Can We Hear What the Land Is Saying? The Haudenosaunee Two Row Wampum and the Via Negativa as Postures for Listening

Daniel Coleman addresses the consumptive relationship with the more-than-human world that is the basis of settler colonial culture and economy, by investigating two under-valued traditions that could open up more reciprocal relationships with the land on which we live. The first of these is the Two Row-Covenant Chain Wampum agreement made in the seventeenth century between the Haudenosaunee and European settlers on the Hudson River, considered “the grandfather of the treaties” between incoming Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast. The second is the via negativa, or apophatic tradition, of neo-Platonic Christianity, also obscured today through the long dominance of imperial versions of religion. Both these traditions emphasize the need for humbly setting aside one’s own knowing and self-definition in order to be known by the Other, a position of immersive listening that is also key to environmental awareness.