Speaking

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Now this is what I have to say about speaking the corn into being.

In the old days the farmers did not know the day of planting. It was announced by the holy men. Then the orators would come and sing the seed corn into the field and the field into the form from which the corn would rise in the process of the seeds breaking. Then someone, usually the grandmother, would sit on her platform speaking the crows away from the seeded fields until the seeds were established in stalks and corn tassels waving and the corn itself could speak the crows away. The corn was mixed with words all summer. The fields were never without sound. Even after harvest, a green-corn ceremony honored the new crop. During the storing process. Even during baking or cooking, a woman would speak to the corn. Tell it stories.

There was an interconnectedness of things.

And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; And the earth shall hear the corn... and [the corn] shall hear [the people]. Hosea 2:21-22

Some of the Cherokee were evangelized by Christian missionaries. They found similarities in Yahweh and the Great Spirit because the Judeo-Christian God also spoke the world into being. He had the power to join mind and word. He knew the wholeness of being. In fact, there are stories that the Great Spirit made us because he wanted to share that power. He mixed us with the dust of the ground and his breath. Its breath that gives us kinship with the Great Spirit. Breath is in the sacredness of the spoken word. In turn, we are creators when we speak.

We are accountable for our words.

Cover Story section, September/October 1997.

From The West Pole (University of Minnesota Press, 1997). The essay originally appeared in Freeing the First Amendment

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print