“But I have found that where there is a spiritual union with other people, the love one feels for them keeps the circle unbroken and the bonds between us and them strong, whether they are dead or alive. Perhaps that is one of the manifestations of heaven on earth.” – Alice Walker, Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973- 1987 as cited by Intisar Abioto.
Want to walk with me? I invite you to a place where we have been before, and then some steps beyond it. You will be taken in by the beauty of the landscape, and perhaps taken aback by what I encourage you to read, admittedly difficult, but important fare on the issue of memory politics.
Imagine a strong sun, still air as clear as can be, a deep blue river reflecting a cloudless sky, except for some contrails.
An ochre landscape, summer drought visible, resilient flora still hanging by a thread.
Hexagonal columns of Wanapum basalt flows that were scoured by the Ice Age floods some 10,000 years ago surround the lake, their darkness dissolving into myriads of colors from different species of lichen when you take a closer look.
We are on the Washington side of the Columbia river, a bit east of The Dalles bridge, at Columbia Hills Historical State Park, specifically Horsethief Lake. There is a public trail there, close by the railway, which offers a selection of petroglyphs moved from various places that were destroyed when damming the river began in earnest.
I have written about the history previously here.
This time around I was invited to a private visit of petroglyphs that are only accessible in the company of a tribal guide. The trail winds through shrub-steppe and in parallel to the river’s shoreline, and brings you to petroglyphs that are still located on their original surfaces of basalt rock. The most famous among them is Tsagaglalal (“She Who Watches”.)
It is said that the trickster-hero Coyote put her there with luminous eyes and a broad face, when she, a chief of the Chinook tribe, worried what would happen to her people when she could no longer look out for them. Before he tricked her, he insisted there would be no longer female chiefs in the future, and then, having put her into rock, he said “…now you shall stay here forever to watch over your people and the river…” According to some sources, “She Who Watches” they called her. She became a symbol of conscience and of death. “She sees you when you come,” they said, “she sees you when you go.”
I was thinking of what I had learned earlier about petroglyphs from Lillian Pitt:
“Petroglyphs/pictographs are not art. They are sacred images that represent significant cultural themes, messages, beliefs to a Tribe. They were not created for aesthetic purposes. They were created to teach, warn, or record those not yet born. Even though we may think that they are pretty, beautiful, pleasant to look at, those are not the values inherent in the images you see. those are the values that you as the viewer are placing on the image. Please stop calling them rock art. “
I was also painfully aware how little historical knowledge we have in general – when my Native American friend and guide did a land acknowledgement by means of unfolding a rope where every millimeter stood for a year of historical Native American existence in these parts, I could only marvel at the numbers expressed in unending length.
We know, of course, only what we are taught, and teaching about Native American History has been overall a sad affair, when you look at general public education. Here is a comprehensive article on the need for reform. Things are changing, slowly, with curricula developed and available from private and public sources, like the Native Knowledge 360º Project initiated by the National Museum of the American Indian. Tribal members themselves have always kept the memory alive and transmitted to next generations. It is no coincidence, that a recent Tsagaglalal (She Who Watches) Scholarship was established in 2022 in honor of Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama), who was instrumental in teaching tribal history as an artist, mentor and advocate.
Looking at the landscape, at these sacred images that convey a message, at the spottiness of my understanding of American history, I could not help but think of memory culture from my own, very different background. The immediate source for these thoughts circled around the October 7th anniversary of the Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli war actions. Two very different essays I read around the politics of memory related to the fate of the Jewish and the Palestinian/Arab/Lebanese/Syrian people have me still think long and hard. Written by an anti-Zionist Jewish intellectual and activist, Naomi Klein, and a Zionist Jewish novelist, Dara Horn, respectively, they outline assumptions about appropriation of Holocaust narratives and memory culture that can harm rather than elucidate the complexities of history (links to the essays under the authors’ names). Long and complicated, but truly important work that will open perspectives you might not otherwise come across.
The core that spoke to me was Klein’s analysis of the politics of mourning (and is easily transferable to historical conflicts of all kinds of cultures, our own destruction of Native American tribes included):
“When experts in mass atrocities speak of the importance of “bearing witness”, they are referring to a specific way of seeing. This kind of witnessing, often of crimes that have been long denied or suppressed by powerful states, is an act of refusal – a refusal of that denial. It is also a way to honour the dead, both by keeping their stories alive, and by enlisting their spirits in a project of justice-seeking to prevent a repeat of similar atrocities in the future.
But not all witnessing is done in this spirit. Sometimes witnessing is itself a form of denial, marshalled by savvy states to form the justification for other, far greater atrocities. Narrow and hyper-directed at one’s own in-group, it becomes a way to avoid looking at the harsh realities of those atrocities, or of actively justifying them. This witnessing is more like hiding, and at its most extreme, it can provide rationalizations for genocide.” (Ref.)
Much to contemplate during these days of Teshuvah, the days of repentance leading up to Yom Kippur, our holiest day. A time to contemplate ways of ethical being. Maybe the love one feels for others keeps the circle unbroken, as Alice Walker stated above, but so does true, non-performative mourning – whether they are dead or alive, those victims of hatred and genocidal fury.
Here is Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre. (Unfortunately there is an interruption by advertising at some point, but it can be prompts skipped. I just favor this performance by Argerich enough that I was willing to tolerate it.)
