Laura Donohue
Healing Gardens
Fall 2006
The Earth’s Blanket: Notes & Responses:
Chapter 1
*note: I know this is probably not quite what was in mind when assigned reflections, but this is the easiest and most effective way for me to interact with texts assigned to me.
[15]
-Language Families of the First Peoples of British Columbia
-Salishan
-Wakashan
-Athapaskan
-Tsimsian
-Ojibwe
-Linguistically isolated languages
-Haida
-Ktunaxa
[20]
-Found in James Teit’s (turn of the century) manuscript documenting the Nlaka’pmx names and uses of plants.
‘“.spákEm [spáq’m] flowers in general. Flowers are the valuables of the earth or mtns and if they are plucked ruthlessly the earth sorrows or cries.” Then after an inscription in Nlaka’pmx, comes the entry: “siekEm [s-yíqm] grass in general. Flowers, plants & grass especially the latter are the covering or blanket of the earth. If too much plucked or ruthlessly destroyed [the] earth [is] sorry and weeps. It rains or is angry and makes rain, fog & bad weather.’”
“They {the above metaphors} signify an attitude towards Earth and the plants growing upon it that would have guided the Nlaka’pmx peoples behavior, that would have reminded them of the importance of vegetation and constrained any harmful actions againsti it. Indeed, thse words convey a positive, direct and reciprocal relationship between these people and their environment, in which the consequences of wrongful action are seen to be immediate and direct.”
There is so much that is within our own language that promotes violence, ignorance of our surroundings, irresponsibility for our health and emotions, and divided rather than holistic thinking. “Ah Fuck it”, “Boys will be boys”, “Good fences mean good neighbors.”, “The natives are growing restless”, “Herd em up and move them out”, “Divide and conquer”, “Jonesing”, “You are making me...”. This is really hard for me to think about, because it is so unconscious for everyone, and also I have to supress a little bit of disdain for this way of thinking in order to show respect as a courtesy for people who do think this way. It is a welcome treasure to go to Evergreen and foster other ways of thinking, but it is often a lingual community of division and absence rather than presence. Spiritual terms and synchronicity have a regular place in our culture, but there is not much that ties theses to a lifestyle of respect for our surroundings and and traditions that give physical descriptions of karmic consequences for irresponsible ecological interactions.
[24]
“We accumulate wealth, at least in part, to get us through anticipated hard times. At the same time, however, by taking too much from the lands that support us we bring on hard times—for ourselves and for future generations”
-I think this applies to all crossections of society, and I see rich and poor alike not understanding how the fate of the world affects the fate of their own progeny, and confusing the game to gain more to protect our health and family, with real honest to goodness experience and wealth: meaningful work, community, shelter, food, and clean water.
[25]
“These beings are so integral to the concept of riches in the society in which kwaxsistala was raised that, without their presence and their participation, no matter how comfortable and well-fed the people were they would consider themselves impoverished.”
I need to go back into the book and look up which resence Adam Dcik or kwaxsistala was talkin about.
[26]
“To understand real wealth, we must become familiar with the origins of our resources, with the processes involved in their production, and with the impacts we might be having as consumers.”
All too often we look over non-material wealth as not meaning much, but often it is non-material things that we are seeking after in our lust for possesions: security (often formed with a healthy nurtured childhood), community (that extends beyond the nuclear family), and worthwhile pursuit (our pessimism often gets in the way of pursuing our dreams: obviously what we are called to do is impossible in today’s day and age).
[27]
“Being an active and direct player in the ecosystem, at once an observer and participant, learner and teacher, contributer and user, can make us sensitive to the Earth’s needs and dynamics, to the damage we are doing to the planet and its life. When we slow down long enough to experience Nature, to remember what it is that gives us pleasure, we realize its wealth.”
We have forgotten our role as caretaker and steward. We are like the neurons for the organism Gaia. Let us not completely forget our role before our present and future companions on this journey: dolphins, whales, ravens, orangutangs, and others die off. How even more lonely it would be without them.
“I get a feeling of complete bliss from a long day of berry-picking, searching the mountainsides and creek margins for the ultimate berry-laden bush. There, amidst the tranquil sound of running water and the spicy scent of evergreens, I surround the clustered berries with my fingers and feel the generous release when they part from the stems. I feel as if I am helping them fulfill their ultimate evolutionary destiny, to multiply and disseminate themselves over the earth. As well as taking some for my own use, I leave behind plenty for the bears, the birds, the insects; to me that is enriching.”
It feels so good to itneract with nature in this way. My most sacred of memories and present are within the times that I am living that reality. Walking down a road, collecting Cottonwood buds from storm dropped branches: collecting medicine, walking in community: without harming the trees. I also reason that collecting from questionable places (such as in the suburbs, near a lightly used road) is more beneficial to our being spiritually than the supposed chemicals in them can do to us: certainly much more healthy than shopping for non-organic produce at safeway, with just as much or more chemical contamination but without the direct interaction.
[30]
“The Nlaka’pmx women around Spences Bridge and Ashcroft treasured these plants, harvesting them selectively and replanting parts of the root to ensure that they would replenish themselves and maintain their populations. They also transplanted bitterroot from one area to another and may have extended the plan’s original range considerably.”
This continent if full of forgotten, lost and invisible interactions that were completely disregarded by the colonizing forces from Europeans. What the Europeans did not realize is that beyond gold or parrots, oil or cotton, this continent’s greatest resource were these verbal, traditional, and cultural relationships with the land that have seemingly dissappeared like Avalon: still here in a land beyond time, but innacessable. Maybe that is part of why Avalon dissapeared, it was part of that magical interaction with nature that was dying under the heavy weight of catholicism and the genocide of the feminine.
[34]
“The settlers focused on their own vision of what this landscape could be. They knew the possibilities of the plow—that sharp-footed instrument of conversion—that churned and turned the soil and removed the entire constellation of life forms exsisting in a place to substitute another, seen as more desirable.”
It is this quote that I was thinking of as I was reading Kurzweil. I was thinking of how these farms despite their benefits, are still plowing the fields, fencing the wildlife, encouraging monoculture.
[35]
"Unfortunately, many people passing through these landscapes and seeing only green hillsides, and even attractive purple and yellow flowers, do not recognize that these weedy invaders characterize a degraded environment. They do not realize just how much the original ecosystems have been transformed. Added to the erosion, soil compaction and general deterioration of the physical landscape, these species have been biological agents of ecological change, and they symbolize what environmental historian Alfred Crosby has termed “ecological imperialism.” Crosby has documented the general displacement of native species in regions of the world settled by Europeans, by the plants and animals that the newcomers brought along with them; not only the indigenous peoples but their flora and fauna had been colonized.”
One of my saddest realizations about how people and my mother in particular think was when we were driving down the freeway when I was 19. I was looking at the rolling portland hills after learning that they were put there or drastically affected by floods thousands of year ago, and how the beautiful expanses of Douglas-firs also point to a large change over time. Douglas-firs are invasive, and so must have colonized after large disturbances that had displaced the more biodiverse ecosystems before. I asked my mother if she ever thought about this land before the freeway, before the roads and farms, 500 years ago. She simply said “no”. She said she had though about our large old house 90 years ago, and the orchards that use to stretch over what is now infilled with 50’s houses in our neighborhood.
[37]
“The Nlaka’pmx men, who understood the peril to not only themselves but also to all the nations upriver in both the Fraser and Thompson drainages if the salmon were preventing from continuing their journey, built a long, rickety wooden flume around the worst stretch of whitewater. Then they carefully dip-netted the salmon from below and carried them in buckets and baskets to the flumeway so they could proceed upriver.”
-I wonder if they were mocked for these actions.
[38]
“Smohalla, and indigenous leader and prophet of Priest Rapids, Washington, rejected the Euro-American world view and the transition to European-style agriculture saying: ‘You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. Shal I dig under here skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it. And be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off mymother’s hair?”
People now again think this way. I think this way. These kinds of arguments are labeled inane. According to The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the word inane comes from the name of a goddess Innana, whose prophetic wisdom of feminine intuitive knowledge beyond words was ridiculed.