Abstract: Through the thread of a small pouch, this hybrid creative nonfiction essay weaves connections between memory, place, and political accountability. Moving between a harm reduction workshop on Treaty 1 and 3 territories, a childhood sewing lesson, a university classroom, a family DNA revelation, and a field course in Palestine and Israel, this essay explores the complex weight of oppressive inheritance. Drawing on the work of postcolonial and Indigenous theorists Aimé Césaire, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Vanessa Watts, as well as harm reduction thinker and practitioner Shira Hassan, and others, this piece asks whether and how a settler can be in good relation with stolen land. Sage, which grows in Turtle Island and Palestine, serves as a portal facilitating a layered analysis of violence, harm reduction, Indigenous Place-Thought, the Yiddish concept of doikayt (hereness), and the portability of colonial sovereignty.
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