During my time in the jungle of Ecuador with the Cofan community I got a sense of what it looks like to be truly rooted to a place. The families I lived and spent time with there are indigenous to this land, can trace there ancestors generation after generation back to this exact place. In many ways their connection to the land is an obvious one: the majority of their food comes from the earth - mashed plantains with every meal, fish, jungle meat, and chicken as staples; fruit from the trees that have been there for generations; homes built with wood from the forest; medicinal trees used by the shaman for his traditional ceremonies and practices; seeds and fibers used by the women to weave bags and create jewelry. And at the same time I realize that their connection to this land - the less tangible and more spiritual side - is something I don't think I will ever be able to truly comprehend.
This leaves me feeling such a sense of respect and admiration for the Cofan and indigenous communities that - through genocide, forced displacement and corporate exploitation - have maintained a deep connection with the land. In our readings for this session, Chief Seattle explains his tribes' relationship to the land: "How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us...Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every cleaning and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man." Loa Nieumetolu from the panel we attended on indigenous resistance also talked about connection to land in regard to her homeland of Tonga, a Pacific Island. She explained how the white folks saw Tonga and the surrounding islands as small and far from one another. However the Tonga people see the water as part of their homeland, that which connects the islands.
Recognizing this special connection, I am inspired to look towards indigenous communities for answers to our current global crises. Tom Goldtooth explains the connection between connection to land and the current crises in his piece called "In the Native Way,":
"Our elders talk about the spiritual battle that's been going on for a long time. Industrialization has always wanted to control the land, control the people. That's going on today. I believe that globalization is part of that. Globalization places no value in people, no value in religious and spiritual principles, no value in the protection of the commons. Spiritual values tie us to the importance of protecting the Mother Erath, the plants, all animate and inanitable things. When we lose that understanding, industry, development, and globalization can do what they want to do, because there are no values behind their structures. Globalization has created a system of corporate ownership above the importance of plants, living things, and humans"
Andrea Smith also challenges us to move beyond just inclusion of indigenous organizations to the re-centering our work, so that indigenous and women of color are at the core. Her work is specifically around doing this within the domestic violence movement. In her speech "Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide" she frames colonization as central to violence again women within indigenous communities. This begins as early as the original conquest, when the colonists normalized domination by instilling it through patriarchy - prior to this indigenous communities had no hierarchical structure. She explains that racism is a process where certain people are marked as unpure, so that indigenous women and land are inherently unpure, making them exploitable. This for example legitimized the raping and sterilization of indigenous women. At the same time it legitimizes using indigenous land as a toxic waste dumps. By re-centering the domestic violence movement, we see that we cannot look to the state for solutions when communities with high levels of domestic violence are experiencing - and have a history of experiencing - state violence. So I ask myself, how can we apply Smith's lesson of re-centering to all of the work we do? And recognizing the importance of the indigenous people's struggle, what does indigenous solidarity look like?
At the same time, getting a glimpse of the connection the Cofan and indigenous communities have to the land also leaves me with an overwhelming sense of disconnect from the land I have and do currently occupy. Chief Seattle explains this disconnect: "We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moved on." At the panel Loa also talked about the importance of returning home in order to heal. She explained that when you take an indigenous person away from the land, they loose their mana, or power within. When one looses their mana, they forget how to heal and take care of themselves. When asked how to heal when there is no home to go home to, she advised us to follow our hearts. My family has been rooted for three generations in the suburbs of Chicago in a town called Elgin, Illinois, but having not lived there since I was 16 and not knowing a queer or political community there, it doesn't feel much like home anymore. In Brooklyn I have a strong queer and jewish and political community of people I love, but no family rooted there. In Falls Village where I spent the fall on a jewish farm, I feel a strong spiritual connection to the place but no familial roots. Oakland is great and I feel like I can really be myself here, and I think my great uncle lived here for a while, but lets be real, that's a stretch and I just got here. And in all of these places, the land was stolen from indigenous peoples in the first place. My family is Jewish on both sides which makes me think that we're probably indigenous to somewhere in Eastern Europe, but I'm part German and part Lithuanian and have never been to either of those places, so, where does that leave me? For now, it leaves me continuing to follow my heart, knowing that amongst all of these contradictions, I will find home.
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Living off the land in Photos....
Comunidad Cofan Dureno, January 2013
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