Embodied Land

I recently wrote, in Scattergood and the Hub, about “what did not reach us.” What did not reach us is one of the five arcs that form the throughlines of my life that began from what I learned at Scattergood Friends School. We learned about communities of integrity, personal integrity and Quaker practice.

What did not reach us is about what we did NOT learn, i.e. about Quakers as settler-colonists, and our role in the Indian Boarding Schools.

Embodied Land

It surprised me that research I’ve done revealed “Embodied Land” as another of the throughlines of my life experiences.

The reason I can understand that concept now is because of what I’ve learned from my Native friends over the past decade. I’ve learned how integral their relationship to the land is to Indigenous peoples. This is also something that did not reach us.

The land has been important to me in many ways throughout my life, but I hadn’t put those experiences together as relationships with the land.

Both things were true at the same time. My relationship with the land was real. The ignorance was also real.

My Land Experiences

I have had a deep, genuine, lifelong embodied relationship to land and simultaneously, I was almost completely ignorant of what Indigenous peoples’ relationships to those same lands looked like, meant, or required.

I grew up on farms in central Iowa. Scattergood’s name has been changed to Scattergood Friends School and Farm, one indication of the importance of the farm to the school. Not only does significant food for the school come from the farm, but the farm is also used in many ways as an educational tool. When I attended Scattergood in the late 1960s, the sophomore biology class focused on each of us raising pigs. Farm crew was one of our work crews. We also worked in the orchard.

Some of my deepest spiritual experiences occurred when our family camped in the Rocky Mountains. It was a nightmare image of my beloved mountains hidden behind clouds of pollution that triggered my decision to live without a car. That meant that the time I would have spent driving was time I was connected to the land instead. Either by walking, running or riding a bicycle. When I was keeping a log, I was running about 1,100 miles a year.

Not having a car meant that I usually walked to and from work. My photography is almost always about the natural world, and improved significantly when I began to carry my camera with me during these daily walks. I typically take around seventy photos a day.

Marches

It is ironic that marches I was involved with, the 1969 Peace March from the school to Iowa City, the 2013 Climate March from the school to Iowa City, and others were meaningful to me. But I now know I missed these opportunities to intentionally build my relationship to the land.

First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March

This changed for me as I walked the 94 miles along the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline over eight days in 2018. The intention of the march was for a small group of Native and non Native people to spend this extended time together sharing stories and learning about each other. I began to learn about Indigenous relationships with the land as I talked with and observed the ways the Native people shared with us during those long walks down empty Iowa gravel roads.

They pointed out the standing water in the fields that didn’t drain because the topsoil was not preserved when the pipeline’s trench was filled. Instead a mix of soil and clay was used, the clay interfering with the drainage of the fields.

They pointed out various plants growing along the road.

But it was when we would stop each time we actually walked over the pipeline that I began to know the land. I could feel the evil below us. We gathered together, held hands, many were brought to tears.

Now that I know and am still learning

I am now part of the planning committee for the Decolonial Repair Network, created by Sikowis and Eric Anglada to support GPAS and the work of Indigenous-led repair. That work has brought me to the Great Plains Action Society’s Urban Resilience Hub in Iowa City — a little over an acre of land, newly in Indigenous hands, being transformed into a healing sanctuary, mutual aid garden, and community gathering space.

I have spent work weeks there: digging, moving soil, doing what needed doing under Indigenous direction. I was not there to lead or advise. I was there because the land asked for work, and I was part of the community doing it.

Urban Farm at the Urban Resilience Hub