The rocks cry out
Chapter 7
We begin with stones. In the Anishinaabe universe, even before the thoughts of Kiche Manidou—the Creator, or Great Mystery—there was what Louise Erdrich calls “a conversation between stones.”[i]
I’ve told this story a few times on Twitter, about my grade 8 science teacher asking us if rocks are alive as a way to get us to think about science and how important it is to both ask the right questions, and to be willing to consider unexpected answers. To shift our assumptions and perspectives. I don’t think he believed they were alive, but I have always appreciated this comment. And of course, I would much later learn that for the Anishinaabe, rocks are indeed alive.
The Anishinaabe don’t divide language into male and female the way that romance languages do. We use kwe and niin for male and female, but we don’t have gendered pronouns and our grammar isn’t rooted in gender the way that French or Spanish is. Which, btw, makes trans issues very complicated. Something I hadn’t considered until I was in conversation with a trans activist in Quebec. So much of how we think is embedded in language.
Our language, like many of the languages that emerged in what is now the Americas, are concerned with whether or not things are alive, that’s how the grammar breaks down. So that’s how the verbs break down but here’s something that’s interesting. Even if something is inanimate, it can still act on me. My moccasins, which are inanimate, can smack me but they can’t smack my socks. So even things that aren’t “alive” still have agency and can take action.
So how does this change our interactions with the world around us? Because that’s the topic of chapter 7. Chapters 1-5 tell the story of how things came apart, how we got disconnected. Because really, chapter after chapter is the story of disconnection and the many different ways that harmed us all. Then we paused for a moment to grieve and breathe and imagine possibility. Now we begin to rebuild.
I was framing the book and thinking about the flood metaphor, which is of course flawed as all metaphors are because what has washed over us in tidal waves of destruction was entirely man made and preventable. But it was/is nevertheless, a flood and so as I thought about rebuilding I thought about where we begin and we begin with land. No matter whose flood story you are telling, land is the first thing to be restored in one way or another.
We begin with land, which means we begin with rocks because in Ojibwe belief system that’s how it all started. With rocks.
Land is our first relationship, and it is the first relationship that we need to restore. We are used to standing on it, planting in it, and marveling at it, but our relationship with it is complicated and colonial. We buy and sell it, extract resources from much of it, and then idealize parts of it.
We can’t always go home. The reality is that because of fractured relationships, displacement, forced and unforced migrations, we may not know where home is. My friends who are part of the Black diaspora have talked about the heartbreak of not knowing the places their ancestors called home. Colonialism has disconnected us from land, severed us from that first relationship, often through violence. We need to restore our relationship with the land around us.
What changes in the way that we treat the world around us if we understand that it is alive? That even if it is not alive, it still has agency and is able to act on us. I think about the rocks turned into concrete and gravel, embedded in what remains of ancient dinosaurs and made into roads. These bones of the earth, beings whose memory goes beyond time and even our own galaxy rendered into roads and sidewalks.
Not very respectful and yet. And yet isn’t that a way that they keep their promise to take care of us. Even while we disrespect them and give no thought to their presence as presence, they still keep their promise and provide us with safe passage. That bears consideration.
A story I didn’t tell in the book was an encounter in Ireland with rocks that felt alive. I started to tell it, but my editor wanted to keep the story in the Americas which makes sense, so I’ll include it when I talk about the book.
We had gone to Ireland to visit our son who was living in Ennis for a couple of years and we took the long way around: Paris, London, Edinburgh, Orkneys, then Ireland. And in the Orkeys we went to the Ring of Brodgar. In fact, I chose our accomodations because of their proximity to this ring. Now I don’t want to say that those rocks are not alive because I don’t know. But they are roped off, and while I was able to get close to some nearby standing stones these ones felt remote. I waited for the magic and felt nothing. Maybe they were resting, I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t in the right space.
Then we went to Ireland and spent a day in Limerick where we saw King John’s castle. It was on the way out of Limerick that I saw a the sign for the Grange Stone Circle so we took a small detour. I got out of the car and stepped into the circle and it immediate felt different. Maybe because it’s surrounded by a community that still engages with it. Because as I walked around the circle I saw flowers and offerings, ribbons tied in the branches of a fairy tree that reminded me of the tobacco ties tied into the fence at Wounded Knee and the branches of trees at Bear Butte. I made my own offerings, tied my own ribbon. Left behind tobacco and silver. Introduced myself to beings that seemed to be listening.
And what of those for whom home is unknown? Those who, for a myriad of reasons can’t return to the places that knew their ancestors?
I don’t know. But these worlds aren’t so disconnected from each other and maybe this land has already heard about your ancestors. Maybe it’s waiting for you to introduce yourself.
But the land is alive, and perhaps the lands that exist in the place we call Africa carried stories of ancestors to its western shore. Maybe the stories traveled on mycelium networks that stretch for miles underground. Maybe the trees whispered to each other. Maybe memories and knowledge were carried on the dust that blows from the Sahara across the Atlantic. Perhaps the sea, a primeval creature of long memory, accepted the burden of these stories and bore them on waves, gathering them along with the heartbeats and tears of those who did not complete the crossing. In this way, stories wash up on the shore of the land we call North America and are carried inland. The stories are shared in low murmurings, in the whispers of wind on trees and grassland, so that the beings who live here and listen carefully to such stories are able to offer medicine and belonging to those in diaspora.
[i] Louise Erdrich, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 72.