I know extraction is sick. That it used to mean leverage, to free from and now it can only mean to free from all, which although is a natural course, is not the course the river meant to flow.
Perhaps this means I know nothing. Perhaps nothing has the same texture everywhere it goes. I don't know. I was asked a simple question: "what do I know?"
"nothing" is the correct answer - must I suspect what you let nothing means matters to you in ways that matters to each (of) me?
I know "legal" and "challenge" where "right to exist" is not upheld may not be what serves and healthy, survivable leverage on the tearing apart of all our lives we compose as whether to no we acknowledge what it is we are composing.
(may it serve) May this land.
I am sharing my knowledge of what it means to function off 15% capacity while shame in such loss looks to snuff out even that. Will I know enough that the 15% becomes 19% or 20 - no, likely not. Will I know enough that the 15% does not become 6% or 5? Maybe that third of what's left is all I'm here for.
Shame can't work under these condition. He aha tou mate? Where do you know that?
The Willamette's story is also fire's story. You Do not get the river without the fire - the river does not get her stones without the fire convecting below, without the fire holding water in her belly. One story I know behind the river might be I lay down in the river,my hair flowing clear as me. In the water I feel a tug, another. I feel it so strong, I stand up with a jump. And a fish slams against my belly, which I hold like a child. Still wrapped in my hair.
Whan I go somewhere new, do I knoe what the Indigenous people there call it? Do I know the stories from the coast of the clams that made the island so coyote could get back to shore? Do I know of coyote ask a feather from each of the birds? Perhaps.
Some. I do not know all.
I know what a hand painting with light in the sand teaches me: how to know a person - and how to know when I see one. I know what what was done here taught me: assimilate or annihilate, no alternative, no exceptions (to save. made merc , made merc ful).
I know this is not what ou asked.
My feelings are the feelings I share with others: this food. This place to sleep, to shower. This home I rent but a room, they they not even that (and that never a requirement). My emotions are the emotions of someone planting seed corn on the last day of the world - because there were still seeds to plant.
The people around me know and feel shame. Shame, and nothing more. Shame, and that is all. They feel ashamed. They feel nothing (else).
Speaking as these words you receive feeling what you feel as you write your own, perhaps how I see intersectionality is how I see linearity - a form of leverage. A form of extraction - true as any other form true as any identity before identities existed and long after they have been metabolized and reintegrated (or else long after they are extracted and burned as any other paleoreserve - be that reserve savings or right or cause of debt and, so, lashed tied at the hands. And all thanking heaven for the prior obligation).
My worldview aligns with what it means to be a person: to feed. I feed people.
I share your games! Your games are so cool! I share articles of te awa tupua and ask people what they think a person is - does their car have a name? What feels alive right now (whispering) that probably shouldn't.
Fighting shame isn't always about punching it in the face (though there is time enough for that before the end). How many fists can we get, in that one punch? What's our high score? Was it high enough (Was it ever going to be?). Was the height ever the point of reaching the tip?
My eviction on the solstice saw people come out, find things in my care homes. One moment, while putting the tranarchy table out to the curb, someone pulled over real hard, yelled from the intersection if that was up for grabs. Our yes was said in unison. Their hazards were on. There was one person. They picked up the whole table. The ran the whole thing to their car.
I remember feeling embarassed, walking away mid-flight. And when the person helping didn't - just watched the neighbor flee with full-sized table, I knew what to do. I would see the table off. I would see a white, more-than-able-bodied neighbor off, with a table laced from foot to top with gender reclamation. In that moment, I felt better than any zine I have (and might ever still) had given away.
What led to getting evicted? That's a question! Rent payments below satisfacrory levels due to job automation, what else!
What happened as a result? I lived on the side of the road for a while. A neighbor hired me for gardening work. Now I'm here.
Glad you asked. The time is appreciated.
(can I say) Nothing. I ask nothing.
...
Where I cannot: I ask be essential for creation - transformative. I ask be reflected in the pre-colonial. Fire, as force, is destructive. Fire, as power, is creative. Be destructive. But be creative.
I do not ask the same for Tāne Māori.
Where spirituality, the environment, kaitiaki may be served by such use. I can use it more where those around me are curious.
Am I aware of Māori in the room when I speak Te Reo? I'm asking. I don't know. Can you have a relationship with that?
W
hat I believe is shame smothers curiosity, living fire, the youngest ember still drifting down the trunk of the tree to the forest floor. Perhaps that fire all the way to the floor. Perhaps giving the young fire is vital for curiosity to burn through shame and leave clean smoke.
When I give rangatahi Māori a place to speak, may my questions bring lift to that forest floor, as though the land itself rises to greet them.
My understanding is I have a body with very little needs, her claws are small, her person littler still. I did not not make this lack of claws. I did not make so small a person. These are all the land affords me - very little separates me and tool/weapon.
How I give room to kaumātua is I find their questions. And address those. Not to be right. But that the river they are may know me by the rocks their request bates. They are this door, this wall I don't touch with my hand as the hand leaves its mark. And I might not leave a mark on what has wittled itself so far down it's barely left its mark on me - not claw, not a tooth, not a coat, not a third eye or fourth. Just a lantern for a core and this breath.
I take the death threats from them, is one thing I do. I take the flu (and CoV-2). I take this broken word, and this one. I take the world, too.
I don't expect them to owe me one. In fact, I don't expect much of anything - how else could it be here I have gotten?
I am not letting fear get things wrong for me. I can get things wrong myself just standing here.
Am I viewing Māori as their own coordinates of what it might mean to be the land? Perhaps.
Have there been times I haven't seen a people as the thing I step on, piss on, shit on, and eat and make small in my view as I walk away and treat like something at the end of the stick? There have.
Have I ever thought lesser of myself than the people who are shaped by this land, are as much this land as they are this mis pelling, this error the planet is, or has, or has left - I have.
Have I ever used someone's Māoritanga, not to discover my whakapapa or be practical, but to tomake a political statement, to perform warmth? Undoubtedly. Every story leaves its seam on the word so the weave might not fray - does this sentence itself not sentence itself to the charge? Has it no shame?
Māori get things wrong just standing here - my not letting them get things wrong leaves me without a people to stand on - I'm water in the air, I'm but Moon, where I am not patient, where I forget my compassion
Oh! Hell yeah! I feel like shit all the time!
breath
I'm so glad someone asked. This breath is really sweet-sweet-personal-pronouns nice of you. (What was the question?)
My relationship - who am I where I am the thinnest sliver between my person and my people? I'm... (this breath?) - I'm failing to understand the question, I realize. So let me say:
My relationship is awake. My relationship is listening. My relationship is unfolding.
Is there shame - in being a relationship‽ Babe, have you been a relationship? What is this - Earth Mother, Sky Father 2 Return of the Shame Fauna?
Get out of here. Happy living!
Land back means... means... you're hitting on me. Land back means I'm in my kitchen getting a bagel. Land back means I live in hay bales as a homeless teen in luie of paying rent for six months so I might hand the deed over when my independant contractor work is over in six months and I leave (I actually haven't been back to those lands in a while - to be fair, thet're like kind of out of the way. I can still go there though - I just haven't).
How can I demystify it to prop tech junkies? Uhh... "trees burn, not all trees burn well." How's that? "Here's a link to nineteen questions - are you available Tuesday at 5 for me to come over with that dish you like? Given me another time - this time next year? Next season? Next Moon? A time of your own invention? (Don't let the time being know)
Maybe, when my silence makes me complicit in racism is not so much when I put my survival in front of someone else, but when I do so on a daily basis, in every breath, every sign of the slightest discomfort. There, my silence - there you are complicit in racism.
What prevents me from speaking up might be how small I keep myself.
What will I do to change that? Make small curious... hip... in. Maybe. That's got humanity this far - clawless, coatless, toothless (save what can get out a woven knot), utterly uninformed of how damn nightmarish even the sun above throws down. And but the grass rises to dapple until there's shade. And the rest of life between the rest of light and all this water.
In the beginning, there was the relationship and the ends saidthe means are good.
Outside of memes, how I am centering Māori in combat, in projects, demonstrations, development, tooling, distribution, uplift, invitation, and other areas from the start might be recognizing shame is no place to start. To hate humanity is to hate peoples Indigenous and otherwise - one's own and one's of family yet to be seen.
Shame is not a foundation. Shame is a stopgap. Shame is a handhold. Shame is a look back. Shame is a spiral - they are one in the same. The planet is a shame spiral - the Moon knows this - and at 3cm per year, the Moon is leaving. The Moon is standing perfectly still. Since the dawn of water on liquid metal early Earth, the Moon has been standing without shame. Carving rivers from oceans with a brush with breath, this read in this hand.
Is the question are the Māori in leadership positions...:
- in shame spirals?
- in standing with the Moon?
- or, there's some third thing
Look, I understand power feels very known, and very frozen in form. I do what I can to answer your questions. This is that power, that leadership position. It's not much by comparison, I get that. But maybe this interaction is all any power gets. (Yeah?) These eyes transform the photons of your questions from electromagnetic energy into electrochemical energy (isomerizing rhodopsin molecules), which thermalize - locking them in entropy for... for the rest of entropy.
Where that's not nothing: perhaps what has been done to make the Māori avoid carrying this is a misinformation campaign going much further back than the first sound forgotten for the sake of someone's word.
Perhaps what's been done to make their weavings fall to the side as one laces up for the game is sometimes fire comes from the sun, and sometimes from the storm, and, sometimes, if only sometimes from their own attention tearing them in two.
Perhaps I am betraying white supremacy by never getting this time back. Perhaps wherever these eyes are knows wherever these are. Knows this attention does not return. Knows what it means to give attempt.
Humanity did not give up the walk - humanity gave up the tail. And yet white supremacy would have me crawl, ashamed. Humanity did not give up the voice - humanity gave up the fang. And yet white supremacy would have me never speak a word edgewise toward myself.
Humanity did not give up the warmth - humanity gave up the coat. And yet white supremacy would have me sell the one it left me off, so I may have none and so make rent.
Humanity did not give up the relationship - humanity gave up the man. And yet white supremacy would leave me no friends, no family, so I might I grow to be one.
And yet you find no man.
Maybe one way I can betray white supremacy in a way I have not is to say there never was one.