Revisiting the Wild: Mythology and Ecological Wisdom in shalan joudry’s Waking Ground

Abstract

Drawing on Freya Mathews’ panpsychism, David Abram’s ecophilosophy, and Robert Bringhurst’s thinking on wilderness and mythology, this chapter explores Mi’kmaw poet shalan joudry’s Waking Ground (2020b), a poetry collection that dwells on environmental concerns, Indigenous history, and transgenerational trauma stemming from centuries of colonialism in Canada. Sensitive to the potential of language to uncover a poetic order in reality, to the legacy and wisdom of her ancestors, and to the more-than-human world, joudry assembles a handful of ecopoems that ponder the entanglements of the human and the nonhuman through the lens of history and mythology. By cultivating a biocentric, environmentally sensitive attitude, joudry is not just gesturing back to the Mi’kmaw ecological wisdom and mythopoeic worldview of her people; she is also countering the mainstream commodification of nature by fiercely materialist, neoliberal, capitalist societies, by showing that there is another mode of existing in the world—one marked by humility, respect, and responsibility.