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Space and Culture
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The Haudenosaunee Imagination and the Ecology of the Sacred

Joe Sheridan

York University

Roronhiakewen "He Clears the Sky" Dan Longboat

Trent University

Imagination is understood to be a quality of mind in settler culture. In Haudenosaunee/Mohawk tradition, the same quality is understood to be animal and spiritual helpers manifesting their presence in one’s life. That sacred ecology of mind is a consequence of long residence in traditional territory and enduring spiritual and intellectual relationships between people, clans, and landscape. Conceiving of imagination without sourcing its ecological origin contributes to and extends anthropocentrism consistent with minds unwilling to naturalize to their surroundings. Worse yet, conceits purporting imagination to have a purely human origin are consistent with preferences for exclusively human environments. Spiritual and intellectual integrity is achieved on Turtle Island by the interplay of human and more-than-human consciousness. The experience of imagination is minding all things. Minding all things performs the spiritual conservation of all things. All things comprise the Indigenous mind and Indigenous minds are composed of all things.

Key Words: Haudenosaunee imagination • Onkwehonwe traditionalism • spiritual ecology

Space and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 4, 365-381 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331206292503
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