SN-P1
Applying a similar water view to the word scattered, which connotes a disorganization of pieces no longer connected to the whole, water particles do not become less watery when they are separated from a larger body. Despite their disjointedness, they retain their inherent watery qualities, awaiting the moment that reconstitution into a whole becomes possible, similarly to the way Brooks imagines the spiral as something that “allows for recurrence and return but also for transformation” (309). Pokagon explicitly invokes this idea of recurrence and return: “We only stand with folded arms and watch and wait to see the future deal with us no better than the past…and so we stand as upon the sea-shore, chained hand and foot, while the incoming tide of the great ocean of civilization rises slowly but surely to overwhelm us” (13). Although Pokagon cannot imagine the future proceeding differently from the past in terms of the violence of settler colonialism, he alludes to the persistence of his peoples’ resistance as he imagines them “chained hand and foot” to the seashore, a place of recurrence, inherently imbued with change, and a force of resistance. His peoples’ survivance is not in question, but rather the nature of this survivance is.