From Rights to Responsibilities: Regenerating Kinship Relations

Langscape Magazine is an extension of the voice of Terralingua. Through the power of stories, images, and art, it supports our mission to educate minds and hearts about the vital value of biocultural diversity for the thriving of all life on earth. ABOUT THE COVER PHOTOS Front: Women were traditionally custodians of seed in Africa. Mashudu Takalani and Gertrude Pswarayi-Jabson are working to revive Indigenous crop varieties and the responsibility of caring for these varieties within communities. Image: Tim Hawkins Back: Gilbert González, a Brunka Elder, looks across the Térraba River valley, Costa Rica, to the Indigenous Territories beyond. Photo: Felipe Montoya Terralingua thanks the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Swift Foundation, Lush Charity Pot, the MakeWay Foundation, the New England Biolabs Foundation, and a major anonymous donor for generously supporting Langscape Magazine. EDITOR: Luisa Maffi EDITORIAL COORDINATOR & COPY EDITOR: Jadwiga Akshara Sangiorgio COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING: Coreen Boucher EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT & CUSTOMER CARE: Elena Oslopova Imagine That Graphics PRINTING: Minuteman Press GRAPHIC DESIGN: Learn about Terralingua: terralingua.org Visit Langscape Magazine and read articles: terralingua.org/langscape-home/ Purchase single copies or subscribe: terralingua.org/shop/ ISSN 2371-3291 (print) ISSN 2371-3305 (digital) © Terralingua 2023 2 | LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE Vol 12 2023 Langscape Magazine is a Terralingua Publication From Rights to Responsibilities Regenerating Kinship Relations For Indigenous Peoples, their relationships to the lands, waters, and natural world shape their responsibilities, governance, and self-determining authority. Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel Above: ᏓᎦᏏ (dagasi or turtle) crossing the road. Photo: PS Media House/Shutterstock Vol 12 2023 LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE | 3 Osiyo nigada. Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel dagwado’a. Tsalagi ayetli agwenasv’i. Echota galsgisgo’i. Jean agitsi nole Gary agidoda. Dagwaltina’i Westville, Ogalahoma nole Huntington Beach, California aneha. Agwetsi ageyutsa Leila Victoria otseha. Nigohilv tsigesvi anehe’i Ani Lekwungen nole Ani W̱SÁNEĆ ahani tsitsinela’i nogwu. Hello. My name is Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel. I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a member of the Echota ceremonial grounds in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. My parents, Jean and Gary, live in California. I live with my family on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ nations and peoples, whose relationships with these lands and waters shape their political thought, governance, and self-determining authority that should inform how we all relate to this place. As I share this critical self-location, I pose two interrelated questions to promote accountability as a visitor to Salish lands and waters: How will the lands, waters, and communities benefit from my time here? And how do we go beyond land acknowledgments to take actions that make space for Indigenous resurgence? A few summers ago, my daughter Leila and I were visiting our homelands in the Cherokee Nation (Tahlequah, Oklahoma, socalled United States). As we were driving along the highway, we noticed that there was a ᏌᎵᎫᎩ (saligugi or snapping turtle) in the middle of the road. After taking my foot off the accelerator, I asked my daughter whether we should stop and help that ᏌᎵᎫᎩ out. She immediately said yes, so we pulled over and slowly approached the ᏌᎵᎫᎩ, who eyed us suspiciously. We both assured the ᏌᎵᎫᎩ that we were going to help get her out of harm’s way. I then showed my daughter how to pick up the ᏌᎵᎫᎩ from the back of the shell, as My daughter Leila helping a ᏌᎵᎫᎩ (saligugi or snapping turtle) across the road. Photo: Jeff Corntassel several Indigenous nations use to refer to “North America,” and the name relates to community origin stories about their homelands being formed on the back of a turtle. As late Cherokee Elder Benny Smith used to say, we come from four worlds back, and it was ᏓᎦᏏ that carried us through these worlds, since they travel on both land and water. Additionally, when Cherokee women dance at our stomp grounds, they fasten ᏓᎦᏏ shells to their ankles, and the turtle shells shake and rattle with each step to keep the rhythm of the dance. ᏓᎦᏏ is part “Everyday acts of resurgence” of our ceremonies and is celebrated in are often unseen and unacknowledged actions our communities. By stopping to help they have very powerful jaws! My daughter proudly held ᏌᎵᎫᎩ and helped her safely into the creek on the other side of the road. Seemingly, that’s the end of the story. So why share a story that appears that take place in intimate or familial settings and to have little to do with rights or even are integral to community health and well-being. ᏌᎵᎫᎩ across the road, we were practicing respectful relations with our kin as with Indigenous nationhood? I would part of the ᏓᎦᏏ nation. This is also an contend that there is a lot more going example of “everyday acts of resurgence,” which are often unseen on in this story than might first be perceived. The ᏌᎵᎫᎩ story actually teaches us about relationships and ways of protecting and and unacknowledged actions that take place in intimate or familial honoring more-than-human kin. Most importantly, it teaches us settings and are integral to community health and well-being. about responsibility. As Indigenous Peoples, relationships to the lands, waters, and natural world shape our responsibilities, governance, and selfᏓᎦᏏ (dagasi or turtle) holds a special place for Cherokees (and for other Indigenous nations). After all, Turtle Island is the name determining authority, and these responsibilities extend beyond the 4 | LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE Vol 12 2023 Dagasi or turtle shells that Cherokee women wear on their ankles for stomp dances. Photo: Jeff Corntassel scope of the contemporary rights discourse. For example, ᎠᏆᏚᏓᎳ organisms with whom the planet is shared, understood as entities (agwadudala) means “I am accountable,” while ᎢᎦᏚᏓᎳ (igadudala) deserving of protection in and of themselves.” In 2017, Aotearoa means “all of us are accountable.” From a Cherokee language (New Zealand) responded to the needs of the Māori peoples and perspective, accountability is what drives our responsibilities granted legal personhood status to the Whanganui River. In Canada, and ultimately lays the groundwork for rights. To understand the the Innu of Ekuanitshit in Québec, along with environmental groups, linkages between inherent rights and responsibilities, it is important initiated the first effort to affirm the rights of nature. That led to the to contextualize Indigenous nationhood as being embedded within Muteshekau Shipu (literally, “The river where water flows between living land-based knowledge systems square rocky cliffs,” aka Magpie River) as well as sacred histories, ceremonies, attaining legal personhood in 2021. Relationships to the lands, stories, languages, and other communityAs these examples illustrate, the rights waters, and natural world shape centered forms of governance. Sharing of nature movement has gained traction our responsibilities, governance, stories, like the one above, helps us in several countries and among several and self-determining authority. identify the everyday ways in which Indigenous nations, extending new legal we embody and activate these values, protections to animals, plants, rivers, principles, and responsibilities, making them intimate expressions mountains, and other more-than-human relationships. The rights of of resurgence. nature discourse, however, can only take us so far in protecting these There is currently a global movement to extend legal personhood critical relationships. Applying legal personhood to mountains and and “rights of nature” to living entities such as rivers and mountains. rivers runs the risk of compartmentalizing and prioritizing complex The idea of rights of nature has its origins in a 1972 article written by relationships, where one aspect of the natural world, such as a river, is Christopher Stone, who examined the question “Should Trees Have emphasized over other more-than-human relationships. Additionally, Standing?” Since that time, several communities and countries have is a legal personhood approach imposing narrow human standards mobilized to create a rights of nature movement. For example, in 2008 on more-than-human relations, such as plant and animal nations? Ecuador was the first country to recognize the rights of nature in its Ultimately, Indigenous responsibilities and resulting actions are what constitution. A 2016 constitutional court case in Colombia examined uphold these enduring, intimate relationships. the rights of the Atrato River as well as those of the Indigenous To illustrate this point, I will share a Cherokee story called “How and Afro-Colombian communities who had relationships to the Medicine Came to the People,” which has been told in many different river. The Colombian court also extended rights to plants or animals ways. This version is told by the late Bob Thomas under the pseudonym living in and along the river “also in connection with the other living of G. P. Horsefly (from G. P Horsefly, A History of the True People: The Vol 12 2023 LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE | 5 Cherokee Indians, 1979, Detroit: An Oral History Publication, which can be freely shared as part of Cherokee living history): “The way the Cherokees received help from the plants is another sacred story. I will just tell it briefly for you.......... They say that the animals were getting put out with the Cherokees make a bow and arrow like the Cherokees and fight them back?’ Then another said, ‘How are we going to do that?’ One bear spoke up and said, ‘I will sacrifice myself so you can make a bowstring out of my innards.’ So the bears made a bow, but when they tried to shoot the bow, they couldn’t do it because they had Accountability is what drives because, by that time, Cherokees had such long claws. One bear cut off his our responsibilities and ultimately lays invented bows and arrows and they were claws and he could shoot the bow alright. the groundwork for rights. killing off a lot of the game. In those The chief of the bears spoke up and days animals could talk just like human said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t go around beings so each animal held a council to killing ourselves to get bowstrings or consider what to do. The bears had a council and they said, ‘They cutting off our claws. We will starve to death. We need our claws for Cherokees are killing too many of us bears so we are going to have digging.’ He said, ‘That’s not going to work. Maybe we ought to get to do something to stop them.’ One of them said, ‘Why don’t we all the animals together to decide what to do.’ All the animals got When turtle shells are not available, cans are carefully linked together and their sounds are harmonized with the turtle shells from the stomp grounds for Cherokee women to wear. These are my daughter’s cans worn at Echota ceremonial grounds in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Photo: Leila Corntassel 6 | LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE Vol 12 2023 Plant nations who provide medicines to the Cherokees. ᎠᏥᎾ (atsina or cedar) is one of several important medicines used by Cherokee peoples for ailments. Photo: Edmund Lowe Photography/Shutterstock together and they decided that the best thing to do was for them lack of respect for their lives and families and decided to punish the Cherokees with disease. In response, the plant nations offered cures to call disease, different illnesses, to the Indians. That would kind for these diseases to help bring the community back to good health. of thin them down a little bit. So the deer spoke up and said, ‘I will This is a story about accountability and the consequences of forgetting give them rheumatism.’ Then each animal spoke up and said what particular disease it would inflict on the Cherokees. Then the animals our inherent responsibilities, ᎢᎦᏚᏓᎳ. All of us are accountable for adjourned their joint council with that course of action in mind. upholding and nurturing the relationships that promote our health “Now the plants heard about what and well-being. While the rights of nature discourse the animals had decided and since they were always friendly with the Cherokees, and the resulting policies offer important Indigenous mobilization extends they decided that they would help the new legal protections to the natural world, beyond recognizing rights to perpetuating Cherokees out. The plants decided that for our inherent responsibilities motivate our inherent responsibilities. each disease the animals brought to the future actions to honor and respect Cherokees, there would be a plant which relationships with homelands, waterways, would offer itself to cure the disease. animal nations, plant nations, and other That’s what the Cherokees had from the beginning. A doctor can go more-than-human relatives. Stories, languages, and sacred living into the woods and it will come to him what plant to use. Sometimes histories shape our connections and guide us in honoring our placethere won’t be any wind and you will see a plant move, and that will based identities. The rights of nature represent important reminders be the plant for you to use to cure that particular disease.” regarding how integral relationships are to healthy Indigenous This story gets at several themes around relational responsibilities futures. However, legal personhood applied to rivers, mountains, and even consent. The animal nations were concerned about the and other aspects of the natural world doesn’t fully encompass the Vol 12 2023 LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE | 7 ᎠᏫ (awi or deer) animal nation. Photo: Karel Bock/Shutterstock scope of our relational accountabilities. When my daughter and I stopped the car to assist ᏌᎵᎫᎩ, the snapping turtle, across the highway, we were not motivated to do so to recognize the rights of the turtle nation; we were acting on our inherent responsibilities to honor our relations. Amidst calls for climate justice, protecting biodiversity, and regenerating planetary health, Indigenous mobilization extends beyond recognizing rights to perpetuating our inherent responsibilities. Learn more about everyday acts of resurgence at bit.ly/46CiWva Watch Cherokee Spoken Here, a short film on the revitalization of the Cherokee language, at bit.ly/3NXkMPX Acknowledgments: Wado/thank you to Cherokee language speakers Gil Jackson, who is a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and Ben Frey, also a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, for their insights about accountability and rights. Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel, PhD, is a writer, teacher, and father from the Cherokee Nation. He is a professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Victoria and Associate Director of the university’s Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement (CIRCLE). 8 | LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE Vol 12 2023 Vol 12 2023 LANGSCAPE MAGAZINE | 9