Fracture before Flight Story

Thunderbird teachings live in the land—cosmic guardians, storm controllers, protectors of balance. But the connection to Thunder Beings has been systematically severed—through cultural suppression and the rise of mechanistic worldviews that stripped nature of spirit. These beings exist across cosmologies worldwide, but over time their stories were outlawed, sacred sites desecrated, and thunder reduced to a mere weather event rather than a living presence. These myths were meant to awaken, warn and remember - lessons woven into the land itself. 

The rupture is layered: spiritual experiences pathologized, consumer values placed above kinship, and intergenerational trauma fractured ancestral ties to place. Together, these forces muted the awe, reverence, and reciprocity once central to relationships with Thunder Beings. Many of us carry a somatic legacy of fracture—body-memories of abandonment, exile, and silence. And yet when we start listening to our bodies and the land we have the ability to access knowledge that has been forgotten. 

When I painted t’aḵ’taḵmu’yin tl’a in7in’a’xe7en (Mt. Caley), the Thunderbird appeared in the sky—before I consciously knew its significance within the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh cosmology. I didn’t yet know this mountain is called Landing Place of the Thunderbird. Even when stories are disrupted, places remain—resilient containers of memory. By remembering the old stories and reweaving new one into the landscape, we can create pathways that tie us back to the earth and into relationship with natural and spiritual forces.

Place reshapes practice. The land sings through people, ceremonies, dreams. Even the most ancient traditions evolve because the land asks them to. Our presence, prayers, and movements leave an imprint. And we, in turn, are changed. I believe we are in a time when we are being asked to cultivate practices of belonging, recognizing the fluidity and reciprocity between humans and land, between traditions and innovation.

Storytelling can help rebuild a reciprocal, animistic relationship with place. To heal our relationship with the Earth, we must step away from seeing ourselves as controllers or authors of reality. Instead, we must listen, participate, and be shaped by the larger-than-human world.

Like plants adapting to new soil, cultural and spiritual traditions evolve through contact, conflict, and collaboration. The work of resurgence and reconciliation happens here—in the soil of complexity, grief, land-based life and imagination. The Thunderbird reminds us we are in a time of rebuilding. As the struggle for justice and the reckoning with colonial legacies comes into the light, we are called to rise. To take flight.