Queer Ecology as a Circle of Reciprocity

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This is the ninth post in the Succession III: Queering the Environment series, edited by Jessica DeWitt, Estraven Lupino-Smith, and Addie Hopes. For this series, contributors were invited to explore ideas of queer rebellion as interruption and resistance.

Background:

Squaknegossippi, “the river where trout are speared.”

This is the territory of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, in Southern Ontario, connected to the Great Lakes watershed of Turtle Island. For millennia Anishnaabeg have been supported by this place and in reciprocal embodied relationship with rock, plant, animal, and water beings. As women whose Indigenous ancestors were from territories adjacent to this place (and whose non-Indigenous ancestors came from lands across the Atlantic Ocean), we have responsibilities and relations to waters and lands, which themselves have tremendous agency. Our practice is a small and humble enacting of respectful continuation, of being in relationship, of coming to know and be known by this place.

Our practice is a small and humble enacting of respectful continuation, of being in relationship, of coming to know and be known by this place.

The images that follow are stills from a film we created during the spring of 2022 (with videography by L.A. Alfonso).  The film, and these images, are the (deliberately) partial documentation of our lived, ongoing creative praxis in a moment of enacting embodied reciprocity and relationship-building with the place we live in…

As artist-researchers with embodied practices and relationships with lands and waters, we explore sensitive, responsive, relational, embodied “land affirmation,” as inspired by Kanonhsyonne Janice C. Hill. With our own distinctive home territories and sets of relations, we arrive in a stunning place currently called Warsaw Caves Conservation Area, whose “rockmills” or “kettles” (hole formations in the limestone caused by the spinning of pieces of granite in the currents of glacial meltwater over time) and caves offer spaces for our human selves to be held and surrounded by massive ancient rock beings. Filmed during springtime by Squaknegossippi, “the river where trout are speared,” our interactions with each other and the land are layered with the presence of rainwater as well as the last remnants of melting winter ice, resonating across deep time with the Pleistocene epoch glaciations that formed the very bedrock of this place, with which we begin to affirm and connect in ways that perhaps communicate across and beyond linear time.

  • looking down into the "rockmill" or "kettle" formation, which is a glacier-made deep circular hole in an enormous rock; the rock appears to swirl in a spiral, like water draining (this could seem to be a hole drilled into the rock if one didn't know its deep geological history); the texture of the rock might evoke tree bark or the skin of a whale; the trunks of two cedar trees appear behind the kettle; as we look down into the kettle, two pale hands are visible at the bottom of the hole, as Jessica begins to crawl into the rock formation from an aperture at the bottom of the rock
  • a view looking down into the kettle rock formation; Jenn and Jessica are both pale-skinned with light brown hair with bangs, Jenn's hair is braided and Jessica's is loose and falls to her mid-back; both are wearing dark pants and bare feet, Jenn is wearing a red sweater and Jessica is wearing a mustard-yellow sweater; Jenn is in the process of climbing down into the kettle, following its natural spiral formation toward its hollow centre, in which Jessica stands, her face tilted slightly up and looking at the kettle wall
  • Jenn continues to climb down into the kettle, one hand holding the upper edge of the kettle, which could appear to be a hole drilled into the rock if one didn't know its deep geological history; Jessica is within the kettle, touching its walls
  • a semi-abstract view looking up from within the kettle rock formation; the surface of the rock has a rough yet flowing texture that might be birch bark; the sky and tops of cedars are visible above the rock, and Jenn's face and hand are partly visible, resting as if sleeping at the upper edge of the kettle
  • a close-up view looking up from within the kettle, Jenn's hand is prominent, caressing the rock; the sky and tops of cedars are visible above
  • a view from inside the rockmill (kettle) circular rock formation; Jessica is inside the rock with hands outspread touching the rock walls, looking up; Jenn is perched at the top of the kettle, also looking up; cedar trees and sky are visible above them
  • Jenn and Jessica are back-to-back inside the kettle; Jenn's face is upturned with eyes closed, and her beaded blue-and-white earring is visible; our hands are touching, Jessica's cupped in Jenn's against the cool rock wall of the kettle
  • Jenn and Jessica are embracing heart-to-heart inside the kettle, viewed from above; their heads rest on each other's shoulders; their arms reach past each other's torsos and touch the opposite sides of the kettle, which encircles them
  • looking down into the kettle rock formation; the rock appears to swirl in a spiral, like water draining; the texture of the rock might evoke tree bark or the skin of a whale; Jenn and Jessica are close together in the kettle, face to face, with arms outstretched touching the walls of the kettle; they are looking towards their hands and the kettle wall
  • Jenn and Jessica are back-to-back, with upper backs touching; Jenn's forehead leans on the wall of the kettle; Jessica's face is turned upward and her arms are spread to her sides and hands touching the wall of the kettle

Image Credits: L.A. Alfonso, Videographer

Reflections

(Jenn’s voice is in plain text, Jessica’s is italicized)

As an Indigenous person coming from another territory, I notice that the lands and waters in Michi Saagig territory do something extraordinary, unique to this place. All over, I find water that runs beneath rock, making sounds that pull me into attentive postures, that make my heart leap. Elder Doug Williams-ba talked about how the teaching rocks (Kinoomaagewapkong) here house spirits in the waters underneath. He says the old people used to say you could ask them questions and that he could hear them say “aaniin,” hello we see you (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg: This is Our Territory). Jess and I talk about this walking amongst the kettles, our feet landing softly on the pine forest floor. We listen to the gurgle and ‘tuke tuke’ of water beneath rock. In this space, I feel the fluidity between water and land, in the powerful exchange of softened edges. I breathe in the fluidity of old, current, and future time present everywhere, but made clearer in this place. Glacial pull of slow, long time makes space for two queer mothers stepping gently and laughing our own sovereignties. Fluidity is networked into these lands, fluidity is a force held close in Anishinaabe cosmologies (Leanne Betasamosake Simpson).

In this space, I feel the fluidity between water and land, in the powerful exchange of softened edges.

Dancing in glacial spirals in this place, held in this magnificent ancestral rock body – this beingness, this still motion, this embrace – all of this is rebellious queer reclamation, kinship, sustenance.  Inwendaamin aki – how we are related to the land. How we are related.

When I think of rebellion and land, I think about refusing hetero-patriarchal ableist colonial capitalism, of course. I also think of return—return to the teachings of my ancestors, and the knowledges of the ancestors and living peoples of Michi Saagig territory. Return to the celebrations of difference and queerness held in the memory of Land and the many relatives present here. Anne Taylor teaches us that Anishinaabeg have not focused on gender binary in our thinking and that this is reflected in our language, where nouns are not gendered. Instead, in Anishinaabemowin, emphasis is on whether an object, material or being is inspirited or not. If, for instance, asinig/rocks are inspirited, as indicated by the word ending, our responsibilities towards them and they towards us, change. Or, because we know rocks are our grandparents and help us in many ways, including in ceremony, we reflect this in the way we talk about them. I understand in my bones, when I am held inside this grandmother kettle with you, that I am responsible to care for you. I am responsible to care for all beings, as they are responsible to care for me. Queer ecologies hold us in this circle of reciprocity. To embrace in this kettle is an act of rebellion against dominant paradigms of extraction and violence and a return to the powerful cosmologies of this place.

Will you find my hand? Could I lean on you awhile?

Rebel-sister-lover-moon-rock-kettle-mama.  We carve this time, this togetherness, this work, this survival, this joyful attentive glacial dance — like bits of granite swimming in circles, spirals, circles.

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Jessica Marion Barr and Jenn Cole

Jessica Marion Barr (she/her) is a mother and an Assistant Professor at Trent University. An artist-researcher of Scottish (Fraser and other clans), English, various European, and matrilineal Haudenosaunee (Six Nations near Niagara Falls) ancestry, her interdisciplinary arts-based practice explores creative, collaborative, and embodied approaches to issues around climate change, species decline, ecological grieving, care, and social/ecological justice. At Trent, she teaches integrated and studio arts in the Cultural Studies Department, including an ecological art workshop; she is also Program Coordinator in the Honours Bachelor of Arts and Science Program, where she teaches interdisciplinary justice-focused courses. | Jenn Cole is mixed ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe from Kiji Sibi watershed territory. She is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Performance and Gender at Trent University, Artistic Director for Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and editor for Canadian Theatre Review's Views and Reviews. She is an artist, scholar and mother focused on connection with Lands and waters in ways that lift up the lifeways of her ancestors.

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