There Is A Season

When I was reading Tim Frandy’s dissertation I couldn’t help but hear this song over and over in my head. It might be ironic that this to me feels like an Indigenous perspective but actually comes directly from lines in the Bible. Given some of the complex interactions with religious missionaries, in particular Jesuits, and Native Americans, this might not be the best choice of a song to represent their world view, but creep in it did.

This version is the first recorded version of Turn! Turn! Turn! This folk song has many renditions, and this one doesn’t sound like the most iconic one from The Byrds. I included this version in my response because the Limeliters was how Lou Gotlieb made the money that he would later use to start and maintain his Morningstar commune outside of San Francisco. 

This song and Tim's writing and again when reading Mountain Wolf Woman reminded me of the first seasonal round I ever saw. When I saw this cyclic, seasonal representation of food and life and culture, I was very emotional. Even though Frandy's life was bound by subsistence through the seasons, mine never was.  I have been learning to see nature in new ways. I think about the patterns of Indigenous populations in North America followed a structure and routine beyond the basic instinct for survival. There is a misconception that Native Americans had to wander to find their food. The intention, the ethnobotany, the knowledge has been erased from memory.

I have also been trying to figure out the language to discuss the animacy of nature. And the ancestry of plants as a way to understand the scope of family in a different way. Mountain Wolf Woman doesn’t really talk about the life of plants. Nor does she explain the plants included in the garden. We know there was corn, but what else? Mountain Wolf Woman’s story takes place across several locations, including some of her seasonal details. I have been thinking a lot about which activities would be appropriate for both Wisconsin and Nebrask and which might only exist in one place or another. Huron Smith did an ethnobotanical study of the Ho-Chunk in Wisconsin, while Melvin Gilmore looked at the Winnebago in Nebraska. I am hoping to have the opportunity to look at both of the sources and compare experiences. Mountain Wolf Woman’s memories will further aid in my interpretation of these texts.

Since Mountain Wolf Woman was moving around throughout the narrative it might give the impression that she wasn’t connected with her place in the world, but no matter where she found herself, she and her family knew how to follow the seasons of the area. The Ho-Chunk understood the world around them, the rhythms of life and nature. They also felt compelled back to their ancestral land, time and time again.

In spring the muskrats were trapped. I find it interesting that Mountain Wolf Woman made a point to comment saying that her mother would “save the bodies” (8). I would not expect the flesh of these animals to go to waste, but perhaps not all trappers made such efforts. I enjoyed reading about the process of drying the muskrat, including the detailed information about the construction of the apparatus. This cooking process was attended to by the women, and the dried meat was stored for summer use. 

The water lilies were dug out by women’s feet in the water and the root would float to the surface. I love when Mountain Wolf Woman says, “they took off their shoes, put on old dresses and went wading into the water” (9). So many ethnobotanical explorations don’t understand that these little human, pedestrian moments are the things that become meaningful in the construction of culture. These are the types of stories that I love to read. Mountain Wolf Woman continues that the roods would be gathered in a gunny sack and then hauled back to camp. At camp they would be scraped and sliced then hung them up to dry.

Then the garden would be planted. After that the blueberries were ripe. “Under the trees the blueberries grew in profusion” (10). Lurie explains in a note about the agroforestry techniques involved with promoting the growth of berries through burning. 

This autobiography is the first I have heard of the exploitation of mice food caches, though it does not surprise me. Gilmore has written about this in his fieldwork, but I have not read his ethnographies in their entirety. I am excited to learn about it more and see where else it might be practiced. I have been trying to find seasonal rounds of the tribes in Wisconsin. 

I learned about the animacy of nature from Robyn Kimmerer. It is also from her that I learn the Ho-Chunk perspective of personhood. Though she presents their own words in her article "Speaking of Nature" it is unlikely I would have found them on my own. The amendments to the Ho-Chunk Nation tribal constitution are recent. In September 2016 , the Ho-Chunk Nation was the first tribal nation in the United States to have their tribal constitution to recognize the rights of nature. The Ho-Chunk recognize that “ecosystems and natural communities within the Ho-Chunk territory possess an inherent, fundamental, and inalienable right to exist and thrive.”

I try to remember how I felt about nature before Kimmerer used the word animacy to describe it. Did I think the rocks were alive? Did I consider the life-force of nature metaphorical? I can't say for sure what I used to think because past cognitive states are rarely static nor captured precisely. I do know that the power of the natural world has always felt palpable to me, so the suggestion of animacy is easy to accept.

Curtis Zunigha speaking on the Lenape (Delaware) interpretation of animacy.