Non-Indigenous settlers can still learn deep reciprocity with land

Evidence

Even as I sit in her still shadow, my thoughts are all tangled. Like my elders before me, I want to envision a way that an immigrant society could become indigenous to place, but I’m stumbling on the words. Immigrants cannot by definition be indigenous. Indigenous is a birthright word. No amount of time or caring changes history or substitutes for soul-deep fusion with the land. Following Nanabozho’s footsteps doesn’t guarantee transformation of Second Man to First. But if people do not feel “indigenous,” can they nevertheless enter into the deep reciprocity that renews the world? Is this something that can be learned? Where are the teachers? I’m remembering the words of elder Henry Lickers. “You know, they came here thinking they’d get rich by working on the land. So they dug their mines and cut down the trees. But the land is the one with the power—while they were working on the land, the land was working on them. Teaching them.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 770

Categorization

• QUESTION: The chapter’s central open question — is belonging-to-place learnable for those not indigenous by birthright? Worth chasing across the polyad’s land-relationship threads.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the land relationships thread — who can claim belonging to place is the crux of Legal Systems land rights and Eco-Justice settler-colonial critique.
• XREF: Echoes Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and the settler-belonging debates found in most environmental-justice anthologies. — connects to: Indigenous land-as-gift and settler land-as-property are irreconcilable worldviews — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 70; Reciprocity with the land is possible even where land and nature are absent — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 867; Settlers share the grief of lost ecological reciprocity with Indigenous peoples — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 765 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Reciprocity with the land is possible even where land and nature are absent #expands (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 867
• Settlers share the grief of lost ecological reciprocity with Indigenous peoples #complicates (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 765
• Settler-colonial solidarity persists only through materially maintained structures, not primordial identity #qualifies (0.75) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 2139
• Colonial misreading of reciprocity stemmed from assuming its own norms universal #corroborates (0.75)
• Settler violation of reciprocal land ethics caused cascading ecological and cultural loss #complicates (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 763