The Living Land

In modern day American society cash is most certainly king. This especially applies to the way we think about land. Land has become the central focus of life, but only so far as it turns a profit. We wage wars for it, trade it, sell it, and bleed it of its resources all in the name of capitalism. It has become a vast commodity that is profoundly taken for granted and then discarded when its resources are run dry.

But not all Americans feel this way. The Indigenous people who have lived here since before the land was even discovered have a very different relationship with the land. For them, it is spiritual, it lives, it breathes. The land provides for them and they see this as a gift, not as a capitalistic right. The land is a member of their family and of their tribe. They sing songs for it and pray for the food and nourishment it yields to feed and give strength to their families. The land is not a commodity for them, but a way of life, a spiritual being who gives life and strength to all of humankind.

To understand the land from this perspective sheds a spectacularly violent light on the mounting environmental problems which have begun to arise as a reaction to draining the land’s resources. The fracking in the land that is done for extracting oil has created earthquakes where previously they did not exist. The land is screaming in protest, and it seems only Native Americans and people who truly understand its value, who can connect with it to understand the life it gives, can hear it. It will not scream forever, however, only to be ignored as it wastes away beneath our feet. The land is living, but for how much longer while it is ravaged of its resources, who can say? It is writhing in pain in its earthquakes, and calling out to its human counterparts for change and help.

You Are What You Eat

 

“The Hopi believe that if you want to teach a person the history or the song that is deeply connected to our history you feed them corn. You’re planting this history into the person. That way that history will grow inside him.” -Hopi artist Michael Kabotie

When I hear people talking about food, I usually hear them discussing where to eat for lunch or dinner. Or making plans with a significant other over who will do the grocery shopping. But I have never heard, and rarely ever thought about, where that food comes from or what it means for my body, not only as physical nourishment but as spiritual nourishment as well, to consume it. But the fact is that as humans we truly are what we eat. We eat the ground that the food was grown in, or the life that the animal who was butchered lived before it was food. We consume and become whatever we put into our bodies. In this way, food becomes far more than fuel or necessary nourishment. It is spiritual.

Native Americans understand this, and have even written many works of literature on that subject specifically. Thomas Pecore Weso writes in his book Good Seeds A menominee Indian Food Memoir on the deep memories and traditions that are attached to the different meals he has eaten. He writes about the ways in which his life was centered around providing food for his family and how those foods, such as the fish he caught as a boy, will now always remind him of that time. He writes on the tradition that was passed down in the Menominee tribe of collecting rice, and how it is a spiritual act as much as it is about collecting food to eat for survival.

Though most people do not stop and take the time to think about food in this way, most still have the same type of memories attached to certain traditional meals such as Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Food is about much more than survival: it is a powerful source of traditional ways that become ingrained in people and last a lifetime.