Excerpt:

"Linden and I were watching a hummingbird just now in the lilac bush as we smoked. So many other birds on our property. Chickadees, goldfinches, woodpeckers, so many I can't remember. There's an oriole. We think there might be some Purple Martins nesting in the sailboat trailer. They're so rare, but the oldest species of birds managed by humans in North America, as I recall. Native people would hang dried out gourds for thousands of years for the specialized rounded housing the birds prefer. There are only nine colonies left in Maine, but they're close enough that it might be the case.

On this land that would have been the Abenaki, of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They called this land N'dakina. That's where I live. I live in N'dakina. They never ceded this land."

Excerpt:

"We bought this land from someone Native. US dollars, of course. We pay the property taxes in US dollars, too, of course. It was bought and sold by white people before that a few times, but it was stolen before that.

An individual tribal member selling us a house and land under colonist rule hundreds of years since their genocide started doesn't change the fact that this is still N'dakina, and this land was stolen from the Abenaki. One Native person selling it to us does not speak for the tribe from the time it was stolen, nor the tribe of today. The only thing it says is that we live here now, and under conditions that are inextricably linked to violence, as is all land on Turtle Island."

Excerpt:

"My grandmother was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My other grandmother qualified, but never applied. In order to qualify, a person must be able to trace a familial line to someone who fought in the USian Revolutionary War these 250 years ago as of today. The DAR just took a vote on whether or not to disqualify trans women from membership. I was shocked to find out that the measure failed, and trans women are allowed to become members.

I still won't. The organization has historically been a very conservative one. Which is why I'm so shocked that the vote went the way it did. Nonetheless, I'm not interested. I take no pride in my relation to these ancestors. What pride should one take in this?

This is N'dakina.

My goddess I hope I'm getting that right. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is N'dakina."

Excerpt:

"My ancestors used to use it, too, for thousands of years. The weed, I mean, that I use to roll my joints. Although, for most of that time they didn't usually smoke it, they ate it. I started with edibles, too, before I started smoking it. The first time I smoked it was on the beach at Coney Island with a lesbian friend of mine, up to our knees in the water, the waves getting the bottoms of our skirts wet. After that, she took me to the lesbian bar for the first time. The second time I smoked it was the next night as we walked to Stonewall, and I thought about how many of us have smoked on that walk to the bar over the years, how many of us smoked that day, when they arrested people for being queer in the land of the free. My friend told me that trip that these were my spaces, like she was welcoming me home."