You Are Not Native to the Planet
I have heard and read many times people expressing that they are native to the planet as if this gives them a special privilege to be anywhere they choose to be. Of course, such a statement betrays a colonial understanding of what native-ness truly is. I would offer that native isn’t something you grant to yourself, rather it is state of being that comes from choices you make. It is to be deeply intertwined with place, and without a specific place, native-ness isn’t possible.
We currently live in a time where people are born in one place and may live in many locations across the continent. Such a life denies native-ness. This isn’t a judgement against those that have moved frequently, it is simply an objective reality. Native-ness is not solely where you are born, it is about what makes up your physical and spiritual being. To be truly native, you must be of the land, and of a specific land. The air you breath, the water your drink, the food you ingest, must come from a place—and that place will define your version of native-ness. Even your symbiotic flora will reflect your place, and it will be different from other places. The more places you rely upon the more dilute your native-ness becomes, until at last it dissolves into nothingness with another purchase from Amazon. This culture of progress, a massive juggernaut of ecocide and political dominance, is a space-based society, never the seeing the underlying differences between locations. Instead, it sets up its housing developments, big box stores, and agricultural fields as if all places were the same, never bending and flowing with each individual theater in this version of creation we find ourselves in.
With this term native-ness, I am not speaking about a political designation nor am I treading on First Nations definitions. Native-ness, in the sense I am writing, is a choice that anyone can make. It is decision to be rooted in one location, to be created of that setting, and breathed into full being by that place. It is not possible by importing your food and water from and exporting your wastes to other places. It is to be molded and shaped by a specific landscape such that your knowledge of place, ecological and cultural, becomes manifest. Further, you could not leave the land (permanently) because it is owed your body upon death (The Original Agreement). And your native-ness becomes stronger and shines more brightly the more generations you are connected. Native-ness, in these times, is easily broken and must be started over by those who understand and crave this state of being.
This writing is not a call to end all travel and never visit other lands. It is not a statement that those born in urban wastes should reside there as if in penance their entire life. It is a call to make a choice—pick a land and make a stand. Eat and drink as much as you can from that scene, even be clothed of the fabrics and hides that come from there. Learn the natural songs and rhythms that flow through everything that is of that place. Allow that spirit to enter your body and re-shape that which an industrial force has twisted and maligned. Protect it as if it were your mother (because it is). And, let go of your fear of death because you are a part of a never-ending being made up of many parts (like the cells that die and are reborn in your body). That being you are part has many versions and many different names. The one I belong to is called Maine by the colonizers who came here or Ckuwaponahkik by the people who first lived here. Regardless of the name we use, these beings of place are something that we are currently wiping out of existence because we can’t even see them. Place is the enemy of a colonial population since it prohibits the destruction of anywhere—because they are all unique and worthy of existence. That existence requires that we yield and become part of the whole (rather than dominate and re-shape). Place is the original crafter of Homo sapiens and responsible for all the diversity of humans on the planet. What we are doing now is the exact opposite of what we have always done, and it will have ill consequences.
You are not native to the planet. You are an inhabitant of the planet. But, you can become native to a place. However, your native-ness will always be denied to you through implicit and explicit policies by this civilization we are enmeshed in. Native-ness is the original resistance, and it is a responsibility to cultivate in ourselves and our children.