Striving For Kithship

What is implied by Kithship? What do I mean by kith when I sing out the word with the kids in my classes? How does it relate to building intimacy and knowledge of the land?

It's hard as a settler to describe relationships with land, especially when striving for relationships that are better than the conventional ones of my ancestors. Intensive land management in detrimental ways, inconsiderate settler land grabbing and destruction of forests and habitats, buying and selling of land.. all these and more disconnect and alienate my family from this new place where I can trace my family line back to only a hundred years or so. For all the varied reasons why my family ended up here, some beyond their control, some against their will, they still participated in interactions with the land which gave wealth and sustenance to them while abetting the Canadian colonial project, which inherently meant taking wealth and stealing sustenance from the folks who were here before them.

My goal is to work away from this exploitative relationship with the land, striving towards renewal of thriving ecosystems, beneficial for all life and struggling against Canadian colonial extinction culture. I do this in many ways, but one of which is reframing relationships, checking in and trying to see the ways my being here and how I move through the world can harm or help. Rather than rend and offend, I want to tend and mend.

“Kith and kin” is another way of saying “friends and family”, but a little older. Old definitions defined kith as your native place, your countrymen, the people of your region or homeland. This isn't the modern definition but important to reflect on. In a time before Europeans engaged in extensive intercontinental travel, “kithship” implied those who you would encounter in your life time, those you may find affinity of place with, a common connection to the land where you lived. A modern definition is what was mentioned above, as your friendships, your crew, your community.

“Kith” sounds like “with” but with a K instead of a W. The word comes from Old English and was spelt cyðð, hard c, y, and the Old English “eth” or “ð” used twice. “Eth” is pronounced similarly to our common “th”.

In considering the word kith in regards to relationships with the landbase, I feel like it stands as a good definition of ongoing desire towards deepening intimacy and knowing, just as we might with a friend or close loved one. The word is used recognizing that I am not from, or native to, this place, but striving towards interpersonal/interspecies/interlifeform bonds and connections based on shared relationships with the place where we live. There is also an understanding that we are not family, not blood, but still in proximity and still display characteristics of love, compassion, generosity, reciprocity and responsibility, which are not all, but some of the characteristics of the bonds of friends and family.

I like to think of relationship to land as the similar to that of a friend or crush or even lover sometimes. I have a print zine series entitled “crushin' on the land” which I described in the first issue my desire to know more about the land as one might be curious to know more about someone you are crushing on.

“i want to spend most of my time outside these days, wandering with all sorts of googly eyes, sighing heavily, smitten by the snow and the rivers and the trees and the birds and the tracks of all those secret beings walking by unseen. in the fall i would lay in the high grasses for long hours, singing quiet songs to the soil while i caressed the shoots and the dirt. ever had a crush on someone? then you must know those feelings.

i want to smell it all, to put everything in my mouth, to ask so many questions and really go deep into the poetry of hills and valleys and caves. i want to know everything and my curiosity is never ending. when i don't see those specific trees, or tracks or sign of the wilder places i feel a pang of loss, a profound pining which tugs at my spirit.

I also think describing my feelings for the land in ways similar to friendship keeps me out of the academic realm but grounded in a common language that lots of folks understand and can relate with, which transcends identities and maybe calls in a very common human experience. We can understand friendship, and understand the work that goes it those friendships. It also elaborates on complexities of those relationships and all the tricky ways we have to navigate and learn from each other.

It also doesn't claim more than I am comfortable claiming. I am not attesting to a grand magical spiritual depth, more connected than anyone else or anything like that, but grounds it in very accessible and again, acquainted framework.

I value Martin Shaw's suggestion, or question, of what does it mean to be “of” a place, when we aren't “from” a place.

“To be of is to hunker down as a servant to the ruminations of the specific valley, little gritty vegetable patch, or swampy acre of abandoned field that has laid its breath on the back of your neck... To be of means to listen. To commit to being around, to a robust pragmatism as to what this wider murmuring may require of you. It’s participation, not as a conqueror, not in the spirit of devouring, but of relatedness. I think this takes a great deal of practice...To be of means to be in. To have traded endless possibility for something specific. It means not talking about a place but with a place – and that’s not a relationship available indiscriminately, wherever you travel, but something that may claim you once or twice in a lifetime. Knowing the stories of a place is bending your ear to its neighbourly gossip... Some of us are trying to re-enter the countries of our birth in a different way. To walk the shores not with a shield but with speech, with seeds rather than slaughter.”

I relate to this Of Being, as I have no tangible, or imaginal, connections to a homeland from which I am still uncertain where I come from. I know no one who'se bones are in the ground of England (or is it Scotland?), or where else my ancestors are from. I think this is why I feel a deep calling to this place, where I have lived most of my life, where I have grown, and will likely die. Where I have folks born and buried. Where I know the landscape, some of the species and feel familiarity with the contours of this particular place, this Homeplace.

Sometimes I think we need to get to know this land to become whole here. Sometimes I think that first we need to get to know the people of the land here before we can get whole here. The people of this place, according to the treaty, are the Mississaugas of the Credit, and personally I don't have any deep connections to anyone of that nation. To know the land means getting to know the people of this land, not just the plants, animals, and rocks. To know the people who've been here since before time would offer me a lot in the ways of learning the natural history of the land as well. Maybe we could share in our knowledge too, sharing what resources and tools I have at my disposal to share the knowledge of place in different ways, reflecting different lives lived, from different lineages and diverse ancestries.

So, kithship is about building friendly relations with the land, and with the folks native to the place where you now call home. It is endlessly complex but also approachable if we don't try and do it all at once. With so much damage done, it sort of means that there are so many moves, large and small, we can do to make our relationships better. Small steps every day towards decolonial futures where Indigenous folks, settler folks, the land, and all relations there on, have sovereignty and self determination and a chance to work towards a good relationship with each other.

So yeah, I want to strive for a kithship with the landbase, something beyond just the first waves of a crush, past the NRE (new-relationship-energy), but instead into a profound connection, full of awe, wonder, love, patience, generosity and shared understanding.