Monday, 16 January 2012

the kitchen table

My favourite poem in the world is "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo. It starts like this: "The world begins at the kitchen table. No matter what we must eat to live..."

One of the things I love about the poem is that it celebrate the normalness, the complexity, the simplicity of being Indigenous. And, more broadly, of being human. I have spoken about this poem with high school students, university students, and at a graduation address at the university marae... and I have always enjoyed experiencing the poem over and over with all of these different groups.

The thing about the kitchen table is that it is a domestic, family-centred, relational, food-related, hospitable, collective, intimate space. The poem celebrates the centre of a world rather than its categories: land, family, genealogy, the environment, colonialism, resistance and sovereignty are all present in the poem, but they are all connected through the centre of the table rather than, for example, another centre like government, tribal structure, political status or theory. The kitchen table at the centre is a place where being Indigenous is practiced rather than a place where it is merely talked about. This is not merely where we talk but it is where we do, show, be.

This evening as I sat around the table here with Chris and Megan, recalling the meals shared here today with Nish, Matiu and other guests, I became aware again of the kitchen table. Chris, Megan and I talked about Maori and Metis identity categories and history, and Chris gave Megan and I an introduction to the history of this place. As I sipped my coffee, I realised this conversation about history and memory and family and being who we are in relation to others was yet another instance in a long line of instances in which these discussions had happened. Metis history (and, yes, Maori history) is recorded in books and film and legal documents and complex oral narratives, but it is also transmitted through conversations around tables while people sit up and talk late into the nite. Sure, the kitchen table is a metaphor: it's land, it's home, it's creation... but it's also the kitchen table where cups of tea and food and shared throughout the day and, in this case, late into the -25c Edmonton nite.
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Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
 
 
 
 
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994

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