#settlertime — Public Fediverse posts

#Acawrimo accountability post 4. For Nov. 4, I'm going to post brief notes about two short pieces in the 2022.9 special issue of the *Journal of #Folklore in #Education* on #Death, Loss, & Remembrance Across Cultures
--Ashley Minner's "Riding With James: More than a #Map" (25-35)
--Browning Neddau's "A Conversation with #Nokmes (My Grandmother) in #Poetry" (36-40)

Each of these is a personal reflection about relationships with the dead by indigenous people, and though neither is from the indigenous groups that Wright-Maley drew on in the article I wrote about yesterday, their reflections illustrate the broad-brush generalization of the differences between #SettlerTime and #IndigenousTime.

Minner writes about learning the history of an area in East #Baltimore that had been a #Lumbee Reservation through conversations with her elder cousin (before his death) and his age peers. Together they annotate an existing map, then draw their, own maps, and then just Minner and her cousin drive through the mapped area, talk to the people there now, eat lunch, and tell stories.

The first map Minner brings to the group of elders had been made by a white anthropologist for a federal government report (28). This map represents historical knowledge based on the evidentiary record available to the anthropologist. It is ultimately incomplete and unsatisfying because it does not represent the lived reality of the Lumbee who had homes, businesses, and lives there. Their maps begin from the same grid but add significantly more depth and nuance to the representation of the Lumbee Reservation. Their folk knowledge is essential to actually understanding this geographic place, its past, and its present.

In her conclusion, Minner notes that her cousin James lives on in the stories of their community, in the continuity of the language, and in the actions of people continuing to walk in his footsteps, both metaphorically and literally (33).

Helpfully, Minner offers a brief lesson plan based on the experiences she shared in this reflection.

Neddeau also emphasizes the importance of stories, connecting the importance of telling the community's stories to the #Potawatomi's charge to "keep the fire burning" among the #Anishinaabe peoples (37).

The personal reflection in this piece tells the story of Neddeau's process of creation, revisiting the stories of his grandmother's early life, recalling his memories of her, and bringing her into his present for a conversation in the form of a poem.

One idea that stands out to me in this reflection is the importance of listening. It's not unusual to have the importance of telling a community's or a person's stories emphasized, but Neddeau also talks about the importance of listening. It's incredibly obvious, but the reminder was like a lightbulb for me--we can only tell the stories we've heard, the ones we've listened to enough times to recall and to tell ourselves.

My own grandmother turned 98 this year, and we can all see her life on this earth approaching its end. I appreciate the reminder to listen in order to tell. As a widow, I have often also felt like the curator of my late husband's life, choosing the stories that I tell his children. In short, I guess, even as a non-indigenous person, the way of relating to the dead presented by these two reflections resonates with me a lot, and I think they describe an important truth about humanity's relationship to our dead in general.

https://jfepublications.org/article/riding-with-james/

https://jfepublications.org/article/a-conversation-with-nokmes-my-grandmother-in-poetry/

#Acawrimo accountability post 3. On Nov. 3 (today! Caught up with records after traveling! WOOT!!!), I finished reading Cory Wright-Maley's article "#Time, #Temporality, and #Entanglement in the Face of Parallel Realities" from the 2022.9 special issue of the *Journal of #Folklore in #Education* on #Death, Loss, & Remembrance Across Cultures.

Wright-Maley presents a fascinating argument for the necessity of rethinking the dominance of #SettlerTime (Mark Rifkin 2017) in our public conversations about #history and especially in #SocialStudies classrooms.

Settler time presents history as a unidirectional arrow from the past to the future, as a teleology. It is paired with historical knowledge that makes us of the evidentiary record to impose linearity on our understanding of history through disciplinary procedure (9). In contrast, folk knowledge depends on experiential reasoning (from factive or non-factive information) to build socially approved narratives. In this model feeling in the present "co-locate the past and future within the present." [Wright-Maley does a thorough citation in this section that I'm not going to repeat.]

Wright-Maley uses these two models of knowledge to look at the sharply divided responses to the J6 insurrection and explains one reason why appeals to facts and logic from historical knowledge partisans have failed to sway supporters.

Using both #quantum theory about entanglement of the observer and observed and #indigenous theories of time, Wright-Maley argues that reaching people on the other side of deeply partisan issues in the present moment requires a conscious effort at entaglement between different viewpoints.

Folk knowledge, of course, does not change historical facts, dates, numbers, but our affective response to the present can influence how we see the past, which in turn influences how we act in the present.

A slightly less controversial example offered is the way that since the beginning of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, our collective interest in and view of the 1918 flu pandemic has changed. The historical facts are the same, but we are paying a different kind of attention to them (20).

On some levels, I'm buying what Wright-Maley is selling. The models he uses here describe our collective relationship(s) with history in ways that ring true to me, and I think his suggestions may work well in adult friendships or among colleagues. I'm skeptical of using these approaches in the #K12 classroom in the present moment when violence and threats come to school board meetings. The issue I see is that US society in general claims settler time and historical knowledge, even the people/groups that Wright-Maley puts on the folk knowledge sides of the situations he discusses. In short, this is highly theoretical and classroom application in K12 or HE would need to be done very carefully.

https://jfepublications.org/article/time-temporality-and-entanglement-in-the-face-of-parallel-realities/