picking flowers

Man and Pipe

George Kishketon, Kickapoo, Tempera on paper

George Kishketon was a survivor of the Carlisle Indian School, an infamous colonial residential institution in Pennsylvania that opened in 1879. Kishketon attended Carlisle between 1898 and 1903, and he lived through the brutality of the federally mandated institution, which had been intentionally designed by a colonial militarized regime to “kill the Indian and save the man.”1 Very little information was recorded about this artist, perhaps due to the anti-Indigenous political climate throughout the U.S. during Kishketon’s lifetime, primarily stemming from the desire of federal and state governments to possess the lands of Native people.

The Flatstyle painting Man and Pipe portrays a man lounging at sunset and smoking his pipe. His hair is adorned with two hawk feathers attached at his scalp-lock braid. He is wrapped in a red and blue blanket and wears bright blue beaded cuffs. The layered halos of the setting sun rest upon a blue horizon line that is anchored to the foreground by two tuft-like clusters of bluegrass.

in a book about Western Concerns.

cannot stress enough that this book is obsessed with the enlightenment concept of universality, does not understand the difference between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, and misuses appropriated north american indigenous teachings about the cannibals (w**d*g*) to make some kind of bizarre point that all culture/community is inherently cannibalistic and consumptive. and that the Western world's problem is NOT that we believe that all cultures and human systems are inherently consumptive and cannibalistic but that we have not appropriately reckoned with it.

indigenous north american teachings about the cannibals are not a spooky story or a crypid. it's a rather straightforward description of the impact of abuse on an individual and a community. the cannibal is not inherently cannibalistic, they are a human person who suffered and then made others suffer. the most widespread misinterpretation is a monster who eats people, when it is in fact referring to a human person who eats another human person during a time of famine in order to avoid starvation and then undergoes a supernatural transformation to reflect their crime. while we understand famine to be an act of god, north american indigenous belief systems rooted in an ethic of ecological kinship relations usually place the blame upon human mismanagement and overharvesting. it's not just a bad reaction to hard times, it's a human-manufactured crisis used to justify human atrocities. the onus is upon the community to respect and steward the land and their own wellbeing through it.

another better example is about a little girl whose father died. when her mother remarried, her stepfather began to direct inappropriate attention to the little girl, and instead of protecting the little girl as she deserved, the mother became competitive and resentful towards her. driven away from her home by the abuse, the little girl lept off of a cliff and her body disappeared, transforming her into a cannibal and freeing her spirit to haunt the community. the mother, haunted by her daughter's restless spirit, became bitter and cruel. the community, haunted by what had happened to the little girl, separated from each other and grew suspicious of each other.

these are not stories of the inherently cannibalistic & consumptive nature of community, they are WARNINGS of what happens when community BECOMES cannibalistic and consumptive and selfish. because the social structures in place were NOT cannibalistic and consumptive. they were explicitly mutualistic.

and instead of learning about positive cascades & mutualism and what it means to engage in a kinship ethic with all life in an ecosystem and confer dignity unto other living beings, deborah root takes it as proof that all cultures are as inherently cruel and hostile to life as ours, others just manage it better.

in a book about Western Concerns.

cannot stress enough that this book is obsessed with the enlightenment concept of universality, does not understand the difference between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, and misuses appropriated north american indigenous teachings about the cannibals (w**d*g*) to make some kind of bizarre point that all culture/community is inherently cannibalistic and consumptive. and that the Western world's problem is NOT that we believe that all cultures and human systems are inherently consumptive and cannibalistic but that we have not appropriately reckoned with it.

indigenous north american teachings about the cannibals are not a spooky story or a crypid. it's a rather straightforward description of the impact of abuse on an individual and a community. the cannibal is not inherently cannibalistic, they are a human person who suffered and then made others suffer. the most widespread misinterpretation is a monster who eats people, when it is in fact referring to a human person who eats another human person during a time of famine in order to avoid starvation and then undergoes a supernatural transformation to reflect their crime. while we understand famine to be an act of god, north american indigenous belief systems rooted in an ethic of ecological kinship relations usually place the blame upon human mismanagement and overharvesting. it's not just a bad reaction to hard times, it's a human-manufactured crisis used to justify human atrocities. the onus is upon the community to respect and steward the land and their own wellbeing through it.

another better example is about a little girl whose father died. when her mother remarried, her stepfather began to direct inappropriate attention to the little girl, and instead of protecting the little girl as she deserved, the mother became competitive and resentful towards her. driven away from her home by the abuse, the little girl lept off of a cliff and her body disappeared, transforming her into a cannibal and freeing her spirit to haunt the community. the mother, haunted by her daughter's restless spirit, became bitter and cruel. the community, haunted by what had happened to the little girl, separated from each other and grew suspicious of each other.

these are not stories of the inherently cannibalistic & consumptive nature of community, they are WARNINGS of what happens when community BECOMES cannibalistic and consumptive and selfish. because the social structures in place were NOT cannibalistic and consumptive. they were explicitly mutualistic.

and instead of learning about positive cascades & mutualism and what it means to engage in a kinship ethic with all life in an ecosystem and confer dignity unto other living beings, deborah root takes it as proof that all cultures are as inherently cruel and hostile to life as ours, others just manage it better.

in a book about Western Concerns.

cannot stress enough that this book is obsessed with the enlightenment concept of universality, does not understand the difference between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, and misuses appropriated north american indigenous teachings about the cannibals (w**d*g*) to make some kind of bizarre point that all culture/community is inherently cannibalistic and consumptive. and that the Western world's problem is NOT that we believe that all cultures and human systems are inherently consumptive and cannibalistic but that we have not appropriately reckoned with it.