So I’ve finally begun reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is of the Potawatomi people of North America. Early in the book, Kimmerer shares her people’s creation story: of Skywoman, who falls from the heavens until she is caught by a goose. Slowly and gently, the goose brings her down to the waters and introduces her to the animals of the seas. Skywoman climbs upon a turtle’s back, and a creature dives to the depths of the ocean… giving its own life to bring her a tiny paw-full of mud. From this mud, Skywoman builds the land of Turtle Island: filled with abundance, with Skywoman just one among all. Not a master, not a manager; instead, a caretaker.

Kimmerer contrasts that story with the Judeo-Christian creation story in the Book of Genesis: Adam and Eve, blissful and ignorant in the Garden of Eden until the day they touch the Tree of Life against the Word of God. For this Original Sin, they are cast out of the Garden to scrape and grapple with a wild, vicious, and merciless Nature — a Nature they must dominate or surely they will perish.

Man and Nature: an ontology at least as old as the Judeo-Christian creation story. Two categories, mutually exclusive—all of Creation is either one or the other.