Lumuhu
Written by Lehua Taitano | June 2020
Lumuhu - time to return, resume one’s route
I was looking forward to hosting the Pulan Collective gathering at my home in Santa Rosa, California in May, but a statewide quarantine forced us to commune in other ways (ways more familiar to those of us who are used to being separated by distance, for better or worse). At each previous gathering, I have brought an offering from my garden: figs, peppers, seeds, flowers, herbs—whatever was in season. Here, I offer a deeper look into why my approach to so many things in life is through gardening and observation of the earth and our nonhuman relatives. In all my interaction with community, I look to the knowledge and sensibility passed to me from my mother, Catherine Taitano, my grandmother, Maria Flores, and countless ancestors before them to inform and guide me. Our ability to heal ourselves comes from our connection to the land, water, and sky, which we consider ancestors as well. My garden is one expression of my love and joy. One expression of my lessons in patience and adaptability.
Until we are once again able to meet face-to-face, hopefully in my garden, I share these words with the Pulan Collective instead: an excerpt from an essay I’m writing about my fascination with plants and birds and growing things, and how our ancestors’ connection to the earth is alive in us all.
from “The Language of Recognition: One Indigenous Approach to Pedagogy”
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I am in love with (a) Wisteria.
I say Wisteria because it is what I know to say that can conjure an image for (some of) you, though the truth takes much more to get to. Besides, the truest names of things often vine toward and away from us, spiraling against a backdrop of cloud-scattered sky.
In this case, etymology only gets us so far, thanks to the taxonomic practices of Thomas Nuttall and the like. The first names of Wisteria are not now commonly used—which is to say: they are alive but held close to the hearts of those who keep and honor such things, despite attempted erasures and the violence of colonial self-importance.
For my purposes here then, I will call upon what I know of true naming in order to bring the life of this sweet flowering vine into your consciousness, so that we might delight in some of her ways. We’ll call her delight, for a start. A proud bearer of draping scent. And what of her many arms, weighted in spring with clustering possibility? Do we know how to name a twining heart, clambering for recognition, for the right slant of light?
I do know this: I am transplanted again and again, my roots air clung during each migration, remembering the many names I have for home. And in every garden, delight.
I begin in the earth and twist toward the sun, that ancestral warmth, an orb of pulsing vision. Like Wisteria. With Wisteria. We are hand-in-hand, spiraling.
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In some lifetimes, at least, I am avian. Once, a pelican, eyes drinking the glittering sea, my throat a pocket of foam and flotsam. I glide through keyhole arches, tuck my knees and skim the salt mist of rolling waves, wings glazed in orange sunset. In another, I am a flitting bower bird. An architect of tending, I gather neat geometries and moments of color, arranging patterns in the name of love and order. I preen and post my signs, then wait. In this I am most patient, tasting small breezes for the tenderest of movements.
(We are speaking of the language of recognition.)
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To enact those memories in this life, I create. Dream. Create again. Pastpresentfuture all emanating from spiralized time. From and to, yes, but throughout all, part of. An Indigenous sensibility. A CHamoru sensibility.
(We are speaking of the language of beginnings.)
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In this life, I am just as interested in curating spaces, tending, stretching outside perceived boundaries and the imposition of borders.
In this life, I am a facilitator, teacher, an eternal student of beginnings. I bring with me, in all spaces, what I am part of. A host of educators and mentors: sky and ocean, currents and decay, my ancestral knowledge, imagination, and intuition—all teachers. In classrooms (institutional, virtual, communal, and personal), I look to the beginnings of things in order to get to the roots of our relationships, our growing.
And in all beginnings, Indigeneity.
Menu
red rice bowl with pickled papaya, cucumbers and smoked salmon
turmeric, honey, apple cider vinegar shrub with sparkling water