Your wrinkled grey skin is gorgeous, and I hope you don't know what's happening
-Leanne Simpson 

When Indigenous artist and scholar Leanne Simpson stands before The Oldest Tree in the World, at the end of her song by the same name, she tells it “I hope you don’t know what’s happening”. So simple, yet so packed with meaning. I heard this line, and I wondered at that meaning, what’s happening. But perhaps I wondered more at the very existence of this conversation, at Simpson addressing this tree with so much love and care. Why would she hope this? 

Now I want to introduce the idea of epistemology. The word epistemology refers to the philosophy, study, and theory of human knowledge. This encapsulates things such as how knowledge can be acquired and the different ways of knowing something. In the context of our class, we have summarized epistemologies as ways of being and knowing. Indigenous epistemology means a specific Indigenous group’s unique version of these philosophies and theories. However, I am using the term in broader reference to some aspects of Indigenous epistemologies that indicate beliefs about these topics shared by numerous Indigenous peoples. 

I have learned from Indigenous scholars Margaret Kovach (KOH-vack) and Leanne Simpson that within Indigenous epistemologies, the earth and its plants and animals are all embodied with spirits, with consciousness. Because they are alive, all things in the natural world merit respect. But this isn’t something that has to be taught; it is inherent. It is assumed that respect will be given, it is unthinkable that this should be questioned. 

In these Indigenous ways of being and knowing, the way you enter into a relationship with living elements must be mutualistic. Both parties must benefit, and both parties are assumed to have free agency. You may gain knowledge or resources or anything else, but you must give equally. The world does not owe humans anything. This is embodied in Simpson’s song; we can see the reciprocal nature of her relationship with the Oldest Tree. “I’m worrying about what you’re drinking. You’re worrying about what I’m breathing,” and then “I breathe it out, you breathe it in” followed soon after by “I breathe it in, you breathe it out”. Settler-colonizers on this continent and all over the world have, for the most part, long since abandoned any mutualism in our relationship with the planet. We are parasites. 

When Simpson stands before the oldest tree in the world, she says, “I don’t know how to say this without embarrassing you” as she steeles herself to relay her hope for the tree’s lack of awareness. In ignorance, there is loss of agency. When agency has been so fundamental, of course it would be embarrassing to have yours wished away. Yet the alternative is crushing awareness of a world where the vast majority of humanity destroys, kills, and subjugates.

When I heard the last line of this song for the first time, I was floored. It is filled with love, with aching, with grief, for the loss of a world where this ancient being is awarded the respect it deserves. For the devastation and destruction and death of countless living beings, countless spirits, at our hands. The world is out of balance. Within Indigenous epistemologies are the ideas that lend an innate balance, and equilibrium between humans and the rest of the world. What if all of humanity learned to see the world as a network of living beings that are equal? What if we treated all living beings as our partners? Indigneous ways of being and knowing show us that this is possible. Humanity can exist in a way that is not fundamentally extractive. We can choose to listen, to learn, to change the way we see our interactions with our natural environment. There is a world where any one of us could stand before The Oldest Tree and say “I hope you are watching, and I hope we are making you proud."



References/Further reading:

Land as Pedagogy (Simpson)