Por Jan Haaken
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| Image by Tristan Frank. |
“We live in a time of monsters,” Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci was thought to have said in the 1930s. He was describing the rise of fascism in his time. Another quote by Gramsci circulates in the fascism of our time: “The old world is dying and the new struggles to be born.”
We are witnessing that struggle across the land as a dying American Empire bludgeons popular resistance. Our monsters seem intent on taking the planet itself with them to their graves. Yet everyday people band together to try to stop them. We see this in the revolts against AI companies and their massive data centers. In protests against this corporate devouring of land and resources, we hear the echo of longstanding indigenous resistance to extractive industries: Water is life!
As a psychologist and documentary filmmaker, I have for decades followed stories that circulate in social movements. In many Native-led climate actions, fables and legends are enlisted to place the struggles of the moment and the sense of urgency in a wider temporal and existential frame. We understand how important fables are for the moral education of young children. When my son was little, he was particularly fascinated by West Africa fairy tales, many centered on small animals outwitting the bigger ones. In Native cultures, however, animal fables are not left behind in childhood. Non-human animals inhabit our shared planet and make moral claims on us. They teach us about our world if we know how to listen.
In my two documentaries on climate resistance, the Necessity Series, Native traditions of storytelling are more than just allegorical tales. I came to understand the stories as carrying vital symbolic power in the climate justice movement. Facing off against the pipeline companies and oil trains, imagined as black snakes, circulated as a powerful signifier of the deadly oil pipelines. In countering the climate denial promoted by reactionaries and the individualistic carbon-tracking of liberals (“Don’t fly, don’t drive, don’t eat meat!), Native evoking of the black snake represented an old struggle against ongoing colonial forces. Rooted in the folklore and visions of Lakota People and other Indigenous elders, prophecies warn of a great black snake that will stretch across the land, poison waterways, desecrate sacred sites, and bring sickness and destruction. The image and the prophecy circulated widely during the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.
During that valiant struggle, I was reminded of bible stories in my childhood about cunning snakes that do the devil’s work. The lessons inevitably led to submission before the Almighty. In Genesis Chapter 3, Eve is seduced by a serpent into eating the forbidden fruit. And for acting on that desire, she was condemned by God to everlasting suffering: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This was one of many bible lessons that led me to leave the religious fold of my childhood and to look to feminism for adult wisdom.
The first Necessity film opens with a more local allegory. “The Monster Who Came Up the River” is a fable passed through oral traditions of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation here in Oregon. One version of the story was told in the 1950s by Esther Motanac, a beloved Umatilla storyteller. Chief Peo-Peo Mox-Mox (aka Don Sampson), a hereditary chief, narrated the story for the Necessity film and talked with me about how the Monster in the fable works as an allegory for settler colonialism in the Columbia Gorge region.
This huge monster came up from the ocean. He would open his huge mouth and inhale anything that was in his path. He soon had all the salmon and other fish like sturgeon and eels, all eaten and because he was so huge he began taking in the deer and all food animals of the forest. Soon there was nothing left for the people and they were getting hungry, and babies and old people began to die. Finally, someone went to Coyote and told him he would have to kill the monster. He got a length of a vine that is called coyote’s rope. He tied one end around his waist and coiled the other around his arm. He got some pitchy kindling and flints for starting a fire. He stood on a far hill and called the monster a shameful name, he teased him until the monster began trying to eat him. Every time the mouth opened, coyote would throw out some useful thing. The monster was near collapsing. The fire got so hot that the monster died and went back into the sea. Some parts of him clung to the sides of the river bank so it was rough like it was before Bonneville Dam was built.
The enormous mouth and insatiable appetite of the monster symbolize sanctions against greed. Passed on through oral traditions, stories such as these reflect the tragic losses and deprivations people have suffered as well. The monster devours salmon, other animals and people and produces starvation among Indian survivors. The powers of Coyote lie in its clever tactics of resistance as well as in the stupidity of the monster.
While listening to this story, I was struck by parallels between Motanac’s tale and the Judeo-Christian story of Jonah and the Whale (or the Big Fish). The tale of Jonah may have been particularly popular in the fundamentalist Christian church we attended in Ballard, a neighborhood in Seattle settled by Norwegian fisher families. My family, like many others in the congregation, had lost relatives at sea so this allegory held special resonance. In my Sunday School class the lesson of Jonah centered on punishment, submission to authority, and rebirth through suffering. The rebellious Jonah was spit out onto the beach, subdued after three days in the creature’s stomach.
Unlike the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale, where the Whale engulfs Jonah under the disciplinary control of the Almighty, Coyote allows himself to be consumed by the Monster as a ploy. Jonah is belched onto the land after being devoured by the creature, transformed from rebel into loyal supplicant. Coyote, in contrast, outmaneuvers the monster and is then able to destroy it and cast it back into the river. In the biblical tale, Jonah is redeemed through engulfment by the great fish and his three days and nights of endurance in its belly. “The Monster Who Came Up the River” unfolds around a more active contest of wills.
While listening to Chief Don Sampson’s interpretation of the Monster story, I was struck by another difference between Jonah and Coyote. Sampson explains how the monster represents the potential for greed and selfishness in all people, and that Coyote in Native stories is both a deliverer and sometimes a betrayer of his people. Coyote enters stories as a morally ambiguous figure. The forced assimilation and the destruction and displacement of Native peoples generated a rich trove of literature where the powerful spirits, both good and bad, are more dispersed across the cosmos than are the spirit forces in the Abrahamic traditions. While respect for elders carries enormous moral weight in tribal cultures, the tribes in the Northwest also stress respect for children and for their independence. Fables with Coyote tricksters abound. There is considerable latitude for children to explore the world around them and to find their own animal spirits or guides.
Colonial powers returned to Indian Country last year with an aggressive push by tech companies to build their monstrous data centers on tribal lands. Honor the Earth’s Stop Data Colonialism Manifesto has gathered support, even in Oklahoma where battles among tribes over Big Oil and now Big Tech are most fierce. After intense opposition, the Muskogee Nation, 40 miles south of Tulsa, rejected a rezoning plan that would have converted 5,570 acres of farmland to a data center “park.” The coyotes may not be clever enough to outsmart these new monsters. But they carry a long history of surviving and subverting their conquerors. And they have many tales to tell.
This is the first piece of a four-part series. The other three parts can be read this fall for free on my Substack page.
Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker.
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