The Movements That Make Us Human

by Francis Weller

Several years ago I took a class at the Miwok Archaeological Preserve of Marin, (MAPOM) on the Point Reyes Peninsula. The course was on flint knapping, the making of arrowheads and spear points from obsidian and chert. We were gathered under a cluster of oaks where anthropologist Bill Mulloy taught us the beginning movements in making a blank from which an arrowhead could be fashioned. His skills at working the stone were impressive. We watched enthralled, as he would study a piece of obsidian, turning it over and over in his hand, looking for the right place to strike. When he was satisfied, he moved with a confidence that produced many workable pieces. Then it was our turn. We were told to choose a hammer stone, a river rock that is used to break off a selected portion of obsidian in the hopes that it could be worked into a point. With gloves and protective glasses on, each of us novices made tentative strikes on the black stones and with the sound of glass breaking everywhere, our furtive efforts led to some small successes and many failures.

Somewhere in the movements, somewhere in the raising of the stone and the striking of the obsidian, inside the flaking of tiny slivers of glass, some old memory echo sounded in me and came flooding in with a rush. I was making a movement that others who lived before me had made for over a million years. It was old, so old, and yet it felt fresh in my body; in this moment I was making a motion that had been encoded into my cells. For a long time after, I reflected on that feeling and realized that many of the movements that have given shape to our human natures are no longer being enacted. I wondered what happens to our humanity in the absence of these gestures. And more, what are the movements we currently make doing to the shape of our beings? Movements like Game Boy and Nintendo, typing on keyboards, or driving cars. These movements are completely new to the body memory and often leave us in discomfort and pain.

After hundreds of thousands of years these ancient movements, like the flinting of stone, became settled in our bodies and were the means that passed on an extensive system of relationships and knowledge. In addition to the making of flints, our deep time ancestors practiced basket making, cordage, trapping, tracking, storytelling, fire making, the skinning and tanning of hides, gathering of an amazing assortment of foods and medicines, made ornamentations from shells and pigments from plants, toys that instructed children, shared communal dances and rituals. An entire array of movements that were shared generation upon generation helped to make us who we are today, and now, within a wisp of a moment we have all but ceased to make these patterns with our modern bodies. Something is silenced in our beings by this absence.

Much of what I felt when I made those movements with the stones has been confirmed by an engagement with a wide variety of other practices that are the commons of the indigenous soul. I have felt the same quickening in my soul while participating in community rituals, around a fire exchanging stories, singing together and while sharing meals. It is here, within the collective memory of all we have known and have forgotten that the possibility lies for our future. We must reclaim what the indigenous soul remembers: how to live here in a good way, a respectful way. We must once again remember the movements that made us human.