“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped…

“If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arm around the people who go to battle everyday to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, their mountains and their rivers protect them. ” – Arundhati Roy. On Monday, I sat on the bench just outside the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council chambers. At 12:24 my friend…

On a recent Sunday at 3:45 a.m. a horrendous smell woke me up. My first thought was the farmer-engineered wiring in the old house started on fire. I tried to go back to sleep hoping I could catch a couple of extra minutes before the house burned down but the smell was so bad I was compelled to get up. I walked through the house, the smell becoming more pungent with each step, until I came upon my dog Ole. I walked up to him, leaned over, and took a big…