…this, to the extent that when colonizers came to the island and saw someone speaking with a mountain, they called it animism. By which they meant, since you don’t pray to Mickey Mouse, you must believe that the mountain is beefcake grandpa. A mountain person told me how offensive and idiotic this was, (they brought it up, told me their side of the story), I said you only know the half of it, and told them the meaning of anima. (Soul, air, breath.) The mountain person said, “I guess we do kind of believe in that,” and I said, “They don’t know the meaning of their own words.” The mountain person said, “Our god cannot be described in words.” (Anthropologists call it, “primitive.") (To speak with a mouse, or to disbelieve in a cartoon?) In retrospect it’s no surprise, colonizers go around with so little understanding of where they themselves come from, that even the mountain person, after uncounted crimes that are (then and now) being committed, against the mountain people and the mountain, had to laugh and feel sorry for them, to be turned so upside-down…
