“No one can hold, back the dawn”
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Or what about farming one species just to feed another, besides us I mean, and what about when that species is a member of the latest greatest kingdom of animals? The animal supremacist has no problem imprisoning an acre of Corn to feed the cattle, even if it does starve out out more than it feeds. They’re even cool with feeding little animals to big animals, circle of life and all, and all in the name of processing food. But would they harvest another’s lifeforce just for the sport of it?
After sweat, we’d cast a few and see who was biting. There for a while, it seemed like we were reeling them in as fast as we could throw them out, over and over again. What an abundance. Or was it excess? We'd eventually realize that perhaps we'd overfished the population. But no worries about the next slow season as the ecosystem finds its evolutionary equilibrium, we'll just restock the stagnant water of what's starting to seem like yet another inescapable aquarium. And funny enough, the Bass preferred a petroleum imposter over a fresh dug wiggler. Freakin dapl. The Brim still liked the organic variety, kinda got me thinking a bit though. Uh oh, here we go again.
So, what exactly are the ethics of using live bait? And I obviously mean 'live' as in the animal 'live', not the 'live' that describes the plants that share the same universal energy as everyone else, they don’t speak english though, so they’re certainly a lesser class of organism, right? I’m talking about: Is it ok to shove a hook through my no-legged brother’s body, and just in the hopes of him getting devoured, as I slam the same hook through a bigger member of our planet? Circle of life baby.
Except those that turn around and turn them free, true animal lovers indeed, as they catch and release to preserve populations. Fishing for sport, also known as ripping a hook violently into another’s mouth, lip, throat, eye, neck, whatever, and then yanking them out by the wound. Very sporting old chap. Now, you know that I’m so down with hunting, for food, but for sport? Well, it’s just not a fair enough game to be any entertaining, they don’t even have weapons, maybe if our constitution gave us the right to arm Bears.
So, Worm farms supplying the sporting goods industry, maybe not so much, but how about me digging up a creepy crawly just a few feet from the lake’s edge? No farm or agriculture or interference in their way of life, at least until I successfully hunt them in their natural habitat. Knowing me, I’d probably be just as happy eating the Worm, definitely within mama’s playground guidelines, but what are the ramifications of trying to trade your way up the food chain?
Let’s assume that my lucky streak continues and my first cast lands the big one, dang I’m crushing it, and now we’ve traded a tiny little living creature for a member of the Fish Nation, who will be enough to feed our entire family for the night. And the Fish got fed, his last meal on the way to the guillotine, but that still counts, and then we keep that circle spinning around the kitchen table. I mean, I guess the circle ends upon impact with colonization, as they often do, got chained down and all, but we’re just talking about the dumb little animals right now. It’s not like they can feel a hook penetrating the length of their body as they squirm to get away, or through a minnows eye socket, though it does somehow seem even worse than slavery now that I think about it.
Kidnapping a ‘lower-class’ citizen, loading them up on a boat, physically abusing them as they’re tied down and made to trade their lifeforce so that their captors can live in convenience. No fence necessary for this short stay on death row. Well, pardon me, but doesn’t that at least give them the chance to escape? Go sports.
That’s kinda the part that gets me, the fishhook impalement survivors, both the predators and the prey, though most of the unbitten baitfish aren’t long for this world with their newborn head trauma in a pool of predation. I’m so down with killing another animal to eat it, but essentially murdering a brother in the hopes that he’s put out of his misery early by a keeper, something just doesn’t feel right about it. Hang out where your food hangs out, love it. You can even use your supposedly complex human superiority, to groom the garden so that we’re surrounded by the favorite grubs of our favorite fillets. But getting them hooked and tossed into the deep end? What if we were Tiger fishing with kittens?
*******
I’m not trying to kill anything that I’m not eating. Not even a Fly. Literally. Killed one accidentally while trying usher it outside, and had to pray for a bit before I could move on in a good way. (I’m a bit of a nut job, I get it.) Tons of Flies out here on the farm, just another fun byproduct of herding the cattle, but we wouldn’t think of swatting them. Well, maybe we still think about it occasionally. But I’ve made peace with their presence, like with the Ants, especially since I can see that it is only due to our presence, that this is a suitable habitat for them to flourish. We created the niche for them to fill, which they filled because they are needed for some ecological reason or another, or because God told them to. So either way, I’m not trying to interfere in an intricate web of complex life and start deciding who I want to live and die, just so that I can live a conveniently comfortable life of extravagance.
Folks will tell you about the disease they spread which threatens all of humanity, people who I thought couldn’t harm a Fly seem to have no problem hanging a sticky death trap, because Flies spread disease, destruction, and famine. Of course, I say the same about the civilized liberties that we take with the agri-ranching industry, those who bred the Flies in the first place.
The Cows don’t get upset at the conglomerating clingers-on, no more than a friendly swat at least, so I think of them as I let the pests hone my mind-over-matter skills. If I stop typing every time a Fly hits me, I’ll never get done with this extra-long novel, so I convinced myself that it felt good, that I wanted them there with me. I was simply sharing space with my brothers, talking to them, and it was far less annoying once they actually landed and quit buzzing around. If it had been Butterflies, it would have been the cutest thing, so what’s the big deal? I know, I'm pretty much a wackadoo, but at least I wasn't eating them, yet.
So I think that settles that bit of it, I can’t kill an innocent Earthling that I don’t intend to eat, so no live bait for me. Using a lure should be cool, seen plenty of fish with extremities designed to mimic their prey’s prey, I’m just thinking that rubber and oil-based is probably not the way to go. A rubber lure may work alright for a cast or two, but as it gets nibbled away, it leaves pollution nuggets all over the lake and in the innards of the wetland denizens. So maybe hand-tied flies made out of heady biodegradable materials?
And what about the whole idea of hooking a fish? Can’t really be that fun for the fish, huh? Sure, maybe a little violent, drawn out, torturous, and sometimes the hook goes in weird places and does even more damage coming out, but historically the hunt isn’t always the most pleasant for the hunted. Plenty of hunters in the wild pierce their prey, and sometimes they escape with a flesh wound, so can’t feel too bad for the one that got away, although most of nature’s killers seem to do it in a more humane fashion than the fashionable humans do. Gotta look to my indigenous homies for this one, spear fishers, now we got something to talk about.
*******
Imagine minnesota back before the vikings conquered it, that was cold, and full of indigenous tribes like the Ojibwe. These native peoples have sustained themselves for millennia on the local abundance of wild Rice, Maple syrup, and the days catch of fresh Walleye. At least until we got involved. You know the story, and if you don’t, then just wait til the bit about reservation dinners.
Needless to say, in the 1800s, they signed a treaty with the US government, as they relinquished control of the state, to the state. The indians, of course, didn’t get much out of it, except for not getting murdered, I guess. Some of them at least. They did manage to retain the right to collect their traditional foods from the fractured fraction of land that we oh so graciously put on reserve for them, including the right to hunt Walleye, with a spear. And then we took that away too. It’s been a controversial subject from back then, until current times, like, it’s still going on.
Yes, surprise surprise, the american dream of starving out the indians isn’t just a thing of the past, like your history books would have you believe. Got pretty violent back in the 80’s, the 1980’s, like the he-man and mario cartoon eighties. Seems that your father’s colonization isn’t just for colonial times anymore. Civil-ians were so upset, how dare these conquered people be permitted to hunt in this traditional manner? This just isn’t natural. Why can’t they just give up on trying to live in harmony with their living Earth, and get a good old fashioned industrial factory job like the rest of us? Why catch your own Fish, when you could waste your life’s energy away making someone else rich, while you make just enough to afford the pollutions of processed fish sticks?
They hunted with spears, at a time when the law actually seemed to be kinda on their side, but boy were people all up in a tizzy. For years there were protests filled with racial slurs and violence. How dare they be allowed to fish in this most simple way, while non-tribal members had to resort to oil-guzzling motorboats and all that other stuff I was going on about before? But the best part, is that the protesters were mainly sport fishers. Yep, a racist mob throwing beer bottles at you, for following your family’s sacred traditions, and for the measly 6% of the total catch that your tribe is responsible for, which is directly responsible for your village’s livelihood, but we already knew that america was obsessed with sports. What a sport too, does the other team ever win?
Protests got rough, violence escalated, the governor asked the supreme court to revoke the indigenous hunting rights to end the violence, the violence being perpetrated by white protesters of a perfectly legal practice, a treaty right, in a country who claims to hold treaties as the “supreme law of the land.” Yeah right. So of course AIM showed up, the indian activist group originated in minnesota, so they kinda had to. The state tried to buy out the tribe’s fishing rights, not gonna do it, and new politicians ran on the platform of eradicating native treaty rights, or between the lines it may have been more about eradicating natives.
Oh pish posh, it’s not like that anymore, that was a more barbaric time of wild western guns and gold, we’re good old tithing and tax paying americans by now. Except that it’s happening right now, at this very moment, in minnesota. Enbridge Line 3, it was one of the camps I considered going to after Standing Rock, and some of us did, and have been fighting the fight for the last year, and I heard it gets even colder there. Lucky.
Plus, wouldn’t it be such an honor to face off against the record holding champions of corporate contamination? Not only does enbridge hold title to the worst oil spill in the country, they also double-majored with the most spills in minnesota’s history. Somehow, their 800 spills over the last few years managed to get PHSMA’s attention, the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Materials Administration, who rarely intervene in the plowing of pipes ahead, but for some reason they deemed it necessary to issue corrective action due to the excessive number of non-exxon spills.
They already operate fifty-thousand miles of pipeline, and if this goes through, they will be moving two hundred million gallons a day, while the great lakeside refinery can only process an 1/800th of that flow. Doesn’t quite add up, except in the wallet conspiracy, and with the seventeen planned facilities of refining the future’s freshwater, of which a fifth of the world’s supply will be poisoned by this pipe. And the pipeline will trash the wild Rice beds that have fed the Ojibwe for millennia, a free abundant healthy food source for the symbiotic caretakers of our planet… nope, that’s certainly not good for business.
*******
I can definitely see myself winding up there at some point, very stoked about their wild food traditions, but where did we land on the whole stabbing fish thing? Well, no resources expended, besides the hunter's lifeforce energy, no pollution or toxic leftovers poisoning the survivors, no hooks lodged in anyone’s mouth for the rest of their life, and somehow I bet that a quick prayerful sacrifice is far more peaceful than a beer soaked battle to the death. Oh, and there’s no need to put another’s life on the line in order to lure in the next victim, but, the Worms might still have to worry about the Chickens.
So why did the Chicken cross the road? She didn’t. Everything she could need was right here on the farm. She’s happy to trade her babies for a place to stay, at least that’s what we tell ourselves over our Sweet Potato omelets. Alright then, well let’s take another look.
The foul had a ball out at Ben’s, super cage-free, and a protective coup that they could check in and out of at their leisure. They weren’t held hostage and forced into assimilation through food, although they did get an optional ground Wheat supplement added to their natural diet. They had free reign of the place, Cow patty crawlers and compost piles, and they liked to sneak into the barn for a bite of sweet feed when we weren’t looking. So definitely free range, with a 'healthy' dose of gluten to boot, but I’m not here to critique another’s diet.
It almost even looks symbiotic. We provide them a safe home, protection from the Fox, a cozy place to lay, and all we ask for in return is every single one of your unborn babies. And as for protection, I think it’s more like us protecting our investment, livestock doesn’t go for Chicken scratch anymore. Well, can’t they just leave? And some did, or started laying elsewhere at least, so we were on a mission to sniff out their new digs. Couldn’t be too far, probably just in the barn or something, there’s no way they’d adventure out into the wooded wild. Why, they wouldn’t even survive ten minutes out there.
Ah, I see, the uber cage-free leaves the farmer’s conscience clear, while leaving no threat of dinner running off, because they’re surrounded by an unnavigable circle of predators who want more than just their eggs. Kinda starting to seem a little cagey, or at least a little fence-ish.
But not all Chickens are so, well, chicken. In Kauai, Hawaii, the Chickens have gone back to the wild. They survived a hurricane and now live in the woods, and they are super freakin tough. They had to be in order to survive, and all those that weren’t, didn’t. Nature selected the strongest, fastest, and smartest birds, and they’ve evolved to become a formidable opponent for even the foulest of players. Now we’re talking my language, go sports, this is definitely a Chicken fight I can get behind. I bet it’s a bit more challenging to gather eggs from these creatures left to their own devices, than from the mechanically separating devices of the modern egg factory. I’m so down. I love eggs from my head down to my feet, so if I can at all help it, I’m gonna keep eating them.
Eating tiny little unborn babies of my fine feathered friends? Sounds pretty ruthless, hardly civilized, though I doubt there are too many ruths left in the plumply populated poultry prison camps of our most civil union. So what do my animal guides have to say on the issue? Game on. My new bff, brother Copperhead, he’s got no moral dilemma separating egg whites from their mothers, and if you can’t trust a serpent’s dinner recommendations...
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I'd imagine it'll be quite a bit more challenging than cracking a carton, definitely not as convenient, but at least our laziness isn't at the cost of our living-stocks livelihood. Be tough to get more eggs than would fit in one basket, nowhere near a surplus when you're providing for a tribe, and that's precisely the point. Living in excess has destroyed the planet, or is about to anyway. Our grotesque overconsumption of anything they could put a dollar figure on, has drained our mother of vital bodily fluids, which only widens our species-wide disconnect from the energy of the planet. The language of the Earth. The songs that our mother sings to us while we sleep, preparing us to wake up in a good way. Helping us to grow in our understanding of the connection shared with every single living thing of this planet.
Every cell of this globalized superpower, is a supporting character, who together compose the ensemble cast of the greatest stage play on Earth. Everyone's got a role, the part they were born to play, plus there's even a little room for improv. Lines change, the script adapts, the show evolves very night, but it all happens pretty organically. Everyone seems to go with the flow, never missing a beat, all tuned-in to the reassuring guidance of the observing director, who's chosen the most fit to provide each contribution to this perpetually sold-out star-studded masterpiece. But you know those new york broadway types...
So the show goes on great, for a long long time, but then this kid, one of the recent additions to the cast, decides that he's the next big thing and the whole world goes to his head. Mr Ego. He thinks the whole thing is about him. He's the shining star of a story whose script reads nothing of the like, but it's his destiny to have creative control over one of the most classic love stories of all time. He's on his way up, just had to climb over a few fallen players to get there. By now, there's been so many lines rewritten to accommodate for the tunnel-visioned selfishness of an overworked actor, to a point that many cast members have been cut out altogether, as the primitive pretender looks around to find himself in monologue. And who says there's no monoculture left in the arts?
Except that no matter how many rewrites happen, the play is still not about him. It is about a glorious transformation of being, not a disappointing descendence of unvolving. He was not left alone to provide every facet of an infinitely complex unfolding of history. The play's not about history. It's about herstory. Her story. Unci Maka. Grandmother Earth. Your life story is about what you do to strengthen the plot of hers.
But he wasn't alone on stage it turns out, the remaining cast was still trying to perform the piece, though they had somehow been downgraded to background extras. Their weakened voices easily muffled by the overpowering presence of such large footprints.
We certainly have a dominating voice, but we're caught in a loop of rationalizing destructive behavior in the name of increasing that very voice's dominion. Sounds like a confusing cluster of stage chatter, but we have a trick up our sleeve. A new tool to help us drown out our mother's symphonic lullaby in exchange for three chord mainstream pop. A purely human invention to prove the pre-assumed hypothesis of human superiority. A self-fulfilling prophecy of planetary prominence, as we award ourselves the power of attorney over our sick and dying mother. There's contracts and paperwork and signatures and stuff, but they're all in 'human,' because we're the deciders, and you don't get a vote unless you speak our foreign language.
*******
Yes, language, human language, at least the colonized phonetic written language. It extended our ability to communicate about nonsense, as it constricted our ability to listen to anyone other than ourselves. It made possible the abstract concepts that would never be conceivable with a homegrown indigenous language, like humans and nature being two separate things.
Now, I'm not gonna suggest that we stop reading and writing, at least not until we finish this thing, but I am going to open a dialogue exploring the undeniable effect that a written text of arbitrary symbols, has had on the fluid oral traditions of a dialect based on a connection with the land, and a resonance with the surrounding natural world. It is a language based on strictly human sounds, human thought processes, a human concept of intelligence, and designed to differentiate between nature and the two-leggeds with words like 'property.' And concepts like owning another living organism, or an entire habitat of them, an impossibility with a communication system interwoven with the fabric of the local ecology. It's embedded as deeply as the subtle nuances of capitalizing the colonies, as they are permitted to tower over the lowercase citizens of our planet.
Indigenous, means 'occurring naturally of a place.' Arising from the land. A piece of a community in which your ancestors compose the hills, and your microbiology is interwoven with the fabric of the forest floor. An indigenous language born in a particular bioregion, and consequently allowed to grow and evolve alongside an extended family of cohabitation, will undoubtedly hold the key to unlocking many secrets of the scenery. I'm not even talking about the casted spelling of magic words that open portals into the dreamtime, nah, I'm just talking about food and stuff.
Whichever indigenous community used to live underneath of whatever concrete colony you do now, their oral tradition connected them to the Earth, ancient wisdom, and an understanding of planetary systems that science is only now discovering. I know first hand about a spiritual connection with Unci Maka, but I know that you can't just tell someone about it, so for the skeptics, I'll pretend that I'm not talking about literally communicating with the plants.
They definitely knew a lot about the plants from somewhere though, so if it wasn't through an instinctual connection to the living energy of their native roots, we'll just assume it was through trial and error that led to an endless about of disappearing plant wisdom. So as the first people found a new plant and thoroughly exhausted their trials and errors, they documented the various uses and had to commit them to memory somehow. Names that described the lifeforms around them was a good start, and then came stories that personified the Plant Nation, or the Plant People, chronicling each plant spirit's journey, how their energies live on in the leaves today, and the many ways in which they provide for the two-legged nation.
A mnemonic way to pass down generations of collected data, but when spoken in their native tongue, there is another level of cryptic clue uncovered. The rhythmic cadence and flow of the dialogue is in time with the land, the tones are in key with the birds, the humans are a part of the orchestra. So naming a bird after what it sounds like, and then tuning your body to the exact pitch of theirs, and then a story about how to hunt them and where in your local neighborhood they like to hang out, yep, bird skills unlocked.
There's also unspoken lessons of an entire way of life, an eco-friendly worldview whose philosophy is completely lost upon translation into a disconnected language, one whose root words are in concrete and not soil. A human-centric language cannot convey an accurate representation of "Mitakuye Oiyasin," "We are all related." I can say that the Beaver is my brother, but you don't read that literally, or on any type of level that begins to explain this concept in the same way we feel it in our hearts.
Our language is built on arrangements of abstract symbols that represent human mouth shapes, in contrast, oral languages are composed of the sounds that are evoked from the emotions created by the living landscape that envelops their entire way of life. Pagan languages connect people to the Earth as their mind transports them to a grounded reality, phonetic language can only be visualized as letter sequences floating through empty space.
An Earthly dialect contains no translation for 'mine.' No 'property.' No 'religion.' God was not separate from nature, God was all around, in every single plant, animal, rock, cloud and Wakinyan. Only with a disconnected language of abstract separation, was a God who was not of this planet able to be written in, which explains why the missionaries were the number one salesmen for the new phonetic alphabet.
Don't quite know if it explains the violent measures used to force the God's english onto their native tongues though. Hard to blame the God fearing missionaries who were just doing their jobs, plus, I bet it scared them when the vocalizations of the natives seemed to resonate with the land in a way that their own speech didn't even attempt, just like the other ones they burned at the stake.
*******
So maybe I need to learn Lakota to uncover more mysteries, but for now I'll be happy with chickenese. I know that so far, I'm pulling for the wild Chicken challenge, but I understand that there will be concessions to this Chicken stand. We're not gonna be egg rich. It'll be ok. Part of this transition will be us remembering how to share, forgetting about excess and eggstravagance, as we reconnect to a diverse family who can provide for us, as long as we honor and respect the other members of our community.
It's ok if we don't eat an egg everyday. If a predator of humans emerges in the coming days, I bet we wouldn't mind if they took a day off here and there. So maybe we have to use our cunning and guile to outsmart the nest guard, or just plain brawn, or possibly take down the bird too and I could use the eggs for some double-breaded drumsticks. I guarantee that it'll taste good, and you won't take a single bite for granted as you savor every morsel of this most precious gift of life's energy.
That's how it is supposed to be. Gratitude. Wopila Tanka. Thank you Unci Maka for this incredible gift of life. If you actually take the time to cherish every bite, as you recognize the sacrifice that another has made so the you could be nourished, it becomes easy to be satisfied with just a small taste of yummy goodness. Like a tiny little yummy Bluebird egg. Ew! Aw! What a tyrant! Why a cute little Bluebird? Well, why not?
And not even just the blue ones, I figure if I can only justify eating eggs of an unkempt variety, then I'll be taking anything I can get ahold of. If I can find the nest, I bet I can pretty easily overpower the security detail. They'll be the tiniest wobbling weebles, but their size would force me to be meticulous and thorough in their handling and preparation. Bluebird benedict. Or maybe a wildwood weed Dandelion brownie. Either way, the small portions will make up for it in genuine nutrient richness, as we learn that we don't actually need a stomach full of empty calories to survive.
Or, I could go on a wild Goose chase, a bigger payoff, but a bit more risk as well. I recently had a deviled Goose egg. A loose Goose. It was the bestest, creamiest, most delectable deviled egg I'd ever had. They'd taken up shop on a pond at a friends house, so she found the nest and grabbed half of them for dinner. If she had taken them all, the Goose would have no reason to return, so she left some and the supply was replenished. She is aware that her actions affect the livelihood of the webbed life that crosses her path, it's easy once you cultivate a connection with the world growing around you. Take all the eggs... no more eggs. Pick all the Sage... no more Sage. Kill all the Buffalo... no more indians?
*******
I'd been out at Benjamin's for a month and a half by this point. Sweat everyday but two. Epic food, and I'd only experienced a brief window of the cornucopia that flowered here. I missed the Kiwis and Figs, the Pawpaw grove down by the creek wasn't ripe yet, and apparently you have to eat them fresh, they don't travel well at all, just my kinda dine-in dinner service. I'd been typing everyday til sweat, then getting back to it once the dinner and drum crew vacated the barn at night. I was getting close, and so was Sun Dance.
Everybody was going. They were all dancing. They were all praying. I came here for a couple of days, over a month ago, I knew about the Sun Dance, but just kept grinding away without expectations, maybe if I finish it I'll end up going too. A water protector who I hadn't known at camp, came to visit for a week before caravanning to ceremony, Leela had worked in the Rosebud herb tent, an herbalist....
And then we made the dopest Peach cobbler. Never one to leave a perfectly good cobbler alone, we topped it off with som