But What, Precisely, Is Hope? At A

When Dams Were Erected On The Columbia, Salmon Battered Themselves Against The Concrete, Trying To Return Home. I Expect No Less From Us. We Too Must Hurl Ourselves Against And Through The Literal And Metaphorical Concrete That Contains And Constrains Us, That Keeps Us From Talking About What Is Most Important To Us, That Keeps Us From Living The Way Our Bones Know We Can, That Bars Us From Our Home. It Only Takes One Person To Bring Down A Dam.

Hope Is A Longing For A Future Condition Over Which You Have No Agency; It Means You Are Essentially Powerless.

The Process Of Schooling Does Not Give Birth To Human Beings - As Education Should But Never Will So Long As It Springs From The Collective Consciousness Of Our Culture - But Instead It Teaches Us To Value Abstract Rewards At The Expense Of Our Autonomy, Curiosity, Interior Lives, And Time.

So Many Indigenous People Have Said To Me That The Fundamental Difference Between Western And Indigenous Ways Of Being Is That Even The Most Open-minded Westerners Generally View Listening To The Natural World As A Metaphor, As Opposed To The Way The World Really Is. Trees And Rocks And Rivers Really Do Have Things To Say To Us.

When We Realize The Degree Of Agency We Actually Do Have, We No Longer Have To "hope" At All. We Simply Do The Work.