The conversations start with rain, waterdrops that convene in the form of clouds before descending, weaving together earth and sky. The conversations start with snow, the white embrace of ice crystals that guard the land till the rebirth of Spring.

While this conversation happens in silence, everyone is listening. From the trees that hold together the networks of life, to the owls who watch the doors of the night, every being is tuned in, connected to the first storyteller.

Whether it be rain or snow, the water finds its way into the soil. It joins the dialogue between plant roots and fungi, who exchange gossip and nutrients. It join the movement of minerals and organic matter, traveling through the trunks of trees, the veins of all living beings, knitting them all together.

In the end, water molecules don’t travel alone, they unite. They gather in the form of streams that travel down from the high mountains and hold in their rocky bellies the fables told by salamanders and chickadees, yarns of moss and decaying leaves.

Dancing by boulders and tree roots, the streams converge, uniting their narratives into a larger tapestry. The water's voices join and become a roar. They speak in unison, of the life they have brought to mountain and valley, of how everything and everyone is connected to their rumbling symphony.

From raindrops, to streams, to rivers, the journey of water is the heart of living memory. It connects past, present and future, and all living beings owe their existence to its flow. All living beings belong to the rivers, for the rivers are our guardians, our caretakers. The rivers of the world are our knowledge keepers. They are our elders.

 And now the rivers pass the word on to their non-human guardians, as they tell the story of this land, of the forest and the waters of Haudenosaunee Territory, starting from the mountains to the confluence with the Kaniatarowanneneh, the artery of the continent.

Gnawing into the meat of wood,
we shape water,
transforming forest glens
into swamp palaces,
a fortress that stills
the rivers chatter.

From our castles,
we watched,
hid from the hunter,
the trapper,
the tree cutter,
mountain stripper,
those that steal,
and float their plunder,
shipping the forests
down to slaughter.

We hid from you, dam builder,
who, in a twisted imitation of our palaces,
attempted to silence the voice of rivers,
commodifying liquid matter.

You chained the veins of this earth,
veins that need to flow,
dance to the rhythm of stars,
caught in the act of laughter.

Poem and Art by Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo

We wade through muck.
When did it happen,
that our green land
our silver water,
became the sewage
of capital farms?

It’s not just the stench
that rots our air.
It’s not just the black water
that invades our nests,
that fills our lungs.

It’s what we don’t see that most harms us.
The disease of your pollution
that eats us from the inside
taking away the light
stealing our lives.

When did it happen,
that our green marshes
went dry?
When did it happen,
that we all lost
our way of life?

We remember endless streams,
green ravines,
trees at the eaves of our peaceful dreams.
We remember rumbling waters
and silent creeks.
We remember flowing rivers
and our homes in the shallows
of their rushing glimmer.

We remember a world that was green
that belonged to all living beings.
We remember a world in which breathing
and swimming
and eating
didn’t mean a day less in our long existence.

We’re saying goodbye,
from the dark waters of manure sprayed crops.
We’re saying goodbye
from the drying marshes
stolen by new GMO stocks.

We’re saying goodbye
at the edges of your highways.
We’re saying goodbye,
from the overflowing banks of your dammed rivers.

We’re saying goodbye,
for your way of life
is stealing our lives.

Poem and art by Blake Lavia

Poem and Art by Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo

Walls
They bar our way to our ancestral land
where the water flows
still young
down
to the valley
to the Great River
to the Ocean

Walls
they bar our way
to our future
to our past.
Our children don’t know
where we all came from.
Our children don’t remember
the way upstream
where it all began
where it all still begins.

But we don’t forget.
We strive to come back.
We wait for the walls to fall,
for the way to open once more.

We wait
patiently watching
swimming the current.
We look for a crack
a crack in the rock.
All walls fall.
Some take longer than others,
but the water always finds a way,
it weathers all barriers away.

Thus, we wait
and we know that
our children
once again
will know the meaning of home
in these rumbling waters.

It’s our way of life.

Poem and art by Blake Lavia