Anishinaabe Worldview, Western Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

By Maya Chacaby

Sometimes things hit in all the best ways. My cousin Maya Chacaby wrote this… Originally posted to Facebook:

I was so in love with my Cousin Zhooshkwa Begonebijiged Chartrand Belair‘s piece on the troubles with how that braiding sweetgrass book has been taken up in the world, that I wrote a story. here is the link to the writing that inspired this: https://terrechartrand.ca/…/knowledge-context-and…/…

…and now for my little story (based on “Nenaboozhoo and the Artichokes” story from the William Jones Collection)

How to Eat Artichokes Without Talking Out of Your Ass:

Anishinaabe Worldview, Western Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Nanaboozhoo was sitting out in the bush one sunny afternoon feeling extremely pleased with himself, (which should always be taken as an early warning sign). You see, he had been reading. A lot. Books. Articles. Essays with tasteful covers and inspirational quotes like “we are good medicine for each other”. Things with words like honour the earth, ancient wisdom, The Mishomis Book is the One True Way, floating around in reassuring fonts as devotional texts for white women. He had been nodding thoughtfully. Highlighting passages. Feeling grounded. Feeling like someone who understood nature in a deep and meaningful way without having to change his behaviour in any noticeable sense. IN one book, He had recently learned that the land was a way of seeing and you can do it with Two-Eyed Seeing. He had tried the two eye seeing gaze across the land and everything came out sort of crossed eyed, blurry, enough to hide the ways that colonial gazes reposition all that is Anishinaabe towards western frameworks for meaning and legitimacy. this kind of blurry seeing the land worked really well! you just had to look at it crossed eyed and all the responsibilities. protocols, tensions, disruptions, destructions, faded away!

This was a relief, because it meant the land did not require anything specific of him. No protocol or obligation or on-going relationship and certainly not anything that would interrupt his afternoon of feel good, romanticized soft nature porn. All it asked for was appreciation and love and somehow doing this would make him even more Indigenous to place… oh yes.. Nanaboozhoo was very good at this.

He admired the trees. He admired the breeze. He admired the idea of relation. He had even stopped at a 7/11 earlier and picked up some very affordable tobacco, which he now felt confident could be deployed ceremonially just in case there were any human spectators around.

He had read somewhere that offering tobacco when people were watching automatically established connection and sacredness excusing any kind of extractive process. That just offering tobacco made ALL Indigenous Knowledge palatable to Western Science. it made Western scientific methodology completely neutral and able to lovingly embrace Anishinaabe relations.

Nanaboozhoo felt reassured knowing that ceremony, properly managed, could be light, flexible, and emotionally affirming. Something you could feel rather than something that might rearrange your responsibilities.

He reflected warmly on how beautiful Indigenous knowledge was. How poetic. How generous. How available. there was no need here to reflect on Indigenous authority. Or law. Or refusal.

Or the fact that admiration has historically been an extremely efficient way to avoid accountability.

He was especially fond of the idea that ceremony could be aesthetic, knowledge could be metaphor, and survivance could be inspirational. This made everything much easier to hold. Nothing sharp. Nothing demanding. Nothing that asked him to give land back or stop doing anything.

What Nanaboozhoo did not notice (because romanticization is very good at hiding this)was that transforming living sciences into metaphor has consequences. That turning ceremony into vibe detaches it from obligation. That reverence, when it floats free of responsibility, becomes a refined form of extraction.

But Nanaboozhoo was not thinking about extraction. He was thinking about how amazingly connected he felt. And then, because relations are never purely conceptual and bodies always have opinions, Nanaboozhoo got hungry.

So he wandered a little further down the path and that’s when he saw them.

Artichokes.

Standing there. Mindinimooyenh-sized. Spiky. Complicated. Clearly minding their own business.

Nanaboozhoo paused to Observe.

He adjusted his gaze into what he had recently learned was called Two-Eyed Seeing. One eye did a soft, reverent scan through the poetics of soft Indigenous nature porn. The other eye did a polite, analytical inventory of western botany. Together, they produced a very satisfying blur …enough to feel respectful without having to get specific.

With his romanticized gaze, He thought about how interesting the artichokes were. How layered. How symbolic. How generous it was of them to just be there, waiting to be understood.

He did not consider that they might not be offering anything to him.

Nenaboozhoo appreciated the artichokes deeply, which allowed him to bypass the inconvenience of asking what territory he was on, whose relations these plants belonged to, or what obligations might already be active the moment he entered their space.

He admired their potential teachings. He did not wonder what conditions made their presence possible. Or what histories sat beneath their roots. Or who would carry the consequences if those conditions were disrupted.

The artichokes, in Nanaboozhoo’s mind, became less like specific Beings and more like a category. A plant that could stand in for many plants. A teaching that could apply broadly. Something interchangeable. Portable.Something that could be _learned from_ without having to deal with anger, refusal, or the possibility of being told no.

He felt grateful. Reverent, even. This reverence made it very easy to reach out.

…and so he took them.

And because everything still felt peaceful and gentle, Nenaboozhoo mistook access for relationship, and silence for consent. The artichokes said nothing. Which Nenaboozhoo interpreted as openness.

…and then he took a bite.

He chewed thoughtfully. Appreciatively. With the kind of care people reserve for something they plan to publish in an Indigenous poetic piece for white consumption. This felt important.

Each bite seemed to offer a small, digestible insight. Little tidbits of Indigenous knowledge tucked softly inside the plant, ready to be accessed once the hard parts were worked around. Nothing confrontational. Nothing that asked him to stop. Just enough texture to feel authentic, but not enough to interrupt his appetite.

Nanaboozhoo ignored the spikes.

They were inconvenient. Uncomfortable to think about. Not very welcoming. He told himself they were probably symbolic anyway. Defensive flourishes. Artistic choices. He focused instead on the parts that yielded easily, the parts that confirmed what he already suspected: that Indigenous knowledge, when handled with sufficient love and awe, was nourishing, generous, and very good for filling gaps.

He felt his empty stomach begin to settle.

This was helpful, because Nanaboozhoo had been carrying around a number of epistemic holes. Places where Western science didn’t quite explain things. Areas where the system felt thin, brittle, or incomplete. The artichoke slid into those spaces nicely, padding them out without requiring him to question the structure of his thinking. No need to change the system at all.

He just kept eating.

With every bite, the artichoke became less of a Being and more of a resource. A supplement. A gentle corrective. Something that could be consumed to improve understanding without rearranging relationships. Not once did he consider that plants do not dispense wisdom on demand. He didn’t consider that knowledge taken without protocol becomes extraction, no matter how tender it tastes.

The spikes pressed occasionally against his mouth. Nenaboozhoo adjusted his grip. He had found a way to eat around them.

Nanaboozhoo then wiped his hands, packed up his books, and stood.

He felt good. Grounded. Nourished. Slightly wiser. The kind of wise that comes from having consumed something meaningful without having been inconvenienced by it.

He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and started down the path toward home, congratulating himself quietly for having had such a beautiful experience with Nature. Capital N. The kind you can have in an afternoon and still make it back in time for dinner.

He felt, in a way that was difficult to quantify but extremely satisfying, more Indigenous to the land. Not in a jurisdictional or legal or like anything possibly relational sense. just a sweet, peaceful feeling. This was important to him.

As he walked, he replayed the experience in his mind. How gentle it had been. How harmonious. How nothing had demanded too much. He thought about how easily what he had learned could be shared. Taught. Braided in. He imagined future conversations where this experience would soften rooms, calm tensions, and reassure institutions that everything could coexist peacefully if everyone just slowed down and appreciated one another.

AND That’s when he heard a very strange sound:

Low. Wet. Disturbing. A Gurgling from the depths kind of sound that is very very un-settling.

Nanaboozhoo stopped. He turned around.

Nothing.

No bears, no storms, no obvious threat. The forest was still respectful and serene.

Then the sound came again. Closer this time. Longer…..Louder.

Nanaboozhoo’s stomach tightened. This was not the Nature he had been reading about all afternoon. This was not gentle and poetic. This was not the nature that could be managed through metaphor or appreciation. This was… unsettling.

He started walking again, a little faster now. His heart picked up. The sound followed. Persistent. Insistent. Refusing to be aestheticized or metaphored out of existence.

Nanaboozhoo’s thoughts scrambled. what did i do wrong? i am innocent here!

He had admired. He had appreciated. He had been respectful.

Hadn’t he?

The sound grew louder.

Closer.

Now unmistakably behind him. Nanaboozhoo broke into a run.

This was not harmony-with-nature-as-metaphor. This was not coexistence-as-feeling.

This was something real, embodied, and completely uninterested in his intentions.

As he ran, his earlier confidence unraveled. The teachings he thought he had gathered did not help him orient. The soft language he had consumed offered no guidance here. Nothing he had read told him what to do when relation stopped being gentle and started asserting itself.

The sound surged again. At this point Nanaboozhoo was terrified.

Which is when it finally dawned on him.

The sound was… him.

More specifically, it was coming from his ass.

Nanaboozhoo slowed. Then stopped.

He stood there, breathing hard, as the realization settled in alongside a very specific kind of discomfort. The artichokes. They had not been digested. Not properly. Not relationally. Not with protocol.

All that beautiful knowledge he had consumed — all those tender insights he had eaten around the spikes — had not integrated. They had moved straight through him, bypassing understanding entirely. What he had taken in without responsibility was now exiting without coherence.

Nanaboozhoo stood very still.

It occurred to him then that what he had mistaken for learning was actually supplementation. That what he had treated as teaching was functioning as a bridge, allowing him to cross into Indigenous knowledge without ever leaving his original position.

He had admired, borrowed and worst of all had filled in gaps with all kinds of mismatched concepts.

But He, himself and his relationship to the land had not changed.

And now his ass was doing what his thinking had refused to do.

It was returning the knowledge to the world…. unprocessed.

Audibly.

Nenaboozhoo sighed. This, he realized, was what happens when you enter a problem-space already structured by someone else’s authority and try to patch its failures without dismantling the frame itself. When Indigenous knowledge is taken up as gentle, poetic, endlessly generous severed from the political, territorial, and legal relations that give it form. This was what happens when refusal is smoothed over, when harmony becomes the default expectation, when reverence becomes an access point rather than a responsibility.

you end up talking out of your ass.

Nenaboozhoo adjusted his grip on his bag and started walking again, still farting away for all to hear. It was clear now that If he wanted to stop talking out of his ass, he’d have to wonder differntly, starting with wondering why Indigenous knowledge is always expected to help something else function better. And, he was going to have to learn how to relate to plants — and knowledge — differently.

And that was going to take longer than an afternoon.