stories
Water Remembers
Who Is the Lake to Us?
An op-ed by Cristina Mormorunni, written for The Salt Lake Tribune.
For 99% of human history, we were wild. We spoke buffalo and wolf, wind and water. We knew the movement of animals, the coming of snow, which plants healed and which harmed. We were wrapped in an intimacy with the living world that fed body and mind — and gave spiritual meaning to our lives.
What We Are Made Of
A Letter from the Director
There is a story, carried by a Zapotec elder and retold in John Vaillant’s The Jaguar’s Children, in which Corn speaks. Corn says: “without us, there would be no humans. Without humans, there would be no corn. And if we ever became separated, we would each turn into something else—something smaller, forgetful of its own strength, unsure of what it is.”
I have been thinking about that prophecy all summer, while the government of the country I belong to has been quietly, legally, methodically pulling people apart from the things that make them who they are.
What Buffalo Still Have to Teach Us
What National Bison Month asks us to remember, restore, and become.
As we celebrate National Bison Month, perhaps the question isn't why America chose the buffalo as its National Mammal. Perhaps the question is why buffalo haven't given up on us–and what they still have left to teach us.
A letter from Buffalo to America
Dear America,
As you mark 250 years, the question is not only what do you choose to remember, but what future do you choose to create?
I was here long before your borders.
For thousands of years I shaped these grasslands. Wherever I roamed, life gathered. The prairie breathed with birds, rivers, flowers, insects, wolves, and people who understood that none of us belong here alone…
Beyond Borders, Into Belonging
The buffalo do not recognize borders.
They do not ask permission to cross fences built by empires, or to follow the waterways that predate every map ever drawn on this continent. They move as the land moves, by memory, by relationship, by belonging to something larger than any one nation or jurisdiction. That is the spirit that gathered advocates, knowledge keepers, scientists, tribal leaders, policy visionaries, youth, and relatives from across Turtle Island in San Antonio, TX for Buffalo Beyond Borders 2026: dedicated to the restoration of our collective relative, Buffalo, Iyane'e, Iinnii, Tatanka. A gathering designed not as a conference, but as a ceremony.
Braided Prophecy: Passed & Present
PHNX created this work as a reflection on Afro-Indigenous identity, belonging, and wholeness. It speaks to the deep knowledge carried through our lineages and the reality that our DNA does not separate, even when colonial systems attempt to divide or other us. For many Afro-Indigenous people navigating diaspora and recognition, belonging can feel contested or conditional. This piece affirms that we already belong and that unity must be cultivated not only in community, but within ourselves.
You’re my Relative
“I call you my relative, a sage of the plains.
For together, we are woven through roots
Where all that is sacred remains.”
Speak Buffalo: The INDIGENOUS LED Origin Story
INDIGENOUS LED was born at a breakfast table in Missoula, Montana in the winter of 2022…