Dear President Roth,
As you know, I was a student at Wesleyan from 2017 until 2019, with some unusual circumstances surrounding thesis advising, the honors decisions, and highly competitive faculty member, who was my mentor, from a different department who took part in a very serious bullying incident. I was there as a mid-career student, and someone from an under-represented religion—a cross-cultural Peruvian shamanic practitioner, active in the Native North American indigenous community. My religion was less advertised at the time mainly because of stigmas that easily arise from commonly-held beliefs concerning cultural appropriation, and the aforementioned bullying incident.
All hell aside, I am writing you today to express my support for the University decision to hang a memorial plaque in Usdan, honoring the “relatives” that we consume, as people and as an institution, every day.
When I heard the news that this was the plan, my heart was filled. Since I began participating in the Lakota traditions, out of habit, I learned to do two things: a) Honor the relatives who have given their lives to allow us to live with a silent prayer; and b) leave a small piece of the food from my plate in their honor, usually by a tree. (The squirrels really love the Usdan cafeteria cookies). Commonly, one might have seen me leaving small samples of food outside—this is why.
My own Statement of Grace is short, sweet, and as follows:
“To the Relatives who have given their lives, or parts of their lives, so that we may live, I thank you for your sacrifice and for your gift. I welcome you as a part of me. Mitakuye Oyasin. [We are all related].”
This prayer, which I authored myself, was inspired by local indigenous teachings and practice, a community that I had been involved with since 2013, teachings which I carry with me even today. When I say, “relatives who have given their lives”, I’m not just referring to the animals, but the plants as well. When I say, “relatives who have given… parts of their lives”, I am also intending a certain gratitude for the vegetables and plant “relatives” that we consume, as well as the human relatives who give their own time to us consumers, to work, harvest, transport, prepare and cook the food we eventually eat. “We are all related” or “Mitakuye Oyasin” is more than a simple “Amen”, it’s a way of life.
You can find a version of the All My Relations or All My Relatives prayer in one of the textbooks used in Wesleyan classes back in 2018 and 2019, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Back when I was a Wesleyan student, in Spring of 2018, a philosophy professor asked me to create a classroom activity based on this particular section of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, in collaboration with another student. However, I found this offensive. I initially protested the unit, because I strongly felt that this was an act of cultural misappropriation. The version of this prayer that appears in Kimmerer’s book is itself an appropriated version of the All My Relations prayer, wherein the author added a verse herself, from her own prayers. She’s forthcoming about this addition, and it is beautifully rendered, but as someone who speaks this prayer in her everyday life, I did not feel comfortable teaching other students to speak this prayer, even more differently than is written in Kimmerer’s book, which I understood to degrade the meaning of the prayer itself. However, her addition does open this idea for debate. It’s not right to teach non-natives a traditional Native prayer, which uses new words and neglects to use the instructions for saying this prayer, when saying it for the first time.
Admittedly, as I wrote this response to the Fox61 headline, I did not know the language that is going to be used on the forthcoming plaque. The full language was not published in the Fox61 article.
It is not the All My Relatives prayer.
Yet, it is reasonable that any student exposed to this text might think to include this prayer, or part of it. I would add, please don’t forget “the plant nation!”. I am not in conversation with anyone from the University, per the above-mentioned incidents from 2018 and 2019. I was inspired to reflect on this one incident by this recent news article, even with the uncanny reminder, which had me calling out, “Hey! I used to pray for them at every meal, when I was there!” It makes sense to use the All My Relatives prayer, or part of it, either in addition to, or in place of the proposed language of the plaque. Or my own prayer, which I included above. If the supporters of this memorial intends to use the Robin Wall Kimmerer version of All My Relations, (speaking as someone who prayed before every meal at Usdan Cafeteria, and throughout many places on the Wesleyan University campus, for these animals and plants, and the people who give their time and effort to make our meals)—I would actually object to anyone including Kimmerer’s specific passage about the strawberries. Strawberries are important to some native communities, and we do love them, but they’re part of the plant nation, and I would not want this publicized on the cafeteria wall.
My concern is that by honoring the animals’ lives, while forgetting the lives of the plants and the people, the spirits, and even the minerals that all go into the act of creating our meals, and furthering life itself, we omit an opportunity for recognition of the foundations of all life.
I love the idea that we should have a memorial to the animals we eat, but there’s so much more to our continued existence on this earth. I would like to voice my support for this initiative, but I would also hope to encourage the community—and even the vegan community—to remember and honor the relatives from all nations, the mineral nation, the plant nation, the animal nation, the human nation, the spirit nation, the four winds of change and growth, when thinking of what other people should think to remember to honor, as they sustain themselves at any of the campus cafeterias.
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin. We are all related.
Melissa Dzierlatka ’19
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