To You We Shall Return: Lessons About Our Planet from the Lakota - Tapa dura

A meditation on our connection to the land and an exhortation to respect it. This title uses a combination of personal anecdote, detailed history and Lakota tales to show how we, too, can learn to love our planet. It demonstrates that the earth can be boundlessly generous, if we can learn to accept its gifts. 'Grandmother, you who listen and hear all, you from whom all good things come...It is your embrace we feel when we return to you...' This traditional Lakota prayer to Grandmother Earth opens Joseph Marshall III's newest work, a meditation on our connection to the land and an exhortation to respect it. Using a combination of personal anecdote, detailed history and Lakota tales, Marshall takes us back to his childhood and shows us how we, too, can learn to love our planet. Marshall had the benefit of growing up with wise grandparents who taught him never to walk a path without knowing the trail from which he'd come; that the bow does not make the hunter and above all, that the earth can be boundlessly generous, if we can learn to accept its gifts.

Joseph M. Marshall III was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and raised by his maternal grandparents. He is an historian, educator, motivational speaker and Lakota craftsman; he has worked as both technical advisor and actor in television movies, including Return to Lonesome Dove. A recipient of the Wyoming Humanities Award, he is author of numerous collections of essays and short stories.