Yotsìtsyonte O:se and “Going Back on Their Tracks”: Learning to Read Trees and Be My Own Creation Story

Abstract:Rotinonhsonni thoughtways understand trees to be part of an interconnected network of land-based knowledge that spans from time immemorial to the present. As extensions of First Woman, trees are literally my relations, my ancestors. While onkwehonwe (original peoples) have long been able to tap into the knowledge of the land (and many still do), colonialism has significantly disrupted our landed and place-based relationships and consequently our ability to read the land. This article explores, through juxtapositions of Rotinonhsonni oral histories, contemporary Indigenous literature, and a series of trees, the possibility of (re)learning to read and communicate with the land. Renewing relations and modes of relationality to the land in this way has the potential to strengthen Indigenous efforts for self-determination, knowledge resurgence, land reclamation, and nation-to-nation alliances.Each human is a complex, contradictory story. Some stories within us have been unfolding for years, others are trembling with fresh life as they peek above the horizon. Each is a zigzag of emotional design and ancestral architecture. All the stories in the earth's mind are connected.—Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings