What is Northeast Algonquian Land-use Practice?
Editor’s Note: The following article was republished with permission of the author, Nohham Cachat-Schilling, from Northeast Anthropology 2018.
Éli Luweyok Kìkayunkahke—So Said the Departed Elders: Northeastern Algonquian Land Zoning Traditions
Nohham Cachat-Schilling
Land use and land classification traditions of Northeastern Algonquians remain poorly understood. Even less clear are traditions governing use of sacred lands: ceremonial places as well as hunting and gathering lands. Epistemic genocide, also called “erasure” and “vanishing act,” in concert with destructive policy and oppressed Native narrative, obstruct our path to understanding. What is Northeastern Algonquian zoning practice? Through traditional narrative, archaeology, ethnohistory, and onomastics, Northeastern Algonquian land classes and uses are described—sacred lands in particular. We discover that ritually circumscribed activity includes not only ceremony but hunting and gathering. When informed by Native cultural sources, we can apprehend Algonquian land use patterns, knowledge that we can apply to improve sacred site preservation and plan for intelligent land management.
Mural from Great Falls, Massachusetts, at Unity Park, near the Peskeompskut village and massacre site. Image by author and husband shows stylized typical winter living—a time for traditional narratives in the warmth of the wichiwan (wigwam) on an alluvial bench above a creek, at the foot of hills holding the spaces where many hunting, collecting and ceremonial activities take place and ancestors watch over from their resting places. Above, the constellations, planets and moon keep our cosmic calendar within narratives of the Bear, the Seven Prophets, and many more.
Nohham Cachat-Schilling is Medicine Elder, Bridge in the Sky Medicine Circle, Chair of the Massachusetts Ethical Archaeology Society, and a Researcher at the Oso:ah Foundation. They are also a contributing author in Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America, part of the Native Peoples of the Americas series from the University of Arizona Press (Dr. Lucianne Lavin, Elaine Thomas, editors). They live in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts.