How places are known

 My grandfather’s farm was a place. It included many places, each marked by a story.

There was the place where the Joe the birddog killed the enormous rattlesnake. There was the place where my grandfather drove the tractor off a ledge overlooking the creek. It was not far from the place where he  found a grinding stone, marking a site where ancient people had lived.

Vine Deloria Jr. said that it’s natural for people to have an aesthetic feeling for a beautiful place. It’s natural for families to have stories about land they live on. But in our culture, those connections between land and people rarely last.

Tribal histories are like my family’s history — they are based on place. Every feature of the landscape has a story about it.

The difference is that the tribal stories evolved over countless generations. They are not the reflections of a poet or someone who has an eye for natural beauty or of a family with a gift for drama.

The Native American stories don’t reflect personal or family wisdom. They reflect communal wisdom.

• Source: Vine Deloria Jr.’s essay “Reflection and Revelation: Knowing Land, Places and Ourselves” is in The Power of Place, edited by James A. Swan; Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1993, pp. 28-40.