One of the most contentious issues facing indigenous peoples around the world today is the fight to maintain a connection and identity to – and with – traditional homelands. This fight, largely the historical outcome of imperial and colonial processes over the last four hundred years, is in many cases the only fight that matters for indigenous peoples.
After working closely with indigenous peoples in three different countries, I have learned just how important and closely held the land is. For indigenous peoples, the culture, the language, and the identity of the individual is directly tied to the land. It is the land that informs indigenous peoples and their world views (1). One question that has arisen as a result of this understanding centers on the ways and methods indigenous people can use to maintain their relationship to the land – often traditional homelands that have been occupied for generations – in the face of such overwhelming colonial and imperial forces, both present and past. In the recent book by professor Lisa Brooks,
The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast,
we are given an example from Native North America of one way this identity was maintained.
Looking at indigenous Native American writers, activists, and leaders of colonial Northeast North America, Brooks convincingly argues that
Samson Occom,
Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and
William Apess all used the mechanism of writing to maintain their Native identity and cultural ties to the land. In relying on the tool of writing, these indigenous Native American peoples were able to maintain – and in some instances reclaim – their rights, identity, and culture in the face of incredible colonial and imperial forces. In fact, as Brooks points out this method was indigenous to the Algonquian, Iroquois, Ojibwa, Abenaki, and other Native Americans of the Northeast as demonstrated by their long tradition of making awikhigan.
As Brooks documents, the root word
awigha- denotes “to draw,” “to write,” “to map.” The word awikhigan, which originally described birchbark messages, maps, and scrolls also came to encompass books and letters during the course of the initial colonial period. Likewise, the root
–igan is the Abenaki word for instrument, such as a book. Awikhigan, therefore, is a tool for image making, for writing, for transmitting an image or idea from one person to another, from one tribe to another, over waterways, over space, and over time. An Ojibwe scroll is an awikhigan. William Apess’ letters denouncing the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans are awikhigan. In honoring this tradition, the “road map” that Brooks used to navigate her trip – her research – is also an awikhigan. For Native Americans of the Northeast, as well as for many other indigenous peoples, writing and drawing are both forms of image making.
It is with this understanding and nuanced levels of meaning that we can begin to appreciate the contribution
The Common Pothas to not only Native American studies of the Northeast, but also to the larger picture of how indigenous peoples have been able to resist colonial and imperial forces and maintain ties to their traditional lands.
The Common Potis one such mapping, a mapping of how Native American Indians in the Northeast used writing as an instrument to reclaim their lands and reconstruct their communities.
As is the case with other indigenous peoples (2), Native American writers often break down the standard binary between word and image and position it within a relational framework. Similarly, they also challenge us to avoid what Muskogee Native American author Craig Womack argues in
Red on Red
as “oppositional thinking that separates orality and literacy wherein the oral constitutes authentic culture and the written contaminated culture.” As Womack argued, and Brooks demonstrates in
The Common Pot,such notions actually hinder our understanding of the vast Native American written tradition. Until Brooks’ contribution, such an understanding has framed the discussion of awikhigan and the place it had in Native American Indian resistance to colonial and imperial processes.
Another part of the reframing of this binary that Brooks work reveals – that between word and image – is how this also forces us to reexamine the place where the awikhigan was made. Echoing Keith Basso’s description of place-making in
Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache
Lisa Brooks puts as much emphasis on where events occurred as she does on the chronology and outcome of such events.
As the late Vine Deloria Jr. argued, the Native American Indian understanding of place focuses more on what happened in a place – spatially, geographically, contextually – then on what happened when.
The method and use of writing has been an instrumental tool for the reconstruction of indigenous Native American ties to the land and for resistance to colonial and imperial processes. As Brooks thoroughly documents in
The Common Pot,it is not a new one. Rather, indigenous authors have been well aware of the power of writing for some time, and have successfully used it for several hundred years. As indigenous people, scholars, and others are increasingly calling attention to, the need to recover and recognize the work of early indigenous writers is essential in any process of decolonization.
The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeastby Lisa Brooks makes an important contribution to this effort for Native North America; hopefully similar works will appear soon for other regions and indigenous peoples.
