Turtle Island (North America)

Turtle Island is term used by several Northeastern Woodland Native American tribes, especially the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy, for the continent of North America.^[1]

Iroquois

According to Iroquois oral history, Sky Woman fell down to the earth when it was covered with water. Various animals tried to swim to the bottom of the ocean to bring back dirt to create land. Muskrat succeeded in gathering dirt, which was placed on the back of a turtle, which grew into the land known today as North America.^[2][3] In the Seneca language, the mythical turtle is called Hah-nu-nah,^[4] while the name for an everday turtle is ha-no-wa.^[5]

Anishnaabe

The term originates mainly from oral tradition, in the tale of the westward travel of the Anishinabe tribe on the land known as Turtle Island, as recorded also in the birch bark scrolls^[6].

Indigenous rights activism and environmentalism

The name Turtle Island is used today by many Native tribes, Native rights activists, and environmental activists,^[1] especially since the 1970s when the term came into wider usage. In a later essay, published in At Home on the Earth,^[7] Gary Snyder claimed this title as a term referring to North America that synthesizes both indigenous and colonizer cultures by translating the indigenous name into the colonizer's languages (the Spanish "Isla Tortuga" being proposed as a name as well). Snyder argues that understanding North America under the name of Turtle Island will help shift conceptions of the continent.

Referring to North America as Turtle Island suggests a view of North America not merely as a land "discovered" and colonized by Europeans and people of European descent, but as a land inhabited and stewarded by a collection of rich, diverse, and civilized peoples.^{[clarification needed]}, a collection that may have room for both indigenous and colonizer cultures. This re-framing of the continent's identity is intended to bring about a better cohabitation of these two groups of people. Finally. the term suggests to some interpreters^[who?] a more holistic relationship between the continent's ecology and its human inhabitants, visualizing Turtle Island as an amalgamation of bioregions.^{[clarification needed]}

Influence

The term has been used by writers and musicians, as well as others. Notable uses include Gary Snyder's Turtle Island, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Turtle Island Quartet, a modern-day jazz string quartet, and soy foods manufacturer Turtle Island Foods.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Johansen and Mann 319
2. ^ Converse and Parker 3
3. ^ Johansen and Mann 90
4. ^ Converse and Parker 33
5. ^ Converse and Parker 31
6. ^ http://www.real-dream-catchers.com/Ojibwe_culture_and_language/Ojibwe_people_and_their_culture.htm
7. ^ Barnhill, David Landis (ed. and introd.). 1999. At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place: A Multicultural Anthology. (pp. 297-306). Berkeley: University of California Press, xiv, 327 pp.

References

• Converse, Harriet Maxwell and Arthur Caswell Parker. Myth and Legends of the New York State Iroquois. Albany: New York State Museum, 1906.
• Johansen, Bruce Elliott and Barbara Alice Mann, eds. Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) Westpoint, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30880-2.