Experiments in Walking: On Oranges and Ownership

I’m reading Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt, and there’s a quote early on that created my mindset while walking today. 

Black Elk says, “Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us. But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.”

If this sounds poetic, excellent observation. Black Elk’s narrative was translated by his son, then recorded in shorthand by Neihardt’s daughter, and shaped into its literary form by Neihardt, Nebraska’s poet laureate. This is important because we see Black Elk’s life through the lens of a poet and writer.

The quote, though, is beautiful. I cannot know precisely how much of the final phrasing belongs to Black Elk, his translator, or Neihardt. But the image itself nestled into my brain as I walk the poodle. Why do we think we can “own” land?

I think about what I “own.” To be “mine,” fully, would mean that I keep it forever, even after death. So to that, I think the only thing I own is my mind, my consciousness. My body feels borrowed at this point, constantly changing along with everything physical. What remains, I think, is my consciousness: my memories and thoughts. 

But are my thoughts actually mine? 

I want to say, no, it’s all rented space at this point. Why? Because the other day I had to make a phone call and all my brain would sing to me was “800-588-2300 EMPIRE. Today!” on repeat. Those aren’t my words. Those belong to Empire Carpets, who I hope are doing really well, by the way, because the neurons in my brain felt their jingle was worth hoarding. But a number I looked at two seconds ago? Designated trash. 

I think it’s worth noting that I have never called Empire Carpets, so the song serves no actual utility. It’s just filed under the “numbers and entertainment” section in my neural network with “867-5309” and “Number 41” because I loved that song for a good two years on burned CDs. My point is this: Even the most private territory I possess is still crowded with things left by other people. 

Which, actually, brings me right back to Black Elk and ownership.

I keep imagining ownership as a clean boundary: this is mine, therefore it is not yours. But almost nothing I can think of works that way. Not thoughts. Not language. Not ecosystems. Certainly not land. Things cross lines. They enter us, leave us, alter us, and continue elsewhere.

And yet land is where we have drawn some of our hardest lines.

Black Elk and Neihardt note that the Wasichus (Neihardt translates this to mean white people) were dividing the land into sections or “islands.” Why must the division be yours or mine? 

It makes me think of Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, trying to explain what he wants to do with his life by listing everything he does not want to do: buy things, sell things, process things, or participate in the endlessly recursive machinery of things being bought, sold, and processed.

It is funny because there seems to be nowhere outside the loop.

And perhaps that is part of what bothers me about ownership. Somewhere along the way, relationship became transaction. The ground beneath us became something that could be parceled, priced, transferred, inherited, leveraged, bought, and sold. We stopped asking what our relationship was to a place and started asking whose place it was.

Black Elk calls it “our own country.” But a homeland is not necessarily something people own as an object. Though property ownership has been going on since Ancient Mesopotamia, a homeland describes a relationship between us and the land. “Homeland” is a place people inhabit, defend, remember, and hold sacred. “Property” reverses the relationship. Instead of belonging to the land, we declare that the land belongs to us.

Later, standing in my kitchen with an orange in my hand, I realize why land ownership makes no sense to me. The Earth is round, like the orange. We can own property on the surface. Just the top of the peel, really. And underneath? Do we own that too? In my mind, every boundary plunges inward like the edge of a wedge until all the claims narrow toward the same center.

Black Elk says later, “Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.”

Property lines erase the reminder that we exist on a sphere even though the Earth is not a collection of separate pieces. It is one living system that we have divided on (FLAT) paper. And the surface of the Earth refuses to cooperate with these human-made lines. Water runs downhill. Roots cross beneath fences. It’s all connected. The lines are only real to us because we enforce them, but they are not real to the Earth.

In this way, ownership is not something that exists between us and the land. It exists only between human beings: an agreement about who can stay, who must go, and who has the authority to decide.

Perhaps what I want is not the abolition of private property, which (for some) gives us a sense of safety and belonging, but a different word for our relationship with the ground beneath it all. We need a word that implies care without dominion. A word that carries accountability.

I live here. 

I care for this place. 

Therefore, I am responsible for what happens while it is entrusted to me.