It’s a sunny spring morning as Nakai Clearwater Northup stands amid white pine trees, near a river, surveying the land.

Looking at his Narragansett homelands in southern Rhode Island, he says hunting and fishing here are plentiful.

“I grew up on deer and turkey and anything we could harvest, quahogs, blue crabs,” he says.

It’s hard work. And as Northup puts in “miles and miles and miles” hunting each year, he says he’s grown to care for the land like a member of his family.

“You learn how to be a father or a parent from your kids. Each kid is going to teach you how to raise that kid,” he says. “That’s the same thing with the land.”

This land is more than a weekend destination for a hunting trip or a material asset. It’s central to Native cultural, spiritual, and community identity.

It’s a place imbued with thousands and thousands of years of tradition, spirituality and culture. Native Americans have been through so much, but through it all, that connection with the land endures.

“You have to spend time on the land,” he says, “and understand what it needs.”

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