Skywoman Falling

Halfway through the first week of the semester, I boarded a plane to Calgary to attend the 2019 Sevengen Indigenous Student Energy Summit. The purpose of the summit was to raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities in Canada’s transition to sustainable energy, specifically from the perspective of Indigenous youth and elders.

For me and many other attendees, the summit was an emotional experience. It wasn’t just a conference about environmental sustainability and climate change; it was about bringing people together from all over and creating a sense of community filled with insight and laughter. Many Indigenous people have a strong belief that everything is connected, so even though the summit was about clean energy and food sustainability, we discussed issues within our communities such as the issue of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, substance abuse, the loss of language and culture, residential schools, and how these all affect our perception of our own identities.

After the summit ended, I wanted to expand my knowledge of indigenous issues. I specifically wanted to start researching about the fusion of indigenous ways of knowing and traditional Western science, since I am a lover of both. I started reading “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which discusses just that. She is from the Potawatomi nation, a native American nation in the Great Plains region, yet I noticed a lot of similarities between our cultures. She begins the book with the Creation story; the story of Sky Woman falling.

Karonhia:ke, The Sky World, was home to our most ancient ancestors, the Sky People. There was a sacred tree that grew in the center of that world, which the people were instructed not to disturb. One day, a pregnant woman began digging at its base so she could harvest the roots to make tea. She dug too deep and a hole was created in the floor of the Skyworld and she fell through while peering down into the unknown. As she fell, she was carried onto the back of a large turtle by a pair of geese. With the help of the animals, soil, and some seeds and roots she managed to grab from the Tree as she fell, she created the land we now walk on. This why many indigenous nations refer to North America as “Turtle Island”. The first plants to grow were sweetgrass, tobacco, sage, and cedar; our sacred medicines. Sweetgrass is believed to be the first to grow of these plants, and symbolizes the hair of mother earth. The strong, sweet fragrance is used as a ceremonial tool. Our memories are strongest when they are associated with our olfactory senses, so smelling sweetgrass is a way we remember our history.

The story of Skywoman’s journey is important in our culture because it holds our beliefs, our history, and our relationship with nature, all in one. Her story is used as guide for living. The way each person lives is unique and the way society should act changes with time. For Skywoman, these Original Instructions meant  respecting hunting, family life, and ceremonies that made sense for her time. To quote Kimmerer herself: “Children hearing the sky woman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the Earth” (5). The creation of our world, from the Iroquois perspective, was the result of human beings cooperating and interacting positively with nature. For example, sweetgrass. This plant is best planted not by seed, but by placing the roots directly into the ground. Even more so, the grass grows longest and most fragrant when it’s tended to by humans.

As I grew older and transferred to school off-reserve, I was exposed to other creation stories, like that of Genesis. I noticed striking similarities between the stories of Skywoman and Eve, and I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps our story was influenced or even changed by the early colonizers. Kimmerer compares Eve and Skywoman’s journeys and explains how they couldn’t be more different. Throughout human history, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. Once again, Kimmerer explains this concept better than I ever could: “One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a co-creator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants . The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her heaven” (7).

One of the most important aspects of the story is that Skywoman did not come to this world alone. She knew her children and grandchildren would inherit the world after she passed, so she worked to create a world that would prosper for generations to come. Through her actions of reciprocity with the land, it is said that that’s when the original immigrant became indigenous; to live as if your children’s futures mattered.

In Western ways of knowing, there is a hierarchy of beings on Earth. Humans at the very top, and the plants and animals at the bottom. In the Indigenous worldview however, human beings are referred to as the Brothers of creation. We have the least amount of experience with how to live so therefore we have the most to learn. This is why many indigenous cultures refer to the plants and animals as our teachers. For example, the dragonfly. This insect is the greatest flyer in nature. They can hover, fly backwards, and even upside down. Using high speed cameras, researchers can see how these creatures work, and try to imitate them, which can lead to advancements in drone production for a variety of applications.

Kimmerer recalls a day in one of her ecology classes when she gave the students a survey. She asked them to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. All of her 200 students said it’s a bad mix. Next, she asked them to rate their understanding of the positive interactions between humans and the environment. The median response was “none”. She remembers thinking “How can we begin to move towards ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what that path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Sky woman” (6).

Coming back to the conference I attended, SevenGen addresses this division between nature and man.The name SevenGen was inspired by two things; a prophecy and a philosophy. The prophecy of the Lakota people was spoken by a holy man who predicted that the seventh generation of his people would be the ones to bring about and lead change. Since his starting point was the arrival of the white man in the mid 19th century, the indigenous youth of today are that generation. The Seventh Generation Principle is based on the ancient Iroquoian philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. This principle was so important to my people that it was codified in the

In 1987, United States Senate even acknowledged that the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Nations served as a model for the Constitution of the United States. And since the U.S. Constitution was a model for the charter of the United Nations, the Iroquois Great Law of Peace is also a basis of international law.The only parts of the Great Law of Peace that the founding fathers didn’t incorporate, includes that of the seventh generation principle.

Overall, I felt that the conference I attended was important because it inspired me to continue my pursuit of knowledge of combining the traditional sciences with the indigenous ways of knowing . The conference also led me to discover “Braiding Sweetgrass” which showed how to bridge that gap and evoke a sense of hope for a way forward through tradition teachings, modern science, and community.

References: Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.