Page 51 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Kinship means relationship. It could mean family. It implies attunement and

long-term commitments to each other. The first time I met the Ambassador

Elephant, I said, “I know who you are. You are from a holocausted people and I

am from a holocausted people. ... I promise you, your people are my people.”

That was seventeen years ago. It was a commitment. We are kin. The

Ambassador and his people know this. How else explain that he and his

community have met me each of the five times that I have returned to Chobe

National Park in Botswana? My agreement is to return to a particular tree by the

river at the same hour on the last day of our visit to mirror the original meeting

with the Ambassador and his people in 2000. His part of the agreement is to

show up in ways that are unmistakable. Each time, we were able to construct a

narrative, to find meaning in the elephants’ displays and interactions with us or

with each other. Story, we can say, is the medium.

In 1999, the groundbreaking anthology Intimate Nature: The Bond Between

Women and Animals that I edited with Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson, was

published. The book established that compassionate and intuitive relationships

with animals lead to greater knowledge and understanding than does objective

research. Knowledge emerges from relationship. Intimacy informs. Additionally

the selections revealed that animals are remarkably and surprisingly intelligent,

are spiritually alert and can, like human beings, exercise agency.

It hadn’t been our goal to draw this conclusion; it was not evident until the book

was complete. We had intended to look at women’s bond with animals, we didn’t

realize we were also discerning animals’ focus and activity. As relationship is

reciprocal, the relationships between humans and animals are inevitably

reciprocal. In the editing of the book, we had acknowledged that animals are

peers but we hadn’t fully investigated the implications. For anyone who read the

book attentively, the five- thousand- year Western cultural hegemony of humans

over animals was challenged.

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