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Travel through a garden’s seasons toward healing, reclamation, and wholeness-for us, and for our beloved relative, the Earth In this rich collection of prose, poetry, and recipes, Teresa Peterson shares how she found refuge from the struggle to reconcile her Christianity and Dakota spirituality, discovering solace and ceremony in communing with the earth. Observing and embracing the cycles of her garden, she awakens to the constant affirmation that healing and wellness can be attained through a deep relationship with land, plants, and waters. Dakota people call this way of seeing and being in the world
mitakuye owasin: all my relations.
Perennial Ceremony brings us into this relationship, as Peterson guides us through the Dakota seasons to impart lessons from her life as a gardener, gatherer, and lover of the land.
We see the awakening of
Wetu (spring), a transitional time when nature comes alive and sweet sap flows from maples, and the imperfect splendor of
Bdoketu (summer), when rain becomes a needed and nourishing gift. We share in the harvesting wisdom of
Ptäyetu (fall), a time to savor daylight and reap the garden’s abundance, and the restorative solitude of
Waniyetu (winter), when snow blankets the landscape and sharpens every sound. Through it all, Peterson walks with us along the path that both divides and joins Christian doctrine, everyday spiritual experience, and the healing powers of Indigenous wisdom and spirituality.
In this intimate seasonal cycle, we learn how the garden becomes a healing balm. Peterson teaches us how ceremony may be found there: how in the vegetables and flowers, the woods, the hillsides, the river valley-even in the feeding of friends and family-we can reclaim and honor our relationship with Mother Earth. She encourages us to bring perennial ceremony into our own lives, inviting us on a journey that brings us full circle to
makoce ki¿ mitakuye: the land is my relative.
Sommario
Contents
Introduction: Gardening Is Ceremony
Wetu Spring: The Time of Blood
Bdoketu Summer: The Time of the Potato
Ptäyetu Fall: The Time of the Otter
Waniyetu Winter: The Time When the Snow Lives
Lessons and Gifts to Consider and Cultivate
Further Reading and Resources
Acknowledgments
Info autore
Teresa Peterson,
Utuhu Cisti¿na Wi¿, is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and citizen of the Upper Sioux Community. She is author, with her uncle Walter LaBatte Jr., of
Voices from Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stories and Storytellers. She also wrote the children’s book
Grasshopper Girl and is a contributor to
Voices Rising: Native Women Writers.
