Sustainability defines the need for any society to live within the constraints of the land's capacity to deliver all natural resources it consumes. To be sustainable, nature and its endowment need to be linked to human behaviour, similar to the practices of indigenous peoples.

The River of Life compares the general differences between Native Americans' and the Western world's view of resources and provides the nuts and bolts of a sustainability portfolio designed by indigenous peoples. It also introduces ideas on how to link nature and society to make sustainable choices, aiming to facilitate thinking about how to change destructive behaviors and to integrate indigenous culture into thinking and decision processes.