Sometimes you hear a thing in passing, on the radio, in an
interview, that’s so true that it becomes part of you, even though you can’t
really remember who said it or what the conversation was about. The etymology
of bits of knowledge that change you, being able to trace them , seems
particularly white, a white person thing. Like, if I insist on knowing who said
it, and being able to trace where they got the idea, then I’ve bought into the
white, wig-wearing European idea that those people therefore own the knowledge,
and I only got it from them—I don’t own it myself.
But when it hit me, in that moment, when it was transmitted
via various electronic means, and when it reached a bottom dwelling microbe in
my soul, and changed it, and started to grow and transform me, well, all of that
means it’s mine now.
With deep bow to the people and forces that brought it.
But the idea is this: the rocks trees and fungi are all my
nation, are also my grandfathers and grandmothers.
Ok, the credit belongs to the Lakota, and the transmitters
were Doug Fabrezio and Alexandra Fuller and the internet and all podcast
technology.
But despite being a city kid, and also an adult who has
lived almost my whole life on the human-made scum hovering above the earth’s actual
crust, where all other creatures live, I can still recognize that, whether or
not that truth is in fact true for me, it really ought to be.
A right nation, a good nation, would of course include all
elements of the ecological system. The glaciers. The turtles. The fungus that
keeps the desert sand from breaking up into individual granules. The fungus on
the tree trunks. All the individual bits of life that create our world, the
whole intricate network.
It’s not profound, it’s basic. It’s a tragedy that it
took me until 37 to hear this idea, and believe it, and try to own it.
