Nomadic you say??

 Someone is explaining "New England Indians" to me again,

Telling me all about

Those nomads wandering in the wilderness again.

 

Someone is explaining "New England Stone Walls" to me again

Telling me all about

Those settler colonists taming the wilderness again.

 

Me, I woke up on Turtle Island again:

The sun rose behind clouds in Nonnewaug again,

I still drive from one old village site to another old village site

Where the modern towns and cities are now

Along some roads that are thousands of years old,

Along an old mastodon migration trail, another Great Path

Along those smaller roads where those stones that were placed long ago remain,

Along another Great Stone Snake, composed of thousands of smaller effigies...

 

Someone is explaining New England to me again

Telling me all about

Those mythical things I’ve heard before about the wilderness again…

And then, thankfully,

Some young person of Indigenous ancestry I know

Pipes up with a quote from somewhere

That goes like this:

"Algonkian towns were located along waterways where fertile soil and fresh water were available...(And)

Native peoples developed sophisticated agricultural technologies for farming a variety of crops, harvesting seafood, and managing forests and landscapes..."

Thanks Drew Shuptar Rayvis!

Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (colloquially known as “stone walls”)

 

 “Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (colloquially known as “stone walls”) by parties who do not test their hypotheses against Northeast Algonquian cosmology, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Rituals of Renewal on Ceremonial Stone Landscapes are doing, at best, only 3% of an investigation,” remarked Sherlock Stones to his associate, famed Rocket Surgeon John Possum.

   “Call it “The 97% Solution,” Sherlock continued. “For thousands and thousands of years -roughly at least 97% of the total human history time span of the area - the Indigenous Peoples of what is thought of as quaint “New England” certainly had a greater opportunity to shape the landscape, using fire and stone than the post contact Euro-American Settler Colonists and their slaves, indentured servants, employees, and their exceptional descendants with their “Merino Sheep Walls” in the remaining 3% of the human history of the region. The example of the use of LiDar in Central and South America to reveal and discover Indigenous Stonework in a place where “true civilization” was thought impossible to exist in a “pristine jungle” serves well. If those southern regions were transformed into some of the world’s largest gardens, then why would it be impossible that the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern gate of Turtle Island could create one of the “World’s Largest Rock Gardens,” my dear Possum?”

    Dr. Possum sighed and remarked, “Well Stones, what is the truly more advanced civilization – one that creates a sustainable system of coexistence with the ecosystem or one that degrades it to such a degree that, if continued without change, in all probability leads to extinction?”

    Both men paused, pondering this...

"Is it ethnic erasure or Ethnic Cleansing to ignore the Indigenous creation of Stonework and attribute the majority of the stonework to the settler colonists who arrived in the years around 1620?" asked Possum.

"You may be merely "splitting hairs," as the saying goes, my dear Possum," replied Stones.