Reflections on Historical and Contemporary Indigenist Approaches to Environmental Ethics in a Comparative Context

Abstract

Weske kutchissik ayum God kesuk kah ohke.' Rev. John Eliot's W6panaak bible, published in 1663 and the Western Hemisphere's first in a Native language, begins with these words, which may be translated as: First in time, when that which continues to be began, God makes the visible heavens, and land.2 This line from Genesis 1:1, translated into the W6panaak language (and now back to English), reads a little differently from the familiar version of the biblical Creation, and from it we may get a picture of Algonkian3 intellectualism. From this brief passage we gain an important Algonkian linguistic perspective on Creation: It is an ongoing process; it continues to take place, rather than being a static action in the past, as the traditional English interpretation implies. Despite being rendered by an Englishman, this passage uses the W6panaak language, and therefore reflects, to a certain degree, an Algonkian view of Creation. The word kutchissik refers to an ongoing act, therefore, Algonkian philosophy tells us that northeastern Indigenous peoples viewed Creation differently than the English arrivals. It has been established that many early Puritan set23