I am a visitor returned, at your calling and their insistence.
You called, deep ancestors of this place and space, ancestors of the
Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak,
and Chonnonton Nations, among others.

My ancestors insisted I rise and come.
My new friends opened a space for me to belong.
It is time. It is time. It is time
To join in bearing witness to what was lost.
It is time to celebrate those who not only survived
But remember and Re-Member so we are here.

The ancestor is not a fly trapped in amber
But the animating force of this moment 
of reckoning and bearing witness
to the truth that sets us all free. 

The trees, birds, insects, worms, fish, and all creatures
Welcome me. I am grateful.
The people welcome me. I am grateful.
I resend a word of greeting to those who belonged here first.
Those whose ancestors heard the first sounds and songs of the rivers, marshes, forests
And all that is this place and space called Turtle Island, coast to coast.
North America to the rest of us,
Settlers, refugees, immigrants, migrants, all new arrivals.

I am here because the wounds of history heal
When we, the living, remember that the human is but
A leaf, a twig, and a branch on the tree of life, the human
has no dominion over the life of a cabbage or a cow
But receives all in gratitude, to those ancestors, 
human and otherwise, who made our presence here possible.

May my presence 
Join those holding space for deep peace and love.
May my voice
Join those heeding the call of the ancestors, and the living,
To live in astonished gratitude that 
We belong to this great Being we call Earth, 
on whose back and belly, we travel the infinite cosmos 
out there, and right here where we are. Now.

I come in Peace.
Tasvika wo, Tasvika wo, Ve Pano. 
Me, my Ancestors, and People are here.
Thank You for having Us.
And so it is.