“We are not made for resignation. Passive acceptance is not the code written into our spirit. If that were true, as a species, we would have vanished long ago. Instead, for millennia, we have shaken off the temptation to simply accept reality and the demand that we bend the knee, and we have stood up to struggle against the odds, to change the situation, and to find an answer and a healing. Those deep drives are the energy we call hope. Those active forces are what determine our future. We are not made for resignation, but for freedom.”
—Steven Charleston, Ladder To The Light: An Indigenous Elder’s meditations on Hope and Courage (Broadleaf Books, 2021), p. 17
