The method involves binding the familiar, sacred, and formalised-procedural to those "things" perceived as profane, inanimate, purely made of material substance but also the source of fascination, fear and danger whether they be a mountain, a river, the sea, a forest, plants and animals, but also the community. It is well know that for many indigenous peoples, and likely due in large part because they have lived in close proximity with the consequences of their actions, rivers, mountains, and other natural formations are sacred because they are not “things” but relations, often kin, and living entities with spirits, memories, and responsibilities.
The form of our relationship to, not to mention our very knowledge of and ability to make relationships to these kinds of entities (themselves beings constituted by webs of relationality) has been depoliticised, and dispossessed by law, technology, distant political institutions, high-speed transportation and communications infrastructure and so on.
