Page 22 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

once again and placed in our bundles the things that will heal us—the things that we love—can we

walk forward on that green path, all the worlds’ people, together...

These are the questions we face today at the crossroads. What do we find along the ancestors’ path

that will heal us and bring us back to balance? What do we love too much to lose that we will carry it

through the narrows of climate change, safely to the other side? For there is another side. The

prophecy of the seventh fire teaches that the people of the seventh fire will need great courage and

creativity and wisdom, but that they will lead us to the lighting of the eighth fire. It is said that we are

the people of the seventh fire. You and I.... As writers, we mark that path with our stories, we mark the

path with our words...

Our Potawatomi stories tell that a long time ago, when Turtle Island was young, the people and all the

plants and animals spoke the same language and conversed freely with one another. But as our

dominance has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely on the planet and we can no

longer call our neighbors by name. If we are to manifest the values of the Skywoman story, we have to

learn once again to call each other by name. And by name, to call on each other for help. It is said that

Skywoman went back to the sky, and looked over the land with the visage of Grandmother Moon. It is

said that she left our teachers behind us, the plants. In this time of the Sixth Extinction, of coming

climate chaos, we could use teachers.

We don’t have to figure everything out for ourselves.

Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn

and remember. We’ve forgotten that we are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by

feathered people and people with leaves. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget. Even the

language we speak, the beautiful English language, makes us forget, through a simple grammatical

error that has grave consequences for us all.

Let me share with you a poem by one of my heroes of women and the land, the Cherokee writer

Marilou Awiakta: