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.

victoria chose not to marry the man she truly loved in order to marry the man who was more devoted to her and who would be obedient, a survival choice in the far more sexist time period she was married in, when a man's power to curtail his wife was far more complete. she never mentions the man she loved again and performs an empty devotion to the husband she chose in order to remain the master of her own domain. and her husband cannot see that. he can never see his wife completely and know that she chose him in order to remain in control. he must believe the whole time that she loved him more than the other, that they moved past it.

rachel's immediate reaction to the witness' explanation is that she is going to die, and we see why. throughout the movie, nicky does not listen to her once. he performs a caring spouse routine to his family's standards by constantly ignoring her wishes. he pressures her about children relentlessly despite her clearly stated preference to have NO children. he decides to drive 8 hours to search for a wedding dress rather than wait for their friends to call back against her repeated pleas to stay with her. the fact that he did not actually believe her about the airplane's doom in their meetcute story is stupid but it is also very significant. nicky pays lipservice to rachel's instincts and anxieties--just enough to calm her into compliance with his desperate attempts to mimic his parents' 'perfect' marriage. he hunts the fox doggedly all day because his father told him to, ignoring his fiancee and pretending to himself that her anxieties are nonsense (always nonsense) until she turns to nell for support. of course rachel does not turn to nicky, why would she? his immediate reaction to every situation is an attempt to disprove and change her conclusions.

nell knows that her soulmate is her own choice, and she is actively in divorce proceedings. she has decided to stop choosing a man that she loves but who is mean to her and who she knows will never ever change for the sake of her wellbeing. she can only look at the man who is convinced that they are meant for each other with shock and grief, knowing also that he must have loved his first wife with the same broken and impotent sort of love that he gave to nell. loving, in his mind, does not require any attempt to avoid causing pain to the one he loves.