CHEHALIS FAMILY LAW

Chehalis, a First Nation situated near the confluence of the Harrison and Chehalis rivers in what is now known as the province of British Columbia, is developing ways for working with children and families that honour their own history, widom and values. The people of Chehalis have created a document that represents such values and gives direction to the work of assisting their own people.

This document describes what is important for the people of Chehalis when it comes to assisting families within their own community. However, I find this document to be of value for all of us. I asked Anna Charlie, from Chehalis, if I could share this document with those who read this blog. She said that they would be happy to share this document if it would benefit other communites.

I hope you find this document of value, as I have.

SNOWOYELH TE EMI:MELH TE STS'A'ILES

Snowoyelh is the natural law the creator provided for us. It is the "Law of Everything", the law of life, the stages of life. Snowoyelh is based on respect to all things, recognition, obligation and traditions, and is the basis of our culture and spirituality.

Emi:melh is a generic word meaning children, but also means family, whether by blood or association; the word has both social and spiritual connotations.

Sts'a'lies is who we are.

Snowoyelh Te Emi:melh is an obligation that we as Sts'a'lies people have to our children, our families, our ancestors and those yet to come, because that is the natural law.

Snowoyelh Te Emi:melh includes these principles:

• Our families are paramount to our culture and society
• We have the capacity to codify family law
• Our culture, spirituality and traditions are core to our identity
• Past, current and future generations are all important to us
• Our children are our most precious gift
• All children have unique gifts
• We are measured by the actions of our children and grandchildren
• Families must be recognized and supported
• Extended families have a role in raising children
• Our families have connections that extend beyond our community
• Healing must be provided to those family members who need it
• Healthy communities are based on healthy families
• In family there are no 'reserve' boundaries
• Community leaders have a place supporting and advocating for their members

Talking about Talking

I want to think of a world where talking is not something which separates us, cuts us away from the worlds of animals and nature, but where out talking emerges from the movements of nature, and where our talking (I sincerely hope) also returns us to the prolific world of life from which we came.

I wish to think of our talking as connected to the songs and calls which animals create.

I imagine the call of the wolf, the mystical song of the thrush, the vibration of the cricket, the chatter of the chickadee, as emerging from the same sorts of relations and creative impulses as do our own words and our own songs.

I imagine that our talking is similar to the sonic engagements of the bat or the whale -- calls are put forth, but it is in the return that the contours of worlds are explicated.

It’s not in the speaking, therefore, that any meaning is produced, but it is in the return of our calls that worlds are brought forth.

Our sense of language, of words, of song is not about a search for a truth, not about knowing the correct formations of reality, but rather, in the return, rich, pragmatic, and complex worlds are produced -- this is not a knowing of precision, but a multifaceted and sensual experience of contour, texture, proximity and distance.

Words can only come from life – I search for words as a return to honour life.

Jacques Derrida's Cat

On discovering one is being looked-at, rather than looking-at

Jacques Derrida in his book, The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008, Fordham), discusses the expectation before him to talk about animals, but, instead of "talking about", and instead of describing animal as a generality, or even as an assortment of species, he describes an incident, a specific moment with a singular and real cat, with his cat. He described a moment of being naked in the presence of this cat, with the cat looking at him. He described a sense, of discomfort, even shame from this experience of having his naked body gazed upon by his cat. Derrida saw that he was not so much looking as he was being looked at, and not by some global category of "animal", but by an all-too-present, staring feline.

Derrida continues, always returning to the cat, his cat, the specific cat staring at his naked body. He reminds us that the experience of being looked upon by an animal is almost never the vantage point from which animals are talked about in both science and philosophy. Instead, the gaze is repeatedly and consistently from the human eyes upon the body of the animal. We, the humans (and in particular, we the philosophers, the scientists, and other institutional players) are the observers, and from the position of looking upon the animal we also find ourselves with the privilege of being the ones who name, who examine, and who interpret the animal. The scientific and philisophical eye never expects the animal to be examining the examiner.

As in Genesis, where the animals are brought before Adam, who then looks upon them, and from that vantage point provides names for them, and also, as in Genesis, where dominion, authority, power is granted to Adam and his descendents over animals, so in a modern world, the human gaze (and, more particularly, the institutionalized gaze) looks upon and gains mastery over animal worlds. Yet Derrida, breaking with all that overwhelming philosophical and scientific tradition, invites us to see the animal seeing us. He invites us to explore the intensity of being gazed upon by the animal.

While science and philosophy have kept this objective, unidirectional gaze upon the animal, other forms of human discourse have, at times, explored life from the position of the animal’s gaze upon us. Derrida suggests that poetry has enabled such forays.

I remember William Blake.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night...

In what distant deeps ofskies

Burnt the fire in thine eyes?

Few animals evoke the varied emotional experiences which come with being gazed upon more than the cat. With Blake, it is the eye of the tiger. As the cat looks at a human being, her gaze so frequently goes, not upon bodies, naked or otherwise, but rather, her eyes cut directly into human eyes. An intensity of stare, like heat from a fire, breaks right through those “windows of the soul”. Such a gaze can awaken awe, a sense of nakedness of spirit, it can demand us to respond, it can demand us to provide food or open a door, and, it can also instil a sense of dread. As fire penetrates and shatters, so the eyes of the cat.

Yet our language is dominantly about looking at the animal, not of the animal looking at us, and certainly not of the exchange of looking which so often occurs with the animals we share our lives with. Language itself is seen as that activity of looking which separates us from the animals. For we can put our observations into words, animals can’t. We can observe animals and name them -- it appears that animals cannot do the same thing.

However, what a cold and dry understanding of language this is! For I do not see language so much as a tool of objectivity, a tool for determining what is true, what is name-able, what is decipherable. Rather I tend to see language as something which emerges, both in evolution and in day-to-day life, within the midst of exchanges, in the midst of social connections and interactions. I imagine language as more akin to the actions of hands rather than the exchange of information. Language touches us, it moves us, and it strikes us, and these hand-like movements reverberate, they are communal, they never come from and never stay within just a two-person realm.

Words are certainly not the only way to touch and be touched, yet words are so often seen as that which distinguishes us from, makes us superior to all other animals. Our adamic heritage is still intact, even within secular realms – it is still often assumed that because we name, because we use words, we are therefore superior; because we use words to look down upon, to observe and evaluate, therefore we have dominion, we can control.

Yet the eyes of the cat tell us otherwise. For it is a challenge to experience the stare of a cat and not feel some intensity within the moment. I have heard stories of encounters with wild cougars – few events can strike terror into the heart more than finding one’s eyes caught in the stare of a wild, large feline. And, it's not just fear, but also the shame of being naked, the joy of being loved, the excitement of play... all such experiences can be evoked as we encounter the eyes of a cat.

Language is one way to touch and be touched, it is obviously an important method that we as humans use, but it is only one way amidst a plethora of ways within nature for connection to occur. The human animal is able to touch and be touched through language. And many animals, in their own desire to connect with us, while they are not able to speak to us with words, they are able to be touched by our use of language. Many animals can develop some resonance with our use of words. Yet, in spite of such remarkable animal responsivity, we still imagine that we are superior in some way.

Whether with language, or whether through connecting with the eyes of the animals, we see the other looking at us. We see the cat responding to us. But, we see even more, we see a mutual looking, a mutual touching and being touched. We see turns and returns of response. We see realms of relationship, numerous lines of connection and reciprocity built through light, sound, touch, even smell -- tying us together as people, and tying us together with the animals and the worlds around us.

Let us not forget, we are animals also. Do we look upon each other, as we so often do upon animals, with this unidirectional eye, this philosophical and scientific gaze? Do we look upon people, as with the other animals, with a one-way objectivity, from a viewpoint separate from, higher than, able to evaluate, interpret and establish names? Or, are we able to see ourselves being seen? Do we see the mutuality of our seeing? Do we see such complex and shared engagements? Do we find ourselves not only coming to connect and understand through communal exchanges, but also collaboratively creating new worlds wherein we can all in our diversities, people and animals, learn to live and thrive?

Call and response is clearly not simply a task of language, for the feline is a master at it. Jacques Derrida’s cat stares upon his naked body. We now see the animal, and to our intense surprise, we are not just looking at her, she is looking upon us, and she is insisting that we respond.

Returning to the Blog

I apologize for taking such a long time to return to this blog.  During this break I have taken some time to go through my previous blog entries and have used much of this material to create a new book.  It is titled:

Territories of the Alive: Nature, Community and the Gift.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to order a copy.

Now I am ready to return to this blog.

Christopher James Kinman

Why no Colours?

I write of the Somali rapper, K’naan... but I have no pictures of Somalia, and if I did they would not be mine... so instead I provide my own pictures, images where, as I see it, beauty emerges out of the ordinary and the sub-ordinary. These images come from my own world.

I heard an interview the other day with K'naan, the Toronto based, Somali rapper. He talked of his home country, Somalia. He talked with great love, he talked in words defusing great beauty as he remembered his own land.

He also talked about the eyes of the media, the predominant Western way of looking at his land in particular; that is the way images are presented of Somalia. He said that the images on the news and in the films is over-and-over-again of a beige, grainy world -- a world of devoid of colour.

And he wondered, where is the colour? The land he knew was infused with colour. Where is the colour?

There were plenty of images of a land taken over with war and warlords, plenty of images of pain, of fear, of terror in its birth. But where is the colour?

Why no colour?

Even in those darkest corners, there is never a purity of the degenerate. Beauty is always right before the eyes, glaring at us. What effort, what discipline we all must make to ensure that this beauty is not acknowledged.

There is colour in Somalia.

There is beauty everywhere, in and around all of us...

Let us make every effort... not to make the colours show (we do not need to do that)... but to remove those nasty boundaries -- liberal and conservative boundaries; boundaries created by a preoccupation with social injustices, breaches of principles, rather than the pragmatic gifts of life as they are inescapably presented before us; boundaries which make a fetish of, as Elton John once said, that Madman Across the Water, that evil in far-away lands, troubles in places and people always removed from us -- boundaries which hide beauty and love from us in its most obvious demonstrations.

Open those blinded eyes... for there is no true effort in looking for it, those gifts of life are everywhere around us.

Demarcations

I write as these pictures portray, lines of difference, between a this and a that, between water and land --distinctions which truly matter in the movements of this world.

However, these lines of difference, while they can be clearly distinguished within an image, a stopping of time... in the real world where living things find their home, these lines of demarcation are never solid, never still, always in movement.

Whether it is the distant movements of the pacific tides, daily raising and lowering the waters in the river; or whether it is the undulations caused by the rising winds or the passing boats; or if it is the less dramatic changes wrought by the swans and the ducks, by the migrating salmon -- it all creates lines of demarcation which can never be solid are always undulating with the movements of life and planetary forces.

Two truths, the double vision of William Blake -- life creates lines which mark differences between a this and a that, but these lines constantly undulate, forever shift and move.

Let us respond, move to the liquid flows which are inescapable in the movements of the alive.

The Proliferating Christ

It was in 2004 that Canadian theologian Tom Harpur published his world-shattering book, The Pagan Christ. Harpur convincingly shows how the Christ of the gospels was not a new figure appearing on the scene in Palestine about 2000 years ago. On the contrary, the idea of Christ, down to the details of his reported daily lived life, were found in a mythical character from ancient Egypt – and these details were laid long before the stories of the biblical Christ. In fact, this Christ figure repeatedly appeared, not only in Egypt and later in Palestine, but in many ancient mythologies.

Clearly this appearance of a Christ figure in ancient worlds, far outside of the Judeo-Christian worlds, long before the creation of the New Testament stories, is a major challenge for contemporary Christianity. However, the challenge this creates for modern day Christianity might not be quite as straight forward as it might appear on the surface.

One obvious way of understanding this difficulty is to distinguish between an emphasis upon the historicity of the biblical Christ, as is seen in modern day fundamentalist Christianity, and the spirituality of a more mythological Christ figure.

The issue as I see it, however, is not so much one of historicity over against spirituality, but one of singularity over against multiplicity – and this, by the way, is a challenge which supersedes religion and effects the modern day secular worlds as much as the religious worlds. Harpur reveals a Christ figure whose mythology is proliferate, repeating, in its spirit and its details, throughout cultures and civilizations. A Christ is revealed who refuses to be limited to one incarnation, to one point in history. And, here appears a challenge not just to Christianity but to a legacy of Western thought, religious and secular. For, in the world which Harpur presents to us, truth itself is transformed, it becomes additive; truth follows rhizome, zigzag lines; truth refuses reductionist lines and instead accumulates possibilities.

Harpur’s world does not so much reveal the Christ as it creates, generates a universe of Christs. Using Nietzsche’s language, we can say that Harpur creates a “becoming” Christ, or “becoming” Christs, incarnating not only in ancient mythologies but in contemporary lives and institutions. And not only Christs, but also proliferating creations of endless possible spiritual figures. Spiritualities emerging which shed exclusivity and unity and instead create repeated affirmations of endless life possibilities. Life collects, life assembles... and life refuses a systemic or mechanistic unity.

While there is a long history of challengers to such singular views of truth, I want to conclude with an emphasis upon the generative spiritualities so beautifully discussed by American poet, Walt Whitman. No exclusive gods in Whitman’s world, just a spreading divinity which enlivens life in its every corner. Christ, divinity is created, like “leaves of grass”.

Speaking of his own work of writing as if he were a visual artist, Whitman says:

Painters have painted their swarming groups

and the centre-figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading

a nimbus of gold color’d light,
But I paint myriads of heads,

but paint no head without its

nimbus of gold-color’d light...

Walt Whitman