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“If the Land is a person, how would you introduce yourself to it?”
My academic ate ([‘atɛ]; “big sister” in Tagalog) Rhonda asked that while we were developing reflection questions for our self-location and plurilingualism workshop.
I was stunned. I’ve never thought of introducing myself to Canada before, or at least not to an Indigenous Canada: a land that belongs only to itself; a land that is neither English nor French. It was a tough question to answer because it was such a good question. It was so good it stayed with me for weeks. I kept thinking about what I should say. I kept wondering about what would actually come out of my mouth if one day, the Land would be incarnated, and it would turn to me and ask, “who are you?”
This hypothetical encounter with the Land is what led me to write out a conversation that I imagined having with Sky Woman, whose arrival on Turtle Island sets the stage for Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass. In this book, Kimmerer (2013) positions her identity and knowledge as a botany PhD within her identity and knowledge as an Indigenous woman. I had to read the book for a graduate class, and I then had to write a short journal reflection about it afterwards. It is through this reflection assignment that I articulated about my meeting with Sky Woman. Braiding my identities as a first-generation settler, a second language teacher, and an emerging language researcher, I imagined talking with her about myself. I imagined her teaching me first-hand the wisdom that Kimmerer (2013) shares in the book. I had convinced myself that reading Braiding Sweetgrass was really me speaking face-to-face with Sky Woman, gleaning knowledge not from the pages of the book but from her very lips.
I share my reflection with you below. I welcome you into my imagined conversation with Sky Woman, so it can become our conversation. So that—just as how sweetgrass grows best from “hand to earth to hand” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 1)—I can pass on what I gleaned from this conversation from my hand to yours.
*****
Hello, bonjour!
Oh hi, kamusta?
Are you from away, too?
Yeah, from across the sea. You?
I fell from the sky.
That’s cool.
With a baby in my tummy.
You’re cool!
Welcome!
Am I?
Of course. Like the seeds of the plants scattered by the wind, we are all immigrants, we make home where the wind blows us to.
I like that. It’s different. Where I was from, people from across the seas came, too. Thrice.
Thrice?
Yeah, thrice! Thrice, they told us some kings gave them right to go where I was born. To take from us what was not ours to give away. They even call me by their king’s name. Felipe he was called. I think.
That sucks. That happened here, too.
Yikes. That sucks.
It sucks. They’re still here, though.
That sucks.
It sucks. But it doesn’t have to. I always tell my children, who tell their children: look around you. Listen to the plants. Learn from how they grow with and for each other. Pay attention when they say, “what happens to one, happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual [1]”
All flourishing is mutual. I like that. It’s familiar.
It is?
It reminds me of the papaya trees that my uncles would grow. The snake beans, the bitter melon. The malunggay, the bamboo, the coconut, and the mangoes. Definitely the mangoes. They were all in there, in my grandmother’s land. All together, all thriving.
Not competing…
Yes, not competing. All giving their fruits or leaves or trunk to my cousins and me. And so we take care of them, too, because they take care of us. And it goes on and on and on. We had what we needed. The trees did, too. But people said we were poor, though it didn’t feel like it.
Poor, rich. Words for people who think things belong to them. The plants, their fruits, their leaves. Even the land.
Even the land. But the land belongs to its own…
It does…
Are you the land?
I don’t know, am I?
Let’s say you are.
Okay.
Hi, land. I’m John. I came to settle.
Welcome, John. Here, be a good settler. Take these seeds. Sow them well.
Seeds. I like that. It’s life.
It is. Spread them, harvest them. Pass them on. From your hand to another.
Pass them on, from my hand to another… I wish my PhD research could be that. Useful for me, but also for another.
For the community.
For the community that welcomed me.
P.S. In exchange for your seeds, here are some pictures of the plants that grew around me as a child. The trees that fed and taught me. The trees that said, “all flourishing is mutual.” They didn’t look like this when I left. I guess I, too, am no longer what I was like when I left…
*****
Thank you for taking your time to join in on this conversation. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass was an emotional experience for me, though I admit that initially, I only read it because it was required by my graduate class (thank you Dr. Bronwen Low for assigning it! But most of all, thank you Dr. Kimmerer for writing it!!!). Having no knowledge of what the book is about prior to reading it, I surprised myself with how deeply Kimmerer’s stories resonated with my own experiences: they reminded me of how I used to live 11 years ago in the Philippines, of how my family and I relied so much on the land for sustenance. The land took care of us, and so we took care of it.
As an emerging scholar, I have been thinking not only about the “Bill of Rights” that would come with a PhD, but also about its “Bill of Responsibilities” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 173). Writing my reflection above has helped me ruminate about our connected pasts and shared futures¾our mutual flourishing. It has helped me ponder more deeply about how I could and should use my knowledge about language learning and teaching to nourish back the Land. It has helped me to think about how I, as an immigrant, can follow Sky Woman’s example to make a home in this land called Canada.
I hope that reading or listening to this blog has also made you reflect about what you would say if one day, the Land would be incarnated, and it would turn to you and ask:
“Who are you?”
References
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
[1] Kimmerer (2013, p. 15)
