Strangled land

Square township boundaries over natural pattern of traditional division of Land

The Nature does not tolerate neither straight, simplistic, predictable lines nor rectangluar, refined shapes, forms for She manifests Herself in periodic, repeatative, wave-like shapes, cyclic forms, events and Laws. ¹

For Her origins are incomprehensible, universal and self-similar. To apply the alien geometry, to enforce the social organization based on un-Natural patterns and Laws is the act of intimidation which challenges the foundation of the World, which is essential desire for Freedom.

With the advance of tool-making, known as technology, the alien mixture of races flooded the two continents, known to their original inhabitants as Turtle Island.

As part of the invasion there was the renaming and redefining of the Land. Newcomers' advance was slowed down at the third continent - the world of ice and vast spaces in high Arctic. Nature preserves and manifests Her majestic design in this environment, where it is perpetually recreated and yet not fully obstructed, destroyed or altered by newcomers.


The Natural pattern of the web formed by the force of temperature over the water. Canadian High Arctic.
Natural Grid: Frost Cracks in Canadian High Arctic Tundra

Original Peoples reflect and implement Nature's Laws in their spiritual and social lives and therefore are dear to Her. They remember of the Unity between everything in this world and thus came the appreciation for the Land which provided for existence.
"... families' boundaries, usually marked by rivers, ridges, lakes, or other natural landmarks such as swamps and clumps of cedars or pines..." ²

Traditional Family Lands of Teme-Augamal
Map of Traditional Family Territories
A manifestation of Natural web pattern.
Ice road on lake Temagami
Ice road on lake Temagami
Ice road on lake Temagami

Newcomers brought over the infested, altered, un-Natural mentality. It desregards, alters and enforces the artificial division, naming and standartization of Nature's creations. It manifests itself as a Grid, a Matrix³ .

It divides, cuts through, separates and ignores.

It brings forth the tension to the People of the Land just as its sharp corners and cross-like intersection of its lines.

It suppresses, ignores and finally eleminates the naturally evolved boundaries on the Land, intimidates the spiritual attitude towards the boundaries of the Land, punishes for not conforming to its standards thus destroying the cultural heritage: performing the ethnocide and ecocide which effectively results in assimilation, which is , in fact, cultural genocide.


Map of Traditional Family Lands superimposed with township boundaries: The Grid (Matrix)
township boundaries: The Grid (Matrix)

All these alien names make no sense in regards to the history or traditional use of the land and is an attempt to erase the culture of Original Peoples and thus, cutting off the link with the ancestral knowledge and traditions.

Neodim Kollobok, 2003

Sources:

¹ B.Mandelbrot. Fractal Geometry Of Nature
² Kenneth H. Bobroff.Retelling Allotment: Indian Property Rights and the Myth of Common Ownership
³ The Matrix
F.G. Speck. Family Hunting Territories and Social Life of Various Algonkian Bands of the Ottawa Valley. Memoir 70. Department of Mines. Geological Survey. Government Printing Bureau, Ottawa 1915
Frost Cracks photo from Canada North by F. Mowat, 1967