IN THE DARK

Hello from my very dark and snowy farm. The power went out a couple hours ago. We are having wet, heavy snow which knocks it out usually every time. I need a generator… I have thought this every millionth time this has happened for almost twenty years. Obviously I’ll be fine. I’m cozy and alone with the critters. We have a flashlight and a wood stove, though, very little wood. Again, we are fine. 

I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving because I will not celebrate the genocide of millions of Indigenous people on this continent, and now, with the situation is Gaza I am even less inclined if that is even possible. “What about time with your family?” people ask. Well, if I really love and respect them, why would I celebrate something so fucking awful with them? My family are mostly chosen and they don’t tolerate such ideas to begin with anyway. I do understand that since our society is built around these things and it’s some of the only coordinated time off work, it is what it is, and it’s the time we get, to do with as we choose, so some of us go see our families. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty or not want to see your family, I just want to witness it , here, WITH you. I am not the originator of the idea that Thanksgiving is, at the very least, a slap in the face to Indigenous peoples. I didn’t say it first, I’m a little drop in the bucket. It’s the first people of the continent who say it, scream it, over and over and over and over… despite ridicule, threats, violence, emotional torment, and radio silence they keep saying it. And I know they will not stop. It is a comfort to me that there is something out there so worth fighting for. The least I can do is amplify. 

Here in the dark feels right, an evening of silence for the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, on whose land my farm sits. They are still here despite the government and many of the people of Vermont’s best efforts to eradicate them. I’ve heard stories of forced sterilization and going “underground.” I would have too. I have only learned a fraction of what there is to learn from the online teachers of Abenaki practices during covid, but all of it has been mindblowing. The things I’ve learned all pertain to horticulture and are more interesting and complex than any stupid story of aliens coming to earth or any scientific “miracle.” Again and again the stories and lessons are about relationships; physics helping plants that help plants, that helps soil, that helps oxygen that is helping living animals and on and on. The current doesn’t just flow one way either, it’s moves in every direction. The natural rhythm sustains. It is an alternating current of life, death, photosynthesis and language as a living pharmacology. The “helping” multiplies additional helping like a Tesla coil. This is where I think all the answers to healing our world are. The tip of the iceberg I have been privileged enough to see is so beautiful, I can’t begin to imagine what could be. Which makes me a little sad next to the feeling of awe, because if we could all imagine it we could make it happen. Our society blows our chance every passing year. 

This is not meant to be a depressing post, on the contrary. There IS something so worth fighting for. I am so grateful to every single Indigenous person flaunting their aliveness and their alternate displeasure at the way we behave without even thinking. When did we stop thinking? We had to shut our eyes. But we can open them. People are screaming for us to open them and to notice our shared world. Despite genocide, hate, consumerism, poisonus plastic, the patriarchy, the money hoarders, the rapists, the great sadness and the decine and extinction of many vulnerable species… there is our beautiful world. It’s never too late to start helping it. It will take your gift and compound it into twice and three and four times the healing power. We can help her, to help herself, and somewhere down the line, help each other. Can you imagine such a grace? A grace that animates your limbs?

Indigenous Heritage Month may be coming to a close, but I’m gonna keep it going by recommending a book by and about Indigenous people in every post in December too. This post it’s the obvious (or maybe not so obvious?) holy grail “Braiding Sweetgrass” by the incredible Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book saved my human soul.

***This face also keeps my human soul getting out of bed every day. Thanks, Coco