Category Archives: Awake to Each Other

Spring Arrives in Maine

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Spring Arrives in MaineToday is the first day of spring everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.  What it looks like in my neighborhood is huge piles of snow and a really cold morning, but with a bright sun leading us into a clear day.

Margy and I hosted an Equinox ritual at our house last night.  It was a small group of five this time, and most of us were weary from the winter, so our ritual was simple and low key.  We named the friends who had joined us for Solstice and Imbolc, and sent blessings to all of them.  (You know who you are!)  We shared thoughts and readings about our lives and about winter and spring.  We talked about what we wanted to let go from the winter season, and what intentions we wanted to carry into this new season.

I thought about the next several weeks until Mayday.  The snow will disappear, and the ground thaw, and begin to fill with green.  Our plants will arrive from Fedco:  an apple tree, a peach tree, two blueberry bushes, three hazelnut bushes, a mulberry tree, a licorice plant, 25 asparagus plants, and 3 golden seal plants.  By Mayday, I hope they will be in the ground.  Our friends volunteered to help with the planting.

I remember when we first imagined this new home, when we began to lay out our intentions to find greener housing in the summer of 2015.  Our intentions included creating a permaculture garden, and having space in our living room for people to gather.  And here we are!  Living those dreams into reality.  The magic of deeply felt intentions can be surprisingly powerful.

Large scale hydro is not clean energy

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I sent a letter today responding to a Portland Press Herald Maine Voices column about Central Maine Power’s push for transmission lines through Maine to bring Canadian hydro power to Massachusetts.   I agree with the column, by the way, but an issue that troubles me is the statement often repeated in the Press Herald that Canadian hydropower is clean renewable energy.  Large scale hydropower cannot truly be considered clean and renewable energy.

First of all, large scale hydro floods huge areas of the best land in the northern climate—river valleys that are home to the most diverse plant and animal life in the region. The resulting reservoirs are not the same as natural rivers or lakes. They become contaminated with methyl-mercury, poisoning the fish and any who eat them. Methane gas is emitted from the decomposition of flooded plant life. And because of silt build up, the dams may not last more than several decades.

Secondly, these dams are being built in the territories of indigenous Cree, Innu, and Inuit peoples, with a destructive effect on their culture, lifestyle, food sources, hunting and fishing, burial sites, and ultimately, their sovereignty. The LaGrande project was built in the 1970s without any consultation with the Cree or Inuit, and then later projects have been and still are initiated without giving any true choice to the people who have lived along these rivers for millenia.

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[La Grande 1 Generating Station]

We know that Maine Governor LePage is not interested in renewable energy, nor is he concerned with the rights and sovereignty of indigenous peoples, as witnessed in this government’s actions toward the Penobscot people and their river. But the rest of us who live in Maine must be better than that.  We should support true renewable energy, and also support the human rights of indigenous people both here and in the lands to the north.

Why I No Longer Support Leonard Peltier

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Edit: December 2024.  I have appreciated folks who commented on this post, sharing further information and concerns (see the comments).  I have been surprised by how many people are still reading this post even though it has been six years since it was published–(and there have been over 6000 views since it was published!) I want to say again today that my knowledge is limited, and I posted these personal thoughts out of concern for Annie Mae Aquash’s family. I am glad that some readers learned more about her story. But I am also concerned that my thoughts might have had more influence than is warranted regarding Leonard Peltier. As I hear the recent calls by so many for President Biden to pardon Peltier before he leaves office, I can’t see the point of resisting that effort. After almost 50 years in prison, isn’t it time to let him go home? 

Original post: For many years, I supported the campaign to free American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who had been convicted, many said wrongly, of the death of two federal agents in a shoot out on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  Even Amnesty International signed on to his case.  But after moving to Maine, I learned more about the murder of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, and I began to have reservations.  I stopped my support, but didn’t really know how to speak about it.

Yesterday, via my friend Sherri Mitchell’s Facebook feed, I started to listen to a live feed of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls that was taking place in Montreal. Denise Pictou Maloney was testifying about the death of her mother Annie Mae.  I listened for an hour and a half, and then after she had completed, I went back to hear what I had missed at the beginning of the tape.

Anna_Mae_Pictou-AquashAnnie Mae was a leader in the American Indian Movement, originally from the Mi’kmaq First Nation at Indian Brook Reserve in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.  I first learned about Annie Mae in the song by Buffy St. Marie, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, in which she sang,

My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of exposure

The implication, the narrative, the story so many of us believed for many years, was that she was killed by the FBI.  But in fact, the truth later came out that she was killed by other AIM members.  In 2004 and 2010,  Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham were convicted of her kidnapping and murder.  They also implicated AIM leadership in her death, though no one was ever charged.  You can find out a lot more if you listen to the tape of Denise’s testimony, or even if you look up Annie Mae on Wikipedia.

Hearing the pain in Denise’s voice moved me to want to speak publicly this time.  It feels risky to do so, because, as a white person who tries to be an ally, a co-conspirator, with Indigenous people, I know that I will always know too little about all of this.  I do know that the FBI tried to sow dissension in the ranks of activist movements, especially those of Indigenous people and people of color.  This included planting informants within the movements, and also casting suspicion on dedicated activists to cause others to suspect that they might be informants.  This is one theory about the motive for killing Annie Mae.  Another theory claims she was challenging AIM leaders on their behavior, or that she had heard Leonard brag about killing the agents.  I don’t know the answers to that.

But I want to speak today, despite not knowing all the answers, because I have in the past spoken in support of Leonard Peltier.  Denise talked about how painful it has been for their family, every time there is more public support for Leonard.  So I want to interrupt my own participation in that process, (which most lately has been through my silence), and let my friends and colleagues know that I can no longer support Leonard Peltier’s campaign for release from prison.  And I also want to acknowledge how difficult a journey we make when we intend to be allies or co-conspirators.  We often make mistakes and get it wrong.  But that does not make it less worthwhile to try, to show up for what is right.

What I carry away with me today is sadness and anger.  Sadness and anger for the fall of heroes–the leaders we wanted to be better than they were, because the cause they fought for was so important.  Sadness and anger for the children and family and friends of Annie Mae, who have waited so long for the world to know the real story, and often feel as if their voices are not welcome because the truth interrupts the stories people want to believe.  Sadness and anger that in my ignorance as an outsider, I was drawn in to the narrative, and thus contributed to their sorrow.  Sadness and anger at the insidious complexity of colonization and oppression, and the brokenness within all of us left in its wake.

Portland Gardens

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About a hundred years ago, in 1912, Jacob Wilbur decided to “develop” the large area of  land in which the old white pine tree lived and is living.  He purchased it from H.H. Holm. He called it “Portland Gardens,” but the first thing that happened was that he had a plan created in which the open land was divided into very small rectangles.  Over the years, some roads were created and houses built, but the area in the upper left corner of the plan–where our old pine lives–was never completed.

Plot plan Portland Gardens

In 1924 that area was sold to Amato Kataruchi, and then a couple years later the City of Portland took possession of it for taxes unpaid.  In 1969 the city sold it cheaply to the D—– family that had bought our house when it was first built in 1967. (Our house is actually in an adjacent development that was called Sunset Heights–it was “developed” by a firm called Jordan and Hammond in 1967.)

I learned all of this by searching online land records and deeds via the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds.  After thinking about the pine tree’s possible 162 year life, I was inspired to see what I could learn about the history of the land to which we now belong.  I didn’t realize how easy it was for anyone to trace one aspect of the history of their land through deeds, its so-called “ownership.” And, I didn’t realize the challenges either.  The boundaries of our yard were formed in 1969 through the combination of two lots–front (where the house is) and back–which in our deed is actually described as four small lots, and a corner of another.

So I could trace the “owners” of our yard from us back to the D—– family, with three families/individuals in between.  But prior to 1967, I had to start searching separately the front and back sections–the back section leading me to the Portland Gardens development plan in 1912.  Then the search got even more complicated because tracking how the developers acquired the land meant investigating multiple sellers, and entirely different descriptions of the land.  Still working on that.

All of this feels important to me as part of understanding our relationship to this land, and as part of a decolonization process–moving beyond the norms of our society which treats land as a possession, rather than as the place to which we might belong. And understanding the many ways that colonizers sought to acquire land–through purchase, through theft, through trickery, and through misinterpreting the early agreements made with indigenous peoples–they treated the offer to settle here in right relationship with the indigenous people as instead granting ownership of the land for whatever use they might want to make of it.

There are so many land records in the registry of deeds.  So many pieces of paper dividing the land into large and small pieces. There are whole professions built up around establishing who owns or owned what pieces of land.  Title insurance, title search companies, and all the rest.  I want to understand the history, but it is wearying to track such an ultimately destructive operation.  My ancestors were not part of this process here in Maine, but perhaps by learning more about this land right here, I can better understand the process as it happened over the whole continent.  It is a long story of the ways those of us who have European descent broke our relationship to the land and to her peoples.

Names & Shadows

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Shadows

Ousamequin of Pokanoket, the Massasoit “great sachem” (sôgemak).  Weetamoo, also known as Namumpum, female leader/sachem (sôgeskwak) of Pocasset. Wamsutta of Pokanoket, son of Ousamequin, husband of Weetamoo. Wootonakanuske, sister of Weetamoo, wife of Metacom. Metacom also known as Philip, son of Ousamequin, husband of Wootonakanuske. Tuspaquin of Nemasket, son-in-law of Ousamequin, husband of Amie. Amie of Nemasket, daughter of Ousamequin, wife of Tuspaquin. Awashonks of Sakonnet, Conbitant, father of Weetamoo, sachem of Pocasset. Nanamocomuck, Penacook, son of Passaconaway, Penacook. (Wampanoags)

I have been reading Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, by Lisa Brooks. It is an amazing narrative, in which she goes back to original documents and source material, combined with local Indigenous knowledge to reexamine the stories of the New England colonies and the Indigenous peoples during the later 1600s, particularly the unfolding of hostilities that came to be known as King Philip’s War.

Reading this book has unlocked a deeper process of decolonizing my mind. What I have been most struck by are the individual stories, the actual names of individual people and the places in which they lived, planted, fished, traveled, escaped, returned.  How they were related and how they negotiated and were ambassadors on behalf of their relatives. How they adapted and resisted and strategized. Their names and their stories.

Warrabitta (female leader) of Owaskoag. Skitterygusset, her brother. Sagawetton, her brother, who lived with his wife on the Saco River.  (Wabanaki leaders around Casco Bay).  Canonicus, Miantonomo, sachems, Quaiapin of Woossowenbiskw, female sachem. Mixxano her husband, Scuttup and Quequegunent, her sons. Ninigret, her brother, leader of Niantic. Cojonoquant, cousin of Mixxano. (Narragansett leaders). James Printer, or Wawaus, a Nipmuc scholar from Hassanamesit.

Brooks brings to light people who had been hidden in the narratives told by the English settlers, people who had been hidden in the shadows as “Native people in the wilderness who were conquered by the English settlers.”  But–of course–they had names.  They had towns and regions and farms. They had families, with names.  Our Beloved Kin is a dense and long book (346 pages not counting the notes), slow reading, ultimately devastating because of the betrayals of the colonists which we anticipate throughout. But even the betrayals are identified specifically to people with names, betrayed by other people with names. I have only listed a few of the hundreds of people she identifies.

Because I speak English, I have had to say “female leader” in these lists to note that in fact there were female leaders. Among the Indigenous peoples of this region, the words for Sachem, or leader, were gendered, (sôgemak) (sôgeskwak) but to have a female leader was no more unusual than to have a male leader.  Just thought I should note that.

There is no way to convey here the immensity of what Lisa Brooks brings from out of the shadows into the light. I imagine that a lot of people won’t try to navigate this exposition. But if you care about our relationship to this land, and to the people of this land, it is mind-blowing.

 

Groundhog Day

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We’ve made it half-way to the Spring Equinox–Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Imbolc according to the Celts… Whatever we call it, I have always liked this festival. Even the birds seem to know that something is up.  On my walks the last couple days, they have been singing so that I notice it.  The height of the sun? The change in the light?  Even though it’s been cold, and today snow was covering everything, they sing.

Today, in my neighborhood, the groundhog would not have seen his shadow–so that means that spring will come early.  But in fact, groundhogs are still in hibernation here, and since technically, it will still be six weeks until spring no matter what, I don’t actually count on the groundhog to confirm the weather.  But this day still awakens the hope that winter won’t last forever.

I was happy to learn that the Groundhog Day tradition comes from Americans with German ancestry–since that is part of my own heritage.  Back in German-speaking lands, it was instead a badger, and originally a bear, whose emergence would predict the weather on Candlemas Day.  Candlemas was a Catholic feast, but was retained even after Protestant Reforms, likely because it was an even earlier pagan feast that had been Christianized. There are sayings in English, French, and Latin as well that correspond to the myth: “If Candlemas is fair and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.” This attests to its antiquity as a European tradition.

Imbolc is the feast of Brigid, the goddess of smithcraft, poetry, and healing.  When Margy and I visited Ireland, we visited more than one Brigid’s well where the waters are known for their healing properties.  But I also think of this festival as a celebration of fire–fire is the key component of welding and smithcraft, and it is also a symbol of creativity–the inner fire that inspires poetry and art and music.  It is the fire which inspires social change, transformation, and healing.

Years ago, this came together for me in the poem by Cherrie Moraga, “The Welder,” in the book, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.  It concludes with these lines:

I am now
coming up for air.
Yes, I am
picking up the torch.

I am the welder.
I understand the capacity of heat
to change the shape of things.
I am suited to work
within the realm of sparks
out of control.

I am the welder.
I am taking the power
into my own hands.

Thank you Cherrie Moraga!  And thank you to the singing birds!  Thank you dear neighborhood groundhog for not eating my kale last summer!  And to all of you reading this, may your day be filled with creativity and healing.

What We Give to Each Other

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Yesterday I met a Passamaquoddy woman, S—, who talked about how she is trying to remove herself as much as possible from the money economy, to live with the values of a gift economy.  One way she does it is to volunteer a lot in her community.  I was moved by the conversation, and it stirred up questions in me about its application in my own life.  We were part of a gathering hosted by Maine-Wabanaki REACH for Wabanaki and Maine residents to explore together the topic of decolonization.  (If that term is unfamiliar, take a look at my earlier post called Living into History.)

Dish with One Spoon Wampum

Photo from IndianTime.net

Colonization brought the capitalist economy to this continent.  Another Wabanaki participant told us about the One Dish with One Spoon Wampum belt, which was a covenant acknowledging mutual care, first between the Haudenosaunee and then with other Indigenous communities prior to settlement.

The Great Law of Peace speaks of it:

We will have one dish, which means that we will all have equal shares of the game roaming about in the hunting grounds and fields, and then everything will become peaceful among all of the people;

We also heard about how in the Passamaquoddy nation, they are creating a community garden with an orchard of fruit trees, and teaching people how to cultivate them.  As people learn to provide for their community’s own food, true sovereignty becomes possible.

I was thinking about how back at my own home, we are also creating an orchard, but it is a difficult process to undo the individualistic capitalist systems.  To be connected to this land we have to “own” it in the capitalist manner.  We can share it with our friend who has a garden here with us, and we’ve also been blessed by the permaculture community’s support through our Permablitz work party last June.  And we received many of our companion plants in the plant swap last spring.  So we are trying to imagine community as a part of our relationship to this land.  But there is so much further to go.

I had brought flyers with me to the gathering about my book, not sure if it felt like the right place to share.  (Our invitation had mentioned we could bring materials about our related work if we wanted.) The content of the book is so much about how we journey into earth community–how we restore that spiritual relationship with the land and with our neighbors on this land.  How we acknowledge and heal the harm caused by the history of this place. But the book is also a product that I sell. So I was torn.

After our conversation about gift economy, I was moved to give a copy of the book as a gift to S—. I had so appreciated her sharing, and it felt to me like this would be a way to plant a seed–to shift something within me that might grow the possibility of a gift economy in this world, and in my life.  I was surprised when she responded by giving me a gift of her beadwork–beautiful turtles. There is magic in this. May it be blessed.

A No-Win Gamble

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The other day I read the “Medicare and You” brochure in preparation for my own “graduation” to Medicare this coming summer.  It has been hard since then to shake a sense of foreboding.  My first reaction to all of it is how can our society treat our elders with such lack of care?  I don’t mean that it is bad that we have Medicare–I wish we had something like Medicare for all–single-payer health care–in our country.  But what we have now seems so bereft of full medical care, that participants are encouraged to buy extra care to cover all the gaps in care.

But it is not merely that you can choose to spend a certain amount per month to cover the gaps–a kind of gambling in itself about whether you will save more than you will spend.  It is that you have to decide between a dozen or more types of options, which kind of product to buy–all seemingly based on making a guess about your own unknown future health needs and prescription needs.  The supposed explanations for the different types of plans amount to gobble-di-gook, if you ask me….

Does anyone besides me see this as a particularly insidious way to torture people?  “You can choose!  Read all this information!  Oh, whatever you choose today will affect your future!”  A gambling game based on what?  (Is it anything besides a way to bring further profit to insurance companies?)  Then in today’s paper I read Michelle Singletary’s column The Color of Money, “Medicare trend causes palpitations,” and felt even worse.  She writes:

New analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that out-of-pocket health care costs for Medicare beneficiaries are likely to take up half of their average Social Security income by 2030.

I hesitate to blog about this issue because by doing so I have to reveal elements of my own financial situation–and money is one of the last taboos.  But I am feeling bold today. I will admit that despite the many blessings in my life, when I stop working, I will be one of those senior citizens living on a fixed low income.  We have been very lucky–we have a home, with solar panels (lower electricity costs) and a yard for gardens.  But homes also cost money for upkeep.  I worry that eventually I will be one of those who has to decide between medical care and eating.  And I am so angry that elders are put into that position today!

In the world I dream of, “health insurance” would be something paid for by the healthy, to take care of anyone who becomes sick–which eventually will be most of us, as we age. In that world, no one would risk losing their home because they become ill, no one would have to gamble based on unknown future events, no one would be left to die because of a lack of money.  There is a lot more to say about all this, but I have to stop now and go to the ocean… get some perspective.IMG_4237

What We Are Here For

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“Life is the expression and fulfillment and celebration of beauty. This is what we are here for.  We’re not here to do anything else.” (Sarah Susanka in The Not So Big Life)

Perhaps this is an odd sentiment, when so much in our country is going wrong these days. Aren’t we also here for justice, for compassion, for interconnection?  But what is beauty anyway?  Is it the unexpected sighting of a wild raccoon near the brook during a morning walk?  Is it the fluid colors of the sky in the dawn?  Is it a coating of ice or snow on the branches of every tree and bush in the neighborhood?

Why do these things enliven our souls?  Perhaps beauty is the mark of an essential wholeness, a harmony we can recognize with our eyes, our ears, our hearts, our whole being.  If that is the case, then I believe beauty also includes justice, compassion, interconnection.  We recognize instinctively the wholeness within justice, within acts of kindness, the miracle of our interconnection.

Beauty has something to teach us about how to work for justice as well.  To express and celebrate beauty is to turn our attention away from the ugly hatefulness we deplore, toward acts of creating what we aspire to.  This is why I love permaculture and solar panels and work parties and gardens.  We are bringing into being the wholeness we hope for.  I am not saying that protests are not important as well.  On the contrary.

But as Rebecca Solnit promises, in her book Hope in the Dark,

…if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it’s a temporary and local place… Make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit.

May you be a beacon of beauty today!

“Part Indian”

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Yvonne DSC01872I don’t know the whole story about Elizabeth Warren’s claim to have Native ancestry.  I have heard her mocked by being called “Pocahontas.”  That mockery is wrong on so many counts, not the least of which is the tragic story of the actual Pocahontas that has been obscured and romanticized by American culture and cinema.  But what I want to explore today is the sometimes confusing experience of those of us who are white but have some Native ancestry.

I know enough now to know that having Native ancestry does not make one a Native American.  But I didn’t know that when I was young.  It was through trying to understand what my Native ancestry meant that I grew to understand what it meant to be white.

When my siblings and I were growing up, all we really knew was our family stories.  Our mom told us she was part Indian.  She didn’t know what tribe.  It was through her mother’s family, my grandmother Yvonne who came from Quebec to Detroit.  (That is Yvonne’s picture I have included above–taken on the day she crossed the border from Canada to her new life in America with my grandfather.) My mom was proud of being part Indian.  My dad had worked as a cowboy, so we used to joke about our parents being the cowboy and the Indian.

Our family stories opened in my heart a curiosity toward Indigenous peoples. As a young adult I learned more about American Indian political struggles, and began to take what action I could in solidarity.  But I also learned that white people who claimed to have Native ancestry were often joked about, considered Wannabes, and especially tasteless was to claim a great-grandmother who was a Cherokee Indian princess.

Perhaps that was why I was relieved to discover that we were not part Cherokee.  I was the one who researched our family history and learned that we were related to the Innu people, who are indigenous to the land now called Quebec and Labrador. The French settlers called them Montagnais. I learned that the Innu know their land as Nitasinnan, which means “our land.”  Later, in the midst of my activist work, I had a chance to meet Innu activists, working against the hydrodams that Quebec was trying to build on their rivers.

Gradually, I learned more about the Indigenous experience in America, and was able to better understand my own position as a white woman.  But in between my childhood and my better understanding, it was confusing to me.  There were a few occasions that I said I was Native American, many other occasions I kept silent.  My sister once took an art class that she got into because she was 1/16th Indian (we thought).  For a short while, I said I was Metis–mixed–because that was a word used in a book in French that spoke about some of my ancestors.  Not being in Canada, I didn’t know about the actual meaning of that word in English to describe another distinct group.  It took a long time to sort out that it was more accurate and respectful to say that I was white.

This is why I have some sympathy for Elizabeth Warren right now.  With only family stories to guide us, it is hard to sort out the dynamics of race and privilege from cherished ancestral connections.  And the stories of my grandmothers are also meaningful to me still.  I say grandmothers, because it was my matrilineal descent that originated in Nitasinnan.  My Innu great-great-great-grandmother was Marie-Madeleine, who married a Scottish trapper near Chicoutimi, Quebec.  Her daughter was Angele, whose daughter was Claudia, my great-grandmother, and Yvonne’s mother.  When we were kids, we thought we were 1/16 Indian, but it turned out to be 1/32.  Much later, a DNA test confirmed that matrilineal descent.

These grandmothers were gradually–or perhaps quickly–assimilated into the white community, first in Quebec, and then in the United States.  I learned that assimilation itself was part of the long campaign to divide Indigenous people from their land and their history.  When an Indian woman in Canada married a white man, she lost her legal status as an Indian.  So, on the census records for Angele, for example, she was referred to as Scottish like her father.  The mother disappears, through a combination of sexism and racism.  I don’t think the assimilation was without difficulty.  I don’t know the early stories, but my mom mentioned once that her mom and her aunts didn’t go in the sun, because they didn’t want their skin to darken and people to think that they were Indians.

Their lingering shame says something to me about the difficulties of the assimilation process.  And yet–they told the stories–they didn’t forget their ancestry.  And that means something to me as well.  The Innu word for “my grandmother” is Nukum.  Even though I am now very clear about being white, I pray to Nukum for guidance in my life, and she has helped me on my journey.