Reading a Landscape
sometimes involves going back to before the times of appropriation and colonization,
before the introduction of the rat and the pig, and everything that followed. Reading
a Landscape sometimes involves as much unlearning as it does learning, as myths
and misconceptions fall away like autumn leaves that reveal a big stone snake
along an ancient Indian road…
Unlearning a Zig Zag Row of Stones:
The carefully constructed pre-contact zigzag stone row at the bottom of layers and layers of the post-contact field clearing stones tossed from the former field above...
There is a calling, there is a need for a book that takes its readers on a leisurely sojourn through a bygone era of ceremonial stone landscapes and Indigenous people. In a new book leading us along rustic winding roads bordering corn fields, birch bark homes, and chestnut tree dugout canoes, Tim Mac Sweeney captures our imaginations as he digs underneath the Colonial layers and reveals the zig-zag rows and stone snakes to give us a guided tour that evokes the American Landscape of first contact times.
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