Page 133 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

function as colonials and begin instead to engage other peoples as respectful human beings”

(154).

Secondly, Alfred does not recommend even for indigenous peoples that they set about

“replicating the surface aspects of the lifestyle and manners” of indigenous in past times.

Rather, he calls for regenerating “the quality of an indigenous existence, the connective material

that bound Onkwehonwe together when ‘interests’ and ‘rights’ were not a part of ... people’s

vocabularies” (254). For settlers, this means we root not by playing Indian but by cultivating that

‘quality’ of indigenous being that connects us deeply to life in this world.

Reading Wasáse, I felt confronted, affirmed, inspired and fiercely guided by Alfred’s warrior

honesty and, surprisingly, his optimism. He helped me articulate new and urgent questions:

what are those ‘rites’ that we settlers might resurrect? What ways of being will foster a “renewed

relationship between the peoples and places of this land” (35)? How do we exchange

entitlement for humility, liberal guilt for friendship and alliance, consumerism for caring and

detachment for deep devotion?

The woods at the end of my street extend a long way up the river valley through the city. The

first time I visited, I left the concrete walkway for a trail, not knowing where it led. The sun shone

down through the leaves onto spider webs that hung like dream catchers. I entered a dim grove

of cedar and fir. The place carried an uneasy feeling, some echo of misery. On the other side I

saw a shape in the trees: a Cooper’s Hawk, a bird I’d never seen. We regarded each other with

mutual seriousness. The next day when I returned to the woods, I took a different trail and

encountered a coyote standing on the path ahead, looking back at me. I offered a greeting

before it bounded into the ravine.

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