A hint of decolonization

In [partial] preparation for observance of spring equinox, today I bought a couple of pots of oxalis plants. The green is a nice contrast to the snow outside. It’s improbable we’ll be able too enjoy a fire in the fire pit come equinox, but I’ve reached the point where, living in the North Country, I need to do more to honor the arrival of spring, longer days, sunny skies(?), returning migrants and open, flowing waters.

oxalis, shamrock

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow, at least for a little while, will include flowing water as rain, which will then become ice. Every year spring arrives on stutter steps, some years more quickly than others, but rarely, if ever, smoothly. I may manage to avoid, or at least minimize, complaining about setbacks and focus on improvements in the weather rather than what we’ve experienced the past few weeks and anticipate over the next few days.

Since I’m tired of writing about our local weather, I’m going to share something I found online this morning. For background, I need to tell you that for several years I’ve been pondering similarities between Native American and Irish experiences under British colonialism. Today I learned I’m not the only one who thinks about such topics. The On Being Project has an interview with Margaret Noodin that includes these observations:

Noodin: Yes. Now, I knew that. I taught the Irish lit. class, last semester, which I sometimes get to do. And my friend Bairbre here, who runs our Celtic Studies center, we had some comparisons in language. And we, of course, are very biased, but we felt that Ojibwe and Irish were perhaps the most musical and lovely languages that there are. [laughs]

Ó Tuama: That’s just plain fact, Margaret. That’s not bias at all. [laughs]

Noodin: I would agree. Absolutely, right? [laughs] But we wonder too, sometimes — we joke — we’ve joked for many years, within my family, and it’s not just us. So you have a confluence of history. You have people located in a similar space on the globe and really defined in ways by where the land meets the water. So, whether you are a diaspora centered around this inland sea or whether you are an island within a sea, a lot of your metaphors are similar in the fact that you’re in this northern region. You have a seasonal similarity.

But we have things like Paisake, little beings that have red hair that potentially cause disturbances or teach people lessons. And there are so many ways where, when you get to know cultures and you can make comparison between stories, you can absolutely see that the option is either to believe that they really exist and they’re all over, in every culture, in different ways, or to somehow think that people really connected sometime, long ago; but that’s probably the least likely. I think that people have a need to understand and describe the world through describing both the real and the imagined, sometimes.

The preceding gives us an opportunity to share one of Margaret Noodin’s et. al. wonderful poems and to confess that we’ve not read as much of her work as we would like and hope to.

Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words

By Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen, and Margaret Noodin

baazhigwaadiziwin—persistence

Ningii-bazhinemin, we have barely escaped

nightly, a threshold looms in the cold.

Again, we sing ourselves strong—

Anishinaabikwewag, women of history and persistence.

Observe: constellations have long illuminated patterns,

relentless stories, adizookanag,

of who we might be, noongom aawiiyaang

gemaa waa-aawiiyang, or become.

Across skies trace belonging, ezhi-dibendagoziyang

in the land of wiindigoo-cannibals, awaken the crumbling spirit.

Become swirling light, motion—where Bagonegiizhig

still lives. This ancient portal a promise.

Become the shadow others expect—aagawaatesen

hiding in significance. Like stars, anangoog, excluded.

Anyone could read this.

No matter this bitter

winter, still.

wiingashk—sweetgrass

How she stitched the rim, gashkigwaadan.

Leaf blades and needle fingers circled,

smallest curve, waaganagamod, of song—

endless like the scent.

Held, there are, atenoon, some parts

one cannot see—

but she knows, gikendaang, what they hold.

Words from bogs and marshes.

Heaven fits neatly, mii gwayak, under

the snug lid, shut tight as lips

long used to gaadood, keeping secrets

of grandmothers and crane companions.

Notes:

The authors write about the collaborative process behind this piece here. 

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