Animal Influence I - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Lisa Jevbratt
Mantis Shrimp Unknown [+endnote with http://anakegoodall.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/mantis-shrimp/ in it]
mollusk foraging in the swamps along the coast. I
was carefully leading my discussions with the guides
towards practices of becoming animal. Overly
afraid of being too direct made me far too vague.
How does one bring these issues up without being
disrespectful and assuming, or without
sounding/feeling ridiculous? Finally, I had a short but
important exchange with an aboriginal man at the
conference I was heading to after my rainforest
excursion. He told me that, as I had started to
suspect, it would be the aboriginal dancers that
could have a concept of shape shifting, but that I
might have to work with one of them maybe for the
rest of my life to get information, and I might end
up not getting any information at all. My whole life,
well the project has a due date. This woke me up,
made me see how I approached para-scientific
knowledge acquisition in a scientific way. I want this
information, and I want it now. In the para-scientific
paradigm you might have to be initiated and
shown to be worthy and trustworthy of information
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before receiving it. Not knowing how to approach
indigenous people with my actual inquiry, I was
seeking their presence and advice in a somewhat
roundabout, and to some extent dishonest, way. I
had a healing session with Walking Thunder, a Diné
(Navajo) medicine woman. During the session I
mentioned to her my quest to learn how animals
see, how I wanted to make us more respectful of
other species. She told me “you should hum to the
animals, I see waves around you” (interesting since I
for some years now have practiced overtone
singing particularly in nature), but nothing about
shape shifting. I had hoped to learn something
about “skin-walkers”: in the Navajo tradition a
human dressed in animal pelt transforming into an
animal and performing morally questionable acts
as that animal. But why would she talk to me about
that? I talked with a young Hopi White Buffalo
dance performer. He was approachable, and
open about his feelings of merging with the buffalo
as he dances it. However, he belongs to a dance