Becoming ethically naturalized to a place requires abandoning the immigrant mindset of extraction.

Evidence

Maybe the task assigned to Second Man is to unlearn the model of kudzu and follow the teachings of White Man’s Footstep, to strive to become naturalized to place, to throw off the mind-set of the immigrant. Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 777

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘naturalized to place’ as an ethic of reciprocity, ancestry, and responsibility, distinct from both native belonging and settler extraction.
• ADDENDUM: Supports ‘Grafting & Growth’ by recasting what human belonging to land requires, complementing the tree-as-infrastructure frame with a belonging ethic.
• XREF: Speaks directly to eco-justice pedagogy course on settler-colonial critique: naturalization as the normative alternative to the colonizer stance. — connects to: Extractors exempt themselves from local exchange cultures and show incuriosity toward inhabitants — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 241
• STORYSTEM: A character who believes they are naturalized but is still enacting immigrant extraction could dramatize the unlearning this passage demands.

Broader Connections

• Extractors exempt themselves from local exchange cultures and show incuriosity toward inhabitants #expands (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 241