bent to the soil. The shiny black curls tied back with a red bandanna
belong to Daniela. She pushes herself up from her knees and I
watch her tally the number of plants in her plot... 47, 48, 49.
Without looking up she makes notes on her clipboard, slings her
bundle over her shoulder, and moves on. Daniela is a graduate
student and for months we have been planning for this day. This
work has become her thesis project and she’s anxious about
getting it right. On graduate school forms it says that I’m her
professor, but I’ve been telling her all along that it is the plant who
will be her greatest teacher.
On the other side of the field, Theresa looks up, swinging her
braid over her shoulder. She’s rolled the sleeves of her T-shirt,
which reads Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse, and her forearms are
streaked with dirt. Theresa is a Mohawk basket maker and is an
integral part of our research team. She’s taken the day off from
work to kneel in the dirt with us and she grins from ear to ear.
Sensing our flagging energy, she starts a counting chant to lift our
spirits. “Kaié:ri, wísk, iá:ia’k, tsiá:ta,” she calls out, and together we
count out the rows of plants. In rows of seven, for seven
generations, we are putting roots in the ground welcoming the
sweetgrass back home.
Despite Carlisle, despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years
long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not
surrender. I don’t know just what sustained the people, but I believe
it was carried in words. Pockets of the language survived among
those who stayed rooted to place. Among those remaining, the
Thanksgiving Address was spoken to greet the day: “Let us put our
minds together as one and send greetings and thanks to our
Mother Earth, who sustains our lives with her many gifts.” Grateful
reciprocity with the world, as solid as a stone, sustained them when
grace
(Grace)
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