Seven Generations in the Future

22 Seven Generations in the Future My father told me that there used to be a forest near our town. But the farmer who owned the forest cut down trees every year until one year, there were no trees left. One day, our teacher took us on a class picnic. We sat in the field where the forest used to be, and we talked about how there used to be a beautiful forest there. In Canada, we used to call Native people " Indians" , but now we use the more respectful words, " Aboriginal people" . One of the children in my class comes from a tribe that lived on the Western Plains. His name is John. He said, “ It makes me really sad to see a forest cut down. My people have taught me to always think seven generations ahead. That way, you will never do anything to the land that will hurt it in the future. " We all talked about what John had said, and our teacher came up with a great idea.

" Let's go buy seeds and plant some trees! " she said. “ We won't be able to buy many, but it will be a good start! " So that's what we did. For the rest of the spring, we worked hard planting small trees and seeds. We planted thousands of seeds and hundreds of small trees. That was five years ago. Now, when I stand in that field that was once empty, I see trees about as high as I am. We named the forest “ The Aboriginal Forest" . Every year, John's uncle comes and does a special ceremony to bless the forest. It's great to see how we've changed the field. It taught us the power of thinking about the future.