Saturday, April 2, 2011

What kind of person

A story from Barre Toelken, which came to mind when I heard about the burning of a Koran by a man in America:
In Pueblo belief...in the spring-time Mother Earth is pregnant, and one does not mistreat her any more than one might mistreat a pregnant woman. When our technologists go and try to get Pueblo farmers to use steel plows in the spring, they are usually rebuffed...I once asked a Hopi whom I met in that country, 'Do you mean to say, then, that if I kick the ground with my foot, it will botch everything up, so nothing will grow?' He said, 'Well, I don't know whether that would happen or not, but it would just really show what kind of person you are'.
quoted in James Zion's paper Monster Slayer and Born for Water: the intersection of restorative and indigenous justice in Contemporary Justice Review.

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