Land Acknowledgement
I respectfully acknowledge that this Civic Engagement Project was conducted in the aboriginal territories of the Séliš and Ql̓ispé people. Today, I honor the path they have always shown us in caring for this place for the generations to come.
(Adapted from language created by the Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee for the University of Montana)Personal Introduction
Thank you for visiting my Civic Engagement Project (CEP) webpage!
My name is Kaleb Cohen. Before getting into my CEP, I want to give you some of my family and geographic background that is integral to who I am and how this CEP has come about.
I am a descendent of European settlers who came to this continent from varying lands and for varying reasons. My mother's side is mostly from western Europe (England and Scotland) and my father's side is made up entirely of Ashkenazi Jews from what is now Belarus.
I grew up in Southern California suburbia, where I learned to love the ocean, the mountains, desertscapes, and food. After college, I moved to Washington state to pursue other climatic experiences—and farming. I settled in Nłʔaycčstm (the Missoula area) in 2021 to start graduate school in philosophy. This CEP is the culmination of my time in the philosophy department at the University of Montana.
The Civic Engagement Project (CEP)
In my CEP, I aimed to conceive and enact a distinctly Jewish and decolonial relationship with land in the particularities of Nłʔaycčstm.
I attempted to accomplish this through three interrelated projects:
- Organizing a Jewish environmental book study
- Facilitating a celebration of Tu BiShvat 5783/2023
- Contributing to the PEAS Farm native plant garden
And, in the Theoretical Applications section below, I connect three of my core philosophy seminars to these projects. (A full account of my CEP is contained in my CEP Portfolio, which you can access below.)
But before I tell you about each of these projects, I want to acknowledge my indebtedness and deep thankfulness to some of those who have been integral to the formulation of this CEP.
Dedication to Sol Neely
Sol Neely (1973-2022) has had a great deal of influence on my intellectual and personal development, especially his contributions to Indigenous phenomenology and Jewish philosophy and his commitment to social justice and decolonization. He died suddenly and tragically in October, 2022. To honor his life and his legacy, I dedicate this CEP to Sol and his memory.
Other Inspirations
"Horsefly Dress," by Heather Cahoon
Emmanuel Levinas
Nłʔaycčstm
Theoretical Applications
For this class, we explored the philosophical implications of the Anthropocene, the recommended designation for the present geological epoch we inhabit. In the Anthropocene, no place on earth is left untouched by human hands.
“Re-story-ation”
One thing we learn from the Anthropocene is the extent to which we humans are interrelated with our environments. One of the thinkers we engaged in this regard was Robin Kimmerer. Kimmerer encourages us to reimagine our relationship to our environments through stories. But not just any stories, the stories of the particular lands we inhabit: here, in the particularities of Nłʔay, those stories are Séliš-Ql̓ispé stories. Kimnmerer has a beautiful term for this practice of learning the stories of particular lands as a practice of healing the land: “re-story-ation.”
"Decolonization as Translation"
But, as Sol Neely has put it, “encountering wisdom in its place risks reinscribing coloniality”—that is, how could those of us who are positioned as settlers on Séliš-Ql̓ispé land learn Séliš-Ql̓ispé stories in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the violence of colonization through the colonization of Indigenous knowledge and culture? Neely suggests that a kind of translation is required—what he calls, “decolonization as translation.” This is a kind of translation that is attentive to the violent colonial strategies such as boarding schools that constitute the reasons why many Indigenous cultures and languages are fragmented in the first place.
Midrash
I think there’s resources in Jewish traditions to aid in Neely's project here: midrash. Emmanuel Levinas describes midrash as “the fruit of centuries of spiritual life forming a chain of tradition in which thought is at once transmitted and renewed.” Midrash is a hermeneutic or interpretive practice in rabbinic Judaism that has to do with making sense of the gaps in Jewish texts generally through telling stories. Midrash is an act of translation to make sense of traditional stories in one’s current temporal and spatial context.
The limits of translation and Indigenous language revitalization
Finally, translation has its limits. And, in the end, says Neely, “we will forever remain tone deaf to wisdom in its place if we do not commit ourselves to the study of indigenous languages in those place.” We must learn the Indigenous languages of the particular lands we inhabit for the sake of becoming environmentally responsible as well as, one might add, in order to contribute to the growing movement of Indigenous language revitalization.
Thoreau’s new sensing and critique of the eye
In her book, Bird Relics, Branka Arsić argues that a major part of Henry David Thoreau’s project was to conceive of how we might have access to the literal world through developing an “intense empiricism” that “abandons the traditional philosophical belief that human access to nature must always be mediated by concepts.” On the way to an unmediated access to our surroundings, Thoreau critiques what he calls “ideation,” which refers to one theory of perception such that when we physically sense something in the world, our brain makes a picture of it in our mind and what we are directly experiencing is that picture, but not the real world.
The eye, for Thoreau, is the metaphorical epitome of ideation. If you think about it, many of our metaphors for knowledge are indeed visual metaphors: I see what you mean; Kaleb's CEP is very illuminating. Instead of the eye, Thoreau suggests we use the ear as the metaphorical epitome of perception.
A Jewish "consciousness of hearing"
Emmanuel Levinas, whose project has been described as a translation of “Jewish sources into Greek,” develops a similar critique. But Levinas’s constructive account of perception is quite different from Thoreau’s. Returning to Sol Neely is really helpful here. Neely explains that, instead of a consciousness of seeing, Levinas develops a consciousness of hearing. A consciousness of hearing is a radical openness to the world.
In a consciousness of hearing, perception doesn’t begin with “ideation,” or perhaps what one might also call intentionality, but inspiration, which Levinas connects to the literalness of respiration. In this move, Levinas appeals to his “Jewish source material” which are the oral traditions of Judaism, or the oral Torah, which also helps to reveal the significance of oral traditions generally. It is an openness to encountering the breath of the other (inspiration), or as Neely puts it so well: through the connected duality of inspiration and respiration, “we breathe in into vitality and breathe out into vulnerability.”
Encountering wisdom in its place
Neely reads Levinas through an Indigenous “inspired eco-phenomenology” to argue that a consciousness of hearing is attuned to the land “which is always already storied and ecological in ways that cultures of usurpation are historically tone deaf toward.” We can learn to become attuned, in this fundamentally different modality of consciousness, to the histories of violence against the land and the Indigenous peoples who have inhabited this land since time immemorial as well as the stories from these lands that teach us how to live well in the particularities of these lands.
Deborah Bird Rose's Shimmer
This course explored a wide range of philosophical topics relevant to non-human animals, such as animal cognition, animal ethics, and intersectionality (of justice issues for non-human animals and for humans). I spent most of the semester reflecting on ethics and wildlife policy—in particular, wolves in Montana and flying-foxes in Australia. My CEP is informed by what I learned from Deborah Bird Rose and her flying-fox teachers in her book, Shimmer.
This quote, I think, captures the ethos of Rose's book: “The story is bleak, but it is not only about death. Flying-foxes interact with humans in networks focused on kinship, care, rescue, advocacy and research. Human beings offer love and commitment; they bring assistance, bear witness and, through their actions, testify to an interspecies ethic that responds to suffering and, at the same time, praises the gifts that flying-foxes bring to the world.”
Yes!
“Yes!,” according to Rose, “is the great powerhouse of life on earth.” Yes!, “asserts the value of life over the powers of destruction, and flows through living creatures in all their fidelity to their own way of life, their new generations, their mutualisms, and their flamboyance.” And, for humans, “saying yes to life is a profound ethical choice. It is an embrace of the living world, a grateful response to the gifts of life, a pledge of solidarity with Earth’s way of becoming, and a commitment to witness the work of life.”
Yes! as הננ
I think that it is reasonable that we might think of Rose’s “Yes!” as her own translation of the Hebrew word הננ (hineni), which, in Jewish traditions, is the ultimate affirmation and acceptance of responsibility. Yes! and הננ are affirmations of the goodness of creatures and creation in general and an acceptance of the responsibility to bear witness to both suffering and joy.
ברכה
In Jewish traditions, one great example of הננ as affirmation of the goodness of creation and responding to this goodness is ברכה (brakha), or the making of a blessing, which is a praise of the goodness of others, or, following James Hatley’s formulation, a praising of the praise of creation. In making the connection to my CEP explicit here, ברכות (brakhot, plural of brakha) are a central feature of Tu BiShvat. According to Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, for “the kabbalists, the point of the [Tu BiShvat] seder is to repair the world”: “The more fruit you eat and the more wine you drink, the more blessings you’re required to say, the more the earth is healed.”
What do I mean by "decolonial"?
Decolonial is meant to signal the larger movement of decolonization. Decolonization, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang tell us, is not metaphorical, but is literally about “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life.” I think of my project as decolonial because I understand it—from the position of a white settler occupying stolen Séliš-Ql̓ispé land—as first and foremost a promotion of the repatriation of Indigenous lands. Though my project isn’t literally giving land back to Indigenous peoples, I still think of it as decolonial, i.e. promoting land back, because I am attempting to enact ways of inhabiting land that ultimately recognize Indigenous sovereignty over their homelands and facilitate a consciousness in (especially Jewish) settler inhabitants of Indigenous lands that might lead to literal land back.
Project Accomplishments
Jewish Environmental Book Study
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Co-facilitated with Jim Hatley
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Thanks to the Montana Jewish Project for this digital flyer on the left!
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Took place over nine consecutive meetings, on Zoom, from January 23-March 20, 2023
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We read Rabbi Ellen Bernstein's The Splendor of Creation
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Made up of a consistent and committed group of around eight members from over six different US states and two countries
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Final meeting was led by Rabbi Ellen Bernstein herself!
Tu BiShvat Celebration
"'Tu' means 15, and Tu BiShvat means the 15th day of the month of Shevat, which is the full moon falling two months before the full moon of Passover (or three months before in a leap year). This festival is also known as the New Year of the Trees or the Trees’ Birthday. This time of year is the beginning of spring in the Middle East, when the sap in the trees is beginning to rise and the almond blossoms can form. It’s traditional to eat fruits from Israel on Tu B’Shevat: figs, dates, grapes, olives, pomegranates. It’s also traditional to eat fruits you haven’t tasted in a long time (or ever), and to say the Shehechiyanu prayer for experiencing something new. While the holiday has changed over the centuries, today in many places it is seen as a time to celebrate the natural world and celebrate our relationship to the Earth” (from Rabbi David Seidenberg's "Simple Tu BiShvat Haggadah").-
The celebration for my CEP was led by R' Laurie Franklin over Zoom on Tu BiShvat 5783/2023, during one of the reading group sessions
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According to R' Ellen Bernstein and 16th century Jewish mystics, “the point of the [Tu BiShvat] seder is to repair the world” (Bernstein, 71).
PEAS Farm Native Plant Garden
For my contributions to the PEAS Farm native plant garden, I hoped to center Séliš-Ql̓ispé relationships with the land and accessibility for Indigenous folks, especially for traditional ways of gathering plants, through these four tasks:
- Install Maggie Gammons' ethnobotany signs and other relevant historical and cultural interpretive signage that emphasizes Séliš-Ql̓ispé relationship with the land the garden inhabits
- Remake a clearly defined walking path
- Add more food and medicinal plants, specifically plants significant to Séliš-Ql̓ispé peoples which would be available for gathering
- Organize an event in the garden led by Aspen and Cameron Decker of Xʷlxʷilt "Alive and Well" Séliš Education Integration
With the help of many generous and committed folks, I was able to accomplish all of these tasks except for the fourth one, because I was unable to acquire funding to pay Aspen and Cameron Decker.
Looking to the Future
I hope to continue conceiving and enacting a distinctly Jewish and decolonial relationship with land by:
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Working to organize an event at the PEAS Farm native plant garden with Aspen and Cameron Decker
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Planting more native plants in the PEAS Farm native plant garden
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Installing more cultural interpretive signs at the PEAS Farm, including more of Maggie's signs and potentially signs created by the Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee
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Volunteering at the Bison Range! (I began volunteering at the Bison Range in April, 2023. My volunteering there has not been purposefully related to my CEP, but it is certainly in the spirit of my CEP as I am deepening my relationship with Séliš-Ql̓ispé homelands in a Jewish and decolonial manner.)
More Pictures
Want to connect?
I'd love to hear what you think! You can email me at kbcohen33@gmail.com