Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Oldest of the Trees at the Hamburger Edge


Can't even find it now, an image of a sycamore tree, branches raised up as if they were arms, possibly a Culturally Modified Tree - but it made me think of the tree to the left in this photo from 8 years ago or so - and there's more than just two significantly larger trees. I just can't recall...

It's an interesting area of land, a newer Cultural Landscape intruding into older layers of landscapes including the Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes, evident in rows of stones and other features that may even include those larger trees...







2012 LiDar images, some of the rows of stones, probable Qusukqaniyutôkanash, visible:

Row of Stones and Outcrop topped by another Row of Stones:

Serpent Stacking (A larger snake made of smaller snakes)

Snake-like segment, with "seventh scale" diamond:



Another intersecting row of stones, one of an unknown number of other Grinding Slicks incorporated into the Qusukqaniyutôk, the hand held stone still resting in place:

More here at Waking Up on Turtle Island Hamburger Edge Search:
Hamburger Edge Search at PWAX:



Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Flanders Roadside Serpent (Woodbury CT)





"Cup marks?" Pitted by use as a fire starter base, another slanted stone to funnel tinder into a clam shell of "that which is mixed" or Kinnikinnick??

Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape feature, Snake Qusukqaniyutôk, or "linear garbage heaps":

Monday, October 29, 2018

Somewhere in New Hampshire

Re-drawing a Snake image from an old post,
 - which was originally stolen from: 
 I see the suggestion of the Supraocular, 
and then try out some horns:

Forward of the "Horn Rest" sometimes is often the most suspected spot, you could still put a "jewel" on the top of it instead, I suppose...

The Guarding Serpent, in many stories, often needs a little gift before allowing a person into a certain space within a Snake Qusukqaniyutôk:
(‘stone row, enclosure’ Harris and Robinson, 2015:140, ‘fence that crosses back’ viz. qussuk, ‘stone,’ Nipmuc or quski, quskaca, ‘returning, crosses over,’ qaqi, ‘runs,’ pumiyotôk, ‘fence, wall,’ Mohegan, Mohegan Nation 2004:145, 95, 129) wall (outdoor), fence, NI – pumiyotôk plural pumiyotôkansh.):
 Sometimes people neglecting to do so are sometimes "eaten."
Guarding a certain space, the Great Snake waits for a tobacco offering. Perhaps a person would step over the low stone all the way to the right to gather something, perhaps a fire would be set to tend this stone garden, renew this Sacred Space...
Name: Gitaskog
Tribal affiliation: AbenakiPenobscot
Alternate spellings: Gtaskog, Kitaskog, Kita-skog, Keeta-skog, Gitaskog, Giciskog, Gichi-skog, Gitaskogak (plural form)
Pronunciation: gee-tah-skog
Also known as: Msaskog, Msa-skog, Tatoskog, Tatoskok, Pita-skog, Peeta-skog, Peetaskog
Type: Lake monsterserpent
Related figures in other tribes: Kci-Athussos (Maliseet), Jipijka'm (Micmac), Kichiginebig (Anishinabe), Maneto (Fox)
Gitaskog or Tatoskok is an underwater horned serpent, common to the legends of most Algonquian tribes. Gitaskog is said to lurk in lakes and eat humans. All of its names are variants on the meaning "great serpent" or "big serpent."

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Old MacDonald Chamber (CT)

The tree crew had me pause by this bit of "stone wall junctions" and the chamber-like opening, very near my childhood home, close to, if not on, the old "Stone Path," an "ancient highway." 
Re-purposed many times, slathered in many mortars, I've walked and rode my bike  or the school bus by, as well as driven by this spot many times.


No, I've never been in it.
That's all I know - except there's no garden tools or chickens in it presently...

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Old Ask∞k Qusukqaniyutôk (Bethlehem CT)



Qusukqaniyutôk:
(‘stone row, enclosure’ Harris and Robinson, 2015:140, ‘fence that crosses back’ viz. qussuk, ‘stone,’ Nipmuc or quski, quskaca, ‘returning, crosses over,’ qaqi, ‘runs,’ pumiyotôk, ‘fence, wall,’ Mohegan, Mohegan Nation 2004:145, 95, 129) wall (outdoor), fence, NI – pumiyotôk plural pumiyotôkansh)
http://oso-ah.org/custom.html
Quassuk, Qussuk =  ‘stone’- Qussukquanash = Stones
Manitou Quassukquanash = Sacred Stones, Spirit Stones
|Ask∞k|, {A Snake} or {Worm}. |Ask∞kquog|
Mohegan, NA – skok plural skokak

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Indigenous Peoples' Day

   Yesterday, the Monday Holiday that isn't actually October 12th but close enough for practical modern American purposes, I found this popping up on the screen in front of me on a Social Media "news feed," as they call it:
   "For Indigenous People’s Day, I challenge everybody to spend 30 minutes on google (or search engine of your choice) learning about the indigenous people and their land that you’re currently occupying. The education system fails both native and non-native people alike, but with a tool like the internet at our disposal, as we mature into young adults, and eventually adults, that becomes an illegitimate excuse for the responsibility we each have to learn about and honor those indigenous nations who are physically dispossessed from their homelands and culture and lifeways to continue the settler colonial state and non-native occupation of our stolen homelands.
I invite people to leave what they’ve learned below so that we can learn together."

  So far this post has generated
7,557 Shares at: 
https://www.facebook.com/pg/SavageFeminism/about/?ref=page_internal, "a page that focuses solely on the experience of indigenous women & femmes as we resist the heteropatriarchal settler state," which in turn is linked to: https://www.instagram.com/SavageFeminism/

   I thought about it awhile and this kind of bubbled out, despite the wise guy troll-like comment that I'm embarrassed to say first emerged: "A whole thirty minutes? That's practically half an hour!"

    "In less than 30 seconds, your Internet search results pour in on the screen before you.
     After 30 minutes of Internet research, you may have some sort of understanding about the Tribes in your State, perhaps enough to satisfy your curiosity or perhaps cause you to wonder just where the concept of tribes came from. 
    After 30 hours of Internet research, you might realize that tribe is a European American concept, that a State is as well, and Indigenous Traditional Homelands are at best poorly understood by most people, in particular by the early European colonists interacting with the tiny percent of Indigenous Peoples who managed to survive the series of epidemics that killed more people than any other known Plague in human history. I use the English word Plague because you might have been told that the Black Plague killed the greatest number of people than any other single disease-related event in human history, something that even your well informed Human Biology professor found surprising.  
      After 30 days of Internet research, and using my location in Connecticut as an example, you will begin to wonder why there is so much conflicting information about these tribes - and why the oldest "reservations/reserves" in the country aren't recognized by the United States of America. You might understand something about Indigenous place names and how these names became attached to certain groups of Indigenous People who happened to be living in those places at certain times, making Treaty agreements to share land and resources that magically transformed into Deeds of private ownership, another European concept.
      After 30 weeks, you might be thinking critically about everything you thought you knew about Indigenous People and may actually crack open a book or two. You might start with the former "go to" 1800s book on CT Indians that tells you practically nobody lived in this "desert" of western CT but I'd suggest you follow it with the latest book on CTs Indigenous Peoples by Dr. Lucianne Lavin that I highly recommend.
     After 30 months, you might have a better understanding of Indigenous Peoples - although you might have been distracted by some bad old ideas that persist still, "Lost Tribes" and assorted groups of usually very light complexioned people who were really responsible for the "advanced civilizations" who were later wiped out by these "blood thirsty primitive savages" in the New World.
And I guess that after (almost) 30 years of unfunded independent research, I personally can proudly say that there is so much more that I don't know than I do know. A bright spot in the last ten years is talking with people of Indigenous descent, some very interested in the same sort of Sacred Stones and Ceremonial Stone Landscapes I see remnants of all around me, here by one of two historically known Pootatuck Late Woodland Villages, called the Nonnewaug Wigwams on floodplain field near a stone Fish Weir, in a house whose stone foundation shows signs of Indigenous Iconography, possibly built for the Pomperauge Plantation by ancestors perhaps of some of the people I speak with, not quite as "extinct" as both I and they have been told they were or are.
    Frightening is the dark cloud looming in the last two years as a shadow of ignorance and misinformation, prejudice and bigotry grows larger and darker...

      And after reading this (if you even read this far), your eyes might be tired, so dive into the last question and click on some videos by Buffy Ste. Marie or John Trudell. Listen a while to Winnona LaDuke, watch the training videos for the National Park Service on Ceremonial Stone Landscapes by Doug Harris or the fine work by Rolf Chachat-Schilling."

Thursday, October 04, 2018

Revisiting Revisit Before the Big Snow

Gateways

A few gateway images that don't appear in this post (with one exception):

Revisit Before the Big Snow



At a right angle from the roadside row of stones, this massive row continues unbroken for quite a distance, sometimes over bedrock making it seem even more massive, intersecting other rows like the one shown below:
First gateway:
It's only this morning that I ponder about certain light colored stones as snake eyes:
Intentionally a nostril?
The next gateway you come to is one that has appeared on this blog before:

Skip down to the next - carefully, past the bedrock:

Past a connecting row:

Eye Variation??


Both sides comparison:





Steep grade to the River below:

Hmmm...

Past another intersecting row:
Then it stops - or is it "begins," high over the steeper grade to the river?
This last one appeared in a previous post, along with a
Serpent Overlay: