Writing is one of the ways I do my work in a world divided by two deeply different world views. Native America and America is a confrontation between two groups of people. The space dividing vibrates with tensions of race, historical trauma, broken treaties, and politics and different ideas about the true meaning of land.
On one side land is viewed as lifeless materials available for the taking. Water, soil, minerals and wild life ignored in the name of greed and corporate wealth.
On the other side is an ancient story of land nourishing. Fertile soil, fresh water and clear air is a gift to all beings that must be respected. Wild life creatures are our relatives. This requires gratitude, reverence and respect. These gifts are not commodities. Land is sacred, a living breathing entity we must care for. In return she cares for us. Land is our mother, our cradle, our teacher, our garden, our medicine, our church and our grave.
We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.
With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something.
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“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.” —Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence
