First Medicine: Stories of Water and Now

Abstract

The essay blurs boundaries between art and theory and is intended as an experience of profound relationality, explicitly rejecting exclusive adherence to Eurocentric political and economic theories for their failure to have relevance to Indigenous concerns while situated on Indigenous lands. We acknowledge sacred and economic dynamics that inform each of our subjectivities, resisting binaries that are often applied to individuals through imposed categorizations of settler society. Considering perspectives that exist and carry meaning outside the variety of sociopolitical conceptualizations familiar to us, the authors describe and experience the actual treatment of water, finding Indigenous revisions of Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation useful for better understanding how humans can develop a relationship with water and all animate material as living relatives rather than relating to the world as a series of properties or resources in a globally extractive paradigm.

Key Words:

• Chaudière Falls
• Decolonization
• Primitive Accumulation
• Two Row Wampum
• Water

Notes

1 Zhaaganaashiimowin is the language of the newcomers who arrived in wooden boats. It is also understood that their boats carry their teachings, foods, beliefs, culture, and other aspects of their presence.

2 “Pimizi is the Anishinaabemowin word for the eel” (Allen 2007, 2) For a more robust discussion and context, see the excellent work of William Arthur Allen.

3 See Walking with Miskwaadesi, written by Harquail et al. (2012), for an English interpretation of the story of how Miskwaadesi’s shell was painted by Nanaboozhoo.

4 A reference to language in the Treaty of Point No Point.

5 Etymologically, the word “Canada” comes from the Kanien’kehá:ka language.

6 Kimmerer’s (2016) multiple discussions on rejecting a popular definition of “sustainability” are noteworthy.

7 Jake Edwards spoke at a public talk for the Two Row Renewal Campaign in May 2013.

8 For an excellent analysis of the Asinabka Indigenous Centre, see Smith (2011).