The way we talk about ourselves as Okanagan people is difficult to replicate in English. When we say the Okanagan word for ourselves, we are actually saying “the ones who are dream and land together.” That is our original identity. Before anything else, we are the living, dreaming Earth pieces. Dream is the closest word that approximates the Okanagan. But our word doesn’t precisely mean dream. It actually means “the unseen part of our existence as human beings.” It may be the mind or the spirit or the intellect. We are mind as well as matter. We are dream, memory, and imagination.
– Jeanette Armstrong
We are, in a very real sense, the universe and life dreaming itself into existence.