I think we have to allow for emerging identities. That's b…

Corn provides a striking model for this. It is so central to some civilizations that it features in their creation stories. It is food and it is also medicine. And there are songs and ceremonies related to it that are different in different civilizations.

Who owns it?

Corn, maize, didn't always exist. We know that. It developed over centuries of hybridization and selecting for traits. It was such a complex process that for a while scientists didn't even think it was related to teosinte, but other scientists proved that it is.

It started in Mexico, went down to Peru where it developed more, came back to Mexico where it transformed that society and then travelled across the continent to the Hauds.

It is food and medicine and ceremony.

Who owns it?

We are corn.

We do not exist as we did thousands of years ago. We also have developed over centuries of hybridization and selecting for traits. We continue to develop and right now a new people is emerging. The Anishnaabe aren't the only ones with this prophecy btw.

In as much as whiteness uses pan-Indianism to flatten our experiences into a single story, we have to allow for emergence. For people who count 3 or 4 different peoples in their immediate family. For people living in diaspora and forming communities without their community.

And Idk why somebody who isn't Anishnaabe would use our medicines. Maybe that's all they know. Maybe it's what they need. Should they look to their own people? Sure. Maybe they can't for any number of reasons.

And what even are our medicines? What medicines only belong to us.

This is obviously not the same as spiritually bankrupt white people appropriating our medicines because they're too lazy to do anything else. Find your own history and your own ways and if you still lack you can become part of our communities.

I don't walk past white people when I carry the smudge. My son doesn't tell white people they can't make an offering at the fire. The lodge I go to doesn't tell white people they can't sweat or come to moon ceremony.

This idea that Nish medicines are only for Nish ppl.

nope

PS. If you are interested in the development of agriculture globally as well as in the Americas may I recommend @TidesHistory by @Patrick_Wyman Fascinating stuff.

https://t.co/xlGpaBNVc2

I think we have to allow for emerging identities. That's basically my thread. Traditionalists (the op) are important and necessary because they hold onto important knowledge.

But diaspora and urban Indigenous inevitably means emerging identity with combined medicine.

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I think we have to allow for emerging identities. That's basically my thread. Traditionalists (the op) are important and necessary because they hold onto important knowledge. But diaspora and urban Indigenous inevitably means emerging identity with combined medicine.

More from For later read

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I think we have to allow for emerging identities. That's basically my thread. Traditionalists (the op) are important and necessary because they hold onto important knowledge.

But diaspora and urban Indigenous inevitably means emerging identity with combined medicine.