White Man's Footstep

    When I first read Kimmerer’s essay “In the Footsteps of the White Man” I thought of the small, scruffy plantain that clusters along every Colorado Springs sidewalk. Kimmerer reminds us that Plantago major, dubbed “white man’s footstep” by the Haudenosaunee because it arrived wherever settlers trod, encapsulates a complicated legacy. Displacement braided to unexpected reciprocity. She refuses the easy binary of “native good, settler bad.” Instead, she notices how plantain’s broad leaves heal scraped skin and soothe insect bites, asking how something introduced by colonial violence can still participate in the grammar of gift.


    This chapter echoes themes I traced in my post on Aldo Leopold’s “Marshland Elegy.” Leopold mourned the sandhill cranes yet urged us to attend to what remains. Kimmerer pushes further, suggesting that even the seemingly mundane remnants of colonization can teach us responsibilities. She writes, “If a foreigner shows up at your door, do you not ask who they are and what gifts they carry?” That question reframes our relationship with non-native species from xenophobic eradication toward careful discernment. Some arrivals, like garlic mustard, dominate and silence. While others, like plantain, integrate quietly, offering medicine without uprooting the community.


    Kimmerer’s lesson feels particularly relevant to our block-long discussions of environmental justice and intersectionality. Just as Dorceta Taylor argues that movements for justice must grapple with layered histories of harm, Kimmerer shows that the land itself records those layers in root systems and seed banks. The ethical task, then, is not to turn back time but to step more lightly, knowing each footstep writes another verse in the ongoing story of the land. After finishing the chapter I found myself walking home slower, noticing the scattered “footsteps” along the path and wondering what gifts, or burdens, I will leave behind.


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