I'm sitting in the garden. I haven't smoked yet, but I will. I have a beautiful new metal case to hold my joints. Here comes my spouse wearing one of those cool t-shirts with the wolves and the moon on it, cut off as a crop-top. My spouse is so cool.

I gave them a joint from my case. Sitting on the garden swing, I took a small puff, but I wanted to get back to this, so I don't really want to smoke much more, at least for now.

It's beautiful out here. One of the people who drives by and yells slurs at us is out enjoying driving their dirt bike down the road. Looks like he's too distracted to pay us any mind. So much is blooming here in the garden, but I know so much more will continue to make the garden explode with color as the summer wears on.

As I write these words, I hear explosions. I often hear explosions when our neighbors are shooting coyotes and whatever else they shoot out there. He used to yell slurs at the kids, too, but not in a while. He likes to think he keeps the kids safe by shooting the coyotes. I'm not worried about it. I wish he would just let the coyotes be.

Our neighbors hate that we didn't mow our lawn for years and instead just had the sheep and goats graze all the way up to the house. That's illegal in much of the land of the free. We also like much of it to just be wild. Never had an issue with the coyotes and the sheep and the goats. We also have a livestock guardian dog we call Moose. But the neighbor shoots the coyotes, so maybe he's the reason we never had an issue, but I don't want to give him the credit.

We mow a little bit now. We don't have the goats and the sheep to do it anymore. We had to get rid of them in case we need to flee at some point.

I just pulled a tick off my foot. We played Blood on the Clocktower with some friends today at the edge of the woods on their property on the lake. We had a blast. They told us to check for ticks before we left. We've got ticks on our property, too, partially because we don't mow a lot, but partially because there are just so many ticks these days. Global warming. The last few days were so damned hot. Was a perfect day today, though, to play a game with friends at the edge of the forest.

There's so much life on our land. Our neighbors mow it down to the dirt. We have wildflowers and orchard and berries, bumblebees and wasps and critters and monarch butterflies. I heard there are 90% fewer monarch butterflies around since I was a kid. My spouse spreads the milkweed every year. It's gorgeous. The whole garden is gorgeous. All the land is gorgeous.

Linden and I were watching a hummingbird just now in the lilac bush as we smoked. So many other birds on our property. Chickadees, goldfinches, woodpeckers, so many I can't remember. There's an oriole. We think there might be some Purple Martins nesting in the sailboat trailer. They're so rare, but the oldest species of birds managed by humans in North America, as I recall. Native people would hang dried out gourds for thousands of years for the specialized rounded housing the birds prefer. There are only nine colonies left in Maine, but they're close enough that it might be the case.

On this land that would have been the Abenaki, of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They called this land N'dakina. That's where I live. I live in N'dakina. They never ceded this land.

We bought this land from someone Native. US dollars, of course. We pay the property taxes in US dollars, too, of course. It was bought and sold by white people before that a few times, but it was stolen before that.

An individual tribal member selling us a house and land under colonist rule hundreds of years since their genocide started doesn't change the fact that this is still N'dakina, and this land was stolen from the Abenaki. One Native person selling it to us does not speak for the tribe from the time it was stolen, nor the tribe of today. The only thing it says is that we live here now, and under conditions that are inextricably linked to violence, as is all land on Turtle Island.

I'm not an historian and I claim no Native heritage to this land. My ancestors were primarily nomadic, though not necessarily in recent centuries. I could be getting some of the history wrong, both of my own ancestry and of N'dakina and the Wabanaki Peoples. But I think it's worth trying to learn.

I can trace my ancestors back about 7000 years, not by individuals but by peoples, but my understanding is that the Wabanaki can trace theirs back around 12,000 years.

My grandmother was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My other grandmother qualified, but never applied. In order to qualify, a person must be able to trace a familial line to someone who fought in the USian Revolutionary War these 250 years ago as of today. The DAR just took a vote on whether or not to disqualify trans women from membership. I was shocked to find out that the measure failed, and trans women are allowed to become members.

I still won't. The organization has historically been a very conservative one. Which is why I'm so shocked that the vote went the way it did. Nonetheless, I'm not interested. I take no pride in my relation to these ancestors. What pride should one take in this?

This is N'dakina.

My goddess I hope I'm getting that right. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is N'dakina.

I had to look it up. I already knew this was Wabanaki land, but I had to look up to find out it was specifically Abenaki. I had to look up that it was N'dakina.

My GPS doesn't call it N'dakina when I open it up. I don't write my address as N'dakina. Even land acknowledgements in my area acknowledge this as Wabanaki land, but they don't get into specifics.

I don't think anyone is certain what good these land acknowledgements do. They often seem performative. Nonetheless, today a country that has known only 17 years without war and was built on genocide and slavery is celebrating its 250th anniversary.

People celebrate with explosions to represent the guns and the bombs. People sing the national anthem, a song about guns and bombs. They forget that one of the verses of that song is about murdering runaway enslaved people. The murder is justified, apparently, because these people sought their own freedom. This verse, like the first, describes this as the land of the free.

My ancestors used to use it, too, for thousands of years. The weed, I mean, that I use to roll my joints. Although, for most of that time they didn't usually smoke it, they ate it. I started with edibles, too, before I started smoking it. The first time I smoked it was on the beach at Coney Island with a lesbian friend of mine, up to our knees in the water, the waves getting the bottoms of our skirts wet. After that, she took me to the lesbian bar for the first time. The second time I smoked it was the next night as we walked to Stonewall, and I thought about how many of us have smoked on that walk to the bar over the years, how many of us smoked that day, when they arrested people for being queer in the land of the free. My friend told me that trip that these were my spaces, like she was welcoming me home.

Weed is federally illegal in the land of the free. I'm illegal, too. I mean, I'm a citizen or whatever, but mostly it's my gender that's illegal. And my anarchist philosophy is also illegal in the land of the free, because in the land of the free, there must always be hierarchy, because someone must be in control of others, someone must always have authority over others in the land of the free.

A US citizen or whatever. It's important that we categorize where people are born, and what blood runs through their veins, because this is how we determine what human and civil rights are afforded to a person. This is the land of the free, if you're a citizen, and if you follow the rules, and if you do what you're told, and if you mold your body to their standards and pay their taxes and don't talk about being gay or wear a dress if you were born without a vagina. I'm just kidding. We don't define people by whether or not they have a vagina. Everyone knows we define them by whether or not they have a dick, and that determines the clothes you wear and how long you're allowed to wear your hair in the land of the free.

But this isn't the land of the free. Obviously it isn't.

This is N'dakina where I sit. Here's a link that can show you the name of the land where you sit. This entire country is situated on stolen land. It was built, and continues to be built, on blood and genocide.

I'm going to go smoke and think of my trans and queer ancestors and talk to the stars like they're my sisters like I normally do. I'm going to come in and snuggle with my cool as fuck queer as fuck spouse.

Tomorrow people will continue to call it the land of the free. My kids will still get scolded for not standing for the pledge to promise their unconditional allegiance to their government authorities.

Tomorrow people will continue to call it land of the free, but this land where my home sits will still be N'dakina, and all the land they're describing will be stolen Native land.

Tomorrow people will continue to call it the land of the free, but my body will still be considered a terrorist threat, as will my political philosophy.

Tomorrow people will continue to call it the land of the free, but I will still be "anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist," a trifecta of some of the greatest threats identified by the US Counterterrorism Strategy in 2026*, 250 years since the first US Independence Day. In the land of the free, where anti-fascism is considered a terrorist threat.

I came into the house already. The mosquitoes were getting to me. But I wasn't finished writing, so I haven't smoked yet. I'll post this, while we're still free or whatever that means. Then I'm going to go smoke like my ancestors, while I'm still free or whatever that means.

And I'll talk to the stars like they're my sisters. Like I normally do.

* (Link to a PDF of the official strategy on the US government site whitehouse.gov)

no ends, only means