An Indigenous Theory Of Water: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson On Rivers As Teachers

Rivers are connectors. The rivers feeding into Lake Ontario and past nan St. Lawrence link me, for example, pinch Audra and her homeland. My group are called Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg because we spent clip astatine nan mouths of nan rivers that drain into Lake Ontario.

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These are rivers that travelled arsenic raindrops and runoff done nan land, into nan land, down nan large stream to nan Atlantic. They are rivers that flood successful nan outpouring to transportation much and shrink successful nan dying summertime to conserve what they carry. Expanding and contracting; a mini creek to a magnificent ocean—making a road where, astatine nan end, nan stream doesn’t beryllium anymore. It empties itself.

Rivers are nan veins of our mother, nan earth; they are nan ocular mapping of a watery network.

What, aliases where, is nan halfway of a network?

creek watercourse stream reservoir stream water wombs of water, gatherings of gender non-conforming, genderqueer, Indigiqueer, trans, Two-Spirits, queer, lesbian, pansexual, bisexual, gay, asexual, intersex, questioning, and everyone successful between, cis-women, cis-men, heterosexual, monogamous, polyamorous, aged people, children, neurodiverse, neurotypical, abled and dis-abled bodies, onshore defenders, h2o walkers, parents, pregnant people, mothers, fathers, caretakers, connection speakers, Elders, snow, knowl- separator holders and practitioners, hunters, trappers, fishers, medicine people, farmers, ricers, artists, maple trees, chaotic rice, salmon, pickerel, whitefish, five-lined skinks, rain, small brown, tri-colored and bluish long-eared bats, landings, bluish map, snapping, spiny softshell, spotted and wood turtles, American eels, monarch butterflies, Blanchard’s cricket frogs, aureate eagles, bald eagles, eastbound whippoorwills, barn owls, reservoir sturgeon, golden-eye lichen, boreal caribou, eastbound caribou, Algonquin wolves, American badgers, grey foxes, wolverines, cougars, bluish myotis, fawnsfoot, eastbound flowering dogwood, four-leaved milkweed, mini yellowish lady’s slipper, massasauga rattlesnakes, winter, eastbound achromatic pines, gangly writer prairies and achromatic oak savannas, Jackson Creek, Otonabee, Rice Lake, Lake Ontario, St. Lawrence River, Atlantic Ocean, Sargasso Sea, clouds

Nibi decenters itself: it leaks, moves, flows and reconnects, not arsenic existent property aliases enclosure aliases property, but arsenic a surviving network, linking endless forms of life moving pinch each different to bring astir much life, much diverseness of life, much abundance of life.

Water is simply a matrix of bonds and attachments amongst surviving things of each kinds, a cascade of surviving beings crossed clip and space, connected a cosmic scale, extending into ancient times and into nan future. Water is simply a group of practices that socially, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically reproduce nan planet.

Practices that are profoundly relational and reciprocal. Practices that embody morals privileging kindness and gentleness, creating architectures of attraction crossed time, abstraction and species.

The point astir a web is that nan sustaining parts are not nan hubs, but nan connections betwixt nan hubs. Nibi, nan air, nan land. The point astir a web is that nan individual beings aren’t truthful important, but alternatively nan value and spot of nan relationships betwixt beings—so overmuch truthful that nan hubs, aliases nan bodies of nan network, are composed of these relationships. Life is made successful nan interstitial spaces betwixt beings.

flowing
breathing
spilling
leaking
bleeding
drinking
crying

My knowing of mino-bimaadiziwin is that it decenters nan thought of nan human, decenters nan needs, desires, knowledges and influences of humans, and favors forms of life that furniture galore ecologies, beyond beingness bodies.

It is this knowing that leads maine to ask: What if, successful resisting colonialism and capitalism, we didn’t attraction connected being recognized wrong nan knowledge, governmental and ethical systems of nan state, which intends being recognized successful nan class of “human” arsenic defined by nan state?

What if, instead, we obliterated nan categories of gender and quality and authorities altogether, and created lateral, co-operative systems of sharing, each successful work to bringing distant much life?

This thought of decentering, of leaking, is Anishinaabe, and galore Anishinaabeg person shared it, spoken it, sung it, prayed it, written it and explained it to me, earlier maine and alongside me.

The much I deliberation astir these ideas, nan much I recognize that galore of our stories, teachings and embodied practices, nan methods we usage to make theory, are focused connected continually decentering quality experience—or possibly placing quality acquisition and our morally bankrupt knowledge systems wrong a plurality of different experiences and knowledges, and blurring aliases obliterating nan boundaries betwixt humans and each different surviving things.

So galore of our stories are astir humans getting into problem by being greedy, by reasoning astatine nan disbursal of feeling, by emotion astatine nan disbursal of thinking, by being retired of equilibrium successful immoderate way, and plants and animals showing nan measurement backmost to equilibrium and reciprocity. In our stories, nan different surviving beings successful nan web of Anishinaabeg life are teachers and co-creators.

Bears ne'er find themselves unemployed aliases successful request of profession counseling. Moose don’t return complete beavers’ intends of production. Robins don’t  prosecute different birds to get worms for them in  nan morning. Cardinals don’t person nannies looking aft their young and cleaning their nests truthful that their lives are much comfortable. Caribou don’t person armies guarding their territory. Salmon don’t stockpile nutrient successful nan riverbed.

The objection is ever human: we are ever trying to make life more, and this leads to nan diminishment of life, it leads to little life. We humans request a batch much caretaking and involution than different beings do, simply to usability successful a patient and sustainable measurement wrong nan web of life.

In our knowledge system, nan Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stock everything pinch each surviving things and their formations. We are profoundly interdependent. We are intercommunal. We are but 1 shape of life successful a analyzable web of cascading lives.

We are nary much important—and galore would opportunity we are little important—than nan different beings and systems making up nan universe. We person nary much “rights” than immoderate different surviving point successful that web. We are not special, other aliases exceptional. We are not owed nan lives of different surviving things.

We are not owed nan planet.

We are not owed comfortable lives.

We judge this not for self-involved reasons—not because our continuance depends upon nan world being healthy, not because our lives dangle upon this, moreover if they do—but because, ethically, who do we deliberation we are? Who are we to spot ourselves supra each different surviving things, astir of which we don’t understand? Who are we to spot ourselves first erstwhile we struggle and neglect truthful often to do what comes people to different forms of life?

Nishnaabemowin, nan Ojibwe language, is composed chiefly of verbs—words that encode nan science of motion of surviving and our world-building practices. While location are respective categories of verbs, connection learners first study two—inanimate and animate verbs—in bid to beryllium capable to conjugate and speak nan astir basal of sentences.

Animate and inanimate. Living and non-living. Beings pinch Spirit, and objects without life aliases spirit. When studying nan connection of a civilization that is immersed successful nan land, uncovering nan section betwixt nan 2 is not arsenic easy arsenic 1 mightiness think.

A character is simply a surviving thing, and truthful animate. A array made of wood is an entity without a spirit, and truthful inanimate. Humans, bears, and cedar are ever living, moreover erstwhile we are dead, because our spirits person agency successful nan tone world. Chairs, integrative h2o bottles and cars are not.

The tone world is ne'er an easy point to constitute about, but I americium compelled to do truthful present because it is simply a non-negotiable characteristic of Indigenous reasoning and living. Within Nishnaabewin, for example, it is 1 of nan reasons humans cannot beryllium centered successful our theorizing and living—because not only does nan tone world exist, it is ever influencing everything, and is populated pinch nan spirits of each being, plant, animal and human.

Bears person knowledge. So does nan five-lined skink. So do nan mini yellowish lady’s slippers. So do monarch butterflies. So do aureate eagles. So do nan eastbound achromatic pines. So do nan Great Lakes. We make worlds successful performance pinch each these surviving beings; we beryllium wrong a web of heavy relationality pinch these surviving beings.

For my ancestors and my Elders, and for galore water-based practitioners, Knowledge Holders and h2o protectors, belief practices supply nan instauration for our interactions pinch different surviving beings. This is 1 reason—beyond our request for survival—that we are not each animal authorities activists and vegans, for example.

Our belief relationships let america to discuss nan consent we request to harvest plants and animals for our continuance. It is nan value of our relationships that determines really good we are capable to share, supply and caretake pinch different surviving beings astir us. Some Anishinaabeg scholars specified arsenic Robin Kimmerer, Aaron Mills and Niigaanwewidam Sinclair usage our believe of miinigowizin to explicate really we prolong this system.

As they describe, this is simply a strategy of gift giving, of profound and endless sharing. Every surviving point has a gift, and erstwhile these gifts are shared pinch nan collective, we build a world made of gifts, whether intellectual, emotional, temporal, based connected contented aliases connected worldly being.

Each life is predicated connected each forms of life giving their gifts to prolong nan collective. Bimaadiziwin is propelled by sharing. And reciprocity is simply a believe that strengthens bonds and attachments betwixt surviving beings done continual sharing.

Put different way: nan changeless practice, some individual and communal, of redistributing “resources” aliases gifts wrong a strategy of Anishinaabe caretaking is simply a measurement of weaving our- selves into nan web of living.

It is these relationships that continually renew nan self-determination, sovereignty and state of nan works and animal relations pinch whom we humans stock abstraction successful nan past, coming and future. And our spirits, and those of each different surviving things, continually reshape nan boundaries of our location space, our beingness bodies and our worldly reality, successful bid to shape a profound and friendly connection.

This rhythm takes spot successful nan discourse of my favourite Nishnaabeg concept, 1 that Doug talked astir often: Gizhewaadiziwin, nan believe aliases nan creation of love, kindness, compassion to all, sharing, caring, respect, humility, tenderness. This is not romanticist love, but a consciousness of connection, nan attachment we person to 1 different arsenic surviving beings. It is generosity, benevolence.

When Indigenous peoples protest, we are motivated to put our bodies betwixt nan authorities and our relatives successful nan works and animal world because these relatives are portion of us. Our bodies are not only our bodies, but hubs of relationships successful a networked web, cascading successful each guidance and dimension, and our spirits recreation good beyond them into nan cosmos of surviving beings.

For me, this knowledge is simply a tremendous asset.

It is simply a tremendous plus successful reasoning and penning astir anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism. And it is simply a tremendous plus successful surviving life because it invokes greater intimacy, vigorous connection and relentless honesty, a thinking-through pinch forms of life different than humans.

From a Nishnaabewin perspective, we cannot prosecute successful immoderate benignant of world-building without that communing; it simply cannot beryllium sustainable otherwise. Our existent world is nan cleanable illustration of this.

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Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to nan Times Ahead by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is disposable via Haymarket.