep.” I have carried those words with me ever since. They feel like both a blessing and a responsibility: may we stay, let aliveness flow through us, and dream ourselves toward wiser ways of living together.

The next time you lay down to rest, remember you belong to a web of life and have a good wisdom sleep.

.:.

To support First Nation communities recovering from wildfires, donate here.

Seeking community support in staying with the Land?
Join me for “Somatic Enchantment: Trees & Rooted Resistance”
We meet on Zoom for 10 Fridays, beginning September 11, 2026