lena

“...most people who do a great deal of harm in the world are protected against the knowledge that they do so.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

“After all these generations since Columbus, some of the wisest of Native elders still puzzle over the people who came to our shores.
They look at the toll on the land and say,
“The problem with these new people is that they don’t have both feet on the shore. One is still on the boat. They don’t seem to know whether they’re staying or not.” This same observation is heard from some contemporary scholars who see in the social pathologies and relentlessly materialist culture the fruit of homelessness, a rootless past.
America has been called the home of second chances. For the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the Second
Man may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become indigenous to place. But can Americans, as a nation of immigrants,
learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore?”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Words tell stories. Specifically, the history of those words - how they came into use, and how their meaning morphed into what they mean today - tell us just as much about a people, if not more, than any other kind of historical artefact.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel