Skok Qusukqaniyutôkanash (CT)

 

Qusukqaniyutôk (2022): “A row of stones artistically stacked using elements of Indigenous Iconography, sometimes resembling a Great Snake, often composed of smaller snake effigies as well as other effigies both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, sometimes appearing to shapeshift into another effigy, possibly related to control of water or fire (sometimes both) on Sacred Cultural Landscapes that are beginning to be recognized as Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.”

From a perspective of distance, the largest of the Stone Snake Qusukqaniyutôk snake across the landscape, crossing over others, sometimes connecting great boulders or bedrock outcrops, sometimes along streams – and sometimes stacked over and hiding a stream, a Musical Row of Stones - the sound of water is the Great Snake contentedly “purring.”

Inside each enclosure was a garden, perhaps tended by fire, perhaps protected from fire, something kept in balance, kept in production by someone offering tobacco to a serpent guardian before entering, someone singing while stacking stones, picking up and replacing her grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ stones that have fallen.

Zigzag, linear rows of stones, snaking across the landscape, both sides of an Indian Path or Native American Trail or an Indigenous Road that’s possibly ten or twelve thousand years old…