Muskrat is Boss of the Land: the Earth-diver Myth and Implications for Decolonization

This paper examines the story of the animal earth-diver. Commonly called a creation story, or myth, the earth-diver motif appears among Indigenous peoples in North America, Siberia, and Northern Europe, nearly everywhere the landscape contains marshes. I examine an example of the earth-diver story among subarctic Dene people, of muskrat creating land in a water world by diving to find mud. It is tempting to call this motif religion and to abstract the story from its material reality and ecological, political, and economic implications for real people and real animals. When contextualized within a traditional Dene framework other elements of the story emerge; such as a rational examination of the natural world, and a political structuring of human relationships and ecology with animals and other other-than-humans, all of which inform a trans-species ethos and is a powerful articulation of sovereignty.