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This post introduces Alicia Colson’s recently published Anthropos article, “’Wilderness’ – ‘Savaged and Shared.’ A Discussion of the Rock Paintings of the Lake of the Woods, Northwestern Ontario, Canada.”
My experience of getting this article published is a story already told. What I was thinking when I devised the project that generated the article. How that process influenced my views of groups of people with contrasting worldviews. The link between that project and current work.
To the subject of the article. A systematic review of the published, unpublished, and gray literature on rock paintings dating from colonial times to the present (2025) suggested that investigators broadly from one worldview were attempting to understand the meaning of images created by Algonkians with very different worldviews.
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” Berger’ (1973: 1) observation became my lodestar. Critics of paintings must make the intellectual effort to internalize the worldview of the creators/”owners” of these images before setting pen to paper – a very different task.
“Evidence was handled in a makeshift manner. Data from colonial and early 20th century materials lacked context.”
The effort involved emerges from a review of the literature on “rock paintings”/pictographs; a canon had emerged which ruled on the way in which these “rock paintings” should be “read.” The review (published as Colson 2007) indicated that the urge to be “clinical about where these sites exist.” Had extinguished the voices of their creators. Groupthink prevailed led by archaeologists besotted with the internal dialogue of their desire to lay out the “latest in theoretical framework in the discipline.” All driven by issues entirely extraneous to the task in hand: alien to those expressed by their informants and even observers of the sites.
Evidence was handled in a makeshift manner. Data from colonial and early 20th century materials lacked context. Typically, the Social Darwinism which permeated 20th century discourse of those who worked in the cognate disciplines of investigators ignored, and sometimes poorly documented. A “scientific” approach?
“Work on the sentient worlds of plants and animals leads us to understand that their communication is ubiquitous; lively and profound, the land is in conversation with humans listening, and, yes, participating.”
Seen in a wider lens this approach is deeply flawed. Work on the sentient worlds of plants and animals leads us to understand that their communication is ubiquitous; lively and profound, the land is in conversation with humans listening, and, yes, participating. The Anishinaabe, the Algonquian speaking peoples sensed the language of plant, insect soil, and the many parallel lives lived in the world of the Boreal Forest. It is time for stocktaking: to clear away the dead wood, to take the time to understand context and time. To stand aside from the ceaseless chatter and “listen to the goddamn Indian” (George Kenny, Elder, from Lac Seul First Nation in conversation).
Feature Image: “Lake Superior petroglyphs” by skotdog is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Latest posts by Alicia Colson (see all)
- Before Interpretation: What Rock Paintings Teach About Worldviews, Silence, and Scholarship - November 22, 2025
- What is a Heritage River? - October 30, 2023