As Long as the Sun Shines, the Grass Grows, and the Rivers Flow

I was born on a land braided by rivers and mountains — Aotearoa, New Zealand. A place where the winds speak Māori, where pōhutukawa trees line the edge of the sea, where treaty is not just a word but a living wound and a whispered hope.

I was born a white-presenting Indigenous woman of Mohawk, British, Scottish, and New Zealand ancestry.

That sentence carries the weight of contradiction. It also carries the truth of colonization — that many of us are walking treaties. Agreements written into our skin, our bloodlines, our contradictions. Some honoured. Many not.

I didn’t grow up learning what a treaty really is. I learned about contracts. About rules. About legal documents signed and filed away, often broken and forgotten. But treaties — true treaties — are something else entirely.

In many Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island, a treaty is not just a piece of paper. It’s a sacred agreement. A relational commitment. A vow made between nations, often sealed in ceremony, spoken aloud in the presence of the land itself.

“As long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow.”

This is how long the treaties were meant to last.

Not four years.

Not until a new government is elected.

Not until it becomes politically inconvenient.

Forever.

And yet — what happened?

Across Turtle Island, in Aotearoa, in Australia, across Africa, and beyond — colonial governments signed treaties with Indigenous peoples and then broke them. Again and again. Land was taken. Languages erased. Children stolen. And with every betrayal, something tore — not just in the fabric of the treaty, but in the fabric of humanity.

But this isn’t just history.

Right now, in my birth country of Aotearoa, there are active movements — supported by political parties and gaining public traction — to overturn the Treaty of Waitangi. The founding document between Māori and the Crown is being called “divisive,” and there are calls to replace it altogether. As if the problem is the treaty itself, not the centuries of dishonour.

Right now, in Canada, land defenders are still being arrested. Unceded territories are still being extracted from. Wet’suwet’en matriarchs are still fighting for their rivers. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have come and gone, but pipelines still get built through sacred land.

Right now, in the United States, many tribal nations are still waiting on basic recognition. Court cases drag on for decades while corporations mine and drill on treaty-protected land. The promises made — spoken aloud “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow” — are being erased in boardrooms and legislation.

In the documentary Eternal Song, there’s a moment that pierced me. An elder says:

“Those who do not honour treaties are cursed.”

Not cursed like a superstition.

Cursed like a consequence.

A spiritual and ecological rupture. A world that cannot thrive because it refuses to live in right relationship.

And maybe that’s what we’re seeing now. The curse of dishonoured treaties: climate collapse, disconnection, mental illness, war, greed, the ache of loneliness in a hyperconnected world.

We are a species out of treaty.

Not just with Indigenous peoples. But with the Earth. With each other. With our own spirits.

I don’t write this to blame. I write this to remember.

To invite us back into right relationship. Because that’s what treaties are — relationships. Built on mutual care, responsibility, reciprocity. They require listening. Grieving. Humbling. Repairing.

In Aotearoa, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. It was supposed to be a partnership. But it was mistranslated. Misinterpreted. Misused. Sound familiar?

Canada has its own web of Numbered Treaties, modern treaties, unceded territories, and legal battles still ongoing. Truth and Reconciliation is a term we use, but often forget to live. We hold events, publish reports, wear orange shirts — and yet the systems remain the same.

Because reconciliation without treaty is just performance. And treaty without right relationship is just paperwork.

As a white-presenting Indigenous woman of British, Scottish, and New Zealand ancestry — with roots in North America and birth in Aotearoa — I walk in both worlds. I see the bridges. I also see the broken planks. And I believe this remembering — of what a treaty truly means — is one of the most important paths we can walk right now.

It’s not about guilt.

It’s about responsibility.

It’s about returning to right relationship — with the land, with each other, with truth.

What would change if we all lived as if we were in treaty with life?

With the trees.

With our neighbours.

With the children we will never meet.

I think of the rivers, still running.

The grass, still growing.

Despite it all, the land remembers.

Now it’s our turn — to return to right relationship.