When I met the Standing Rock, and what he taught me

The two truths at the heart of “right relationship” that so many people miss.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

A woman saw me drumming in a cemetery one day and she came over to talk.

She was interested in my drum and why I was there.

She began to explain that she had recently acquired her own drum during a “drum birthing” workshop with a friend. She asked me about the drum skin and whether it was deer.

“Oh no, this is synthetic,” I replied. “It isn’t animal skin.”

“I thought deerskin was normally used? This is what I have on mine,” said the woman.

“I know but I don’t feel the animals can really consent nowadays.”

My response was offered casually and without judgement. It didn’t matter anyway as the woman hadn’t heard and she continued to chatter away about the different workshops she was attending.

But behind me, the rock jolted.

I felt his presence sharpen and lean in — carrying an energy of shock and surprise, mixed with delight and curiosity.

It was like being peered at by a friendly fairy godfather, over his moon-shaped glasses.

Somehow, that day, the rock heard me.

He is only a small monolith, buried in the corner of the graveyard, covered in lichen, so elusive that most visitors walk past him. I had been visiting this place for 9 years and this response was very new.

Where perhaps before this old standing stone had been idly snoozing the day away — in a spot he has stood silently for at least 5,000 years — now he was awake and alert. The cause of this were my words to the woman about animals and consent. I knew that as soon as I felt his sudden movement. Even the air seemed to shift.

This particular rock had never animated in my presence before and he, she, or they — as rocks are not easily gendered — has never done it since.

Certainly he listens to me as I twitter away on my sporadic visits. He has much patience for my damsel-in-distress, anxiety-riddled monologues. As do the nearby graves and trees.

But he has never moved again in that way. He has never communicated with me clearly that he heard what I said and found some delight in it.

And I respect that. It heartens me that things are on his terms. He doesn’t feel the need to people-please or mould himself to human expectations. He doesn’t feel obliged to respond or join in or reassure us he’s still listening. He doesn’t try to fit in. He doesn’t mask. He’s steady and calm and grounded and clear. Most of the time, he is silent.

He’s had the freedom, years and liberty to know what he wants and be authority over himself. And he only communicates, talks, or moves when he feels like it.

So when he does, you know he means it. He really means it. And he will often give generously. And continue giving long after you forget what you have asked.

When I think about defining what Indigenous Peoples in Turtle Island (North America) name “right relationship” to our other, non-human kin, it goes something like that.

So often we miss key aspects of this relationship because we are applying a human-centric gaze, with human eyes, and human thinking.

Colonial systems and various forms of power-and-control dynamics are so internalised within us that we do not notice it’s happening.

Because of this, so much becomes lost in translation when interfacing with the non-human and more-than-human worlds.

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

Being part of the sacred spiral (the “triskele” or Brigid’s Cross) — and what some Native American tribes call the sacred hoop — requires more from us than living in balance, harmony, reciprocity and mutual respect, though these are needed too. More is required than taking only what we need. Than giving back. Than understanding they are our brothers and our sisters. That we are accountable to them. That we must watch over and care for them.

They watch over us, too. This we always forget.

But crucially, we often forget two principles at the heart of living in humility with the land — principles from which all other parts of the relationship can bloom:

Consent. Will.

Is consent present from my kin today, and do they will their body to be here?

The rock had never responded to me before because it was not his will to do so. To be, as the rock he is, is entirely on his terms.

When the rock was moved to this position, on this hill, in this place, all of those thousands of years ago — I know that the people asked for his consent to go there. And if he went, he willed to go and be with them.

We all lived like that once. A very long time ago.

It is only from a foundation of consent and will that we can rebuild the spiral these British Isles once lived by, and which this little rock remembers, and was happy for someone to speak out loud that day in the graveyard.

Photo by Olena Shmahalo on Unsplash

It’s not that we don’t have our traditions in Europe for seeking consent from the animals whose bodies we are using, and for giving thanks, but so much of the time these rituals are carried out in retrospect. These feel empty and disingenuous to me. They are not in-keeping with modernity, which is where we find ourselves. At worst, they are untruthful. They steamroll over the ugly realities of commodification and desecration.

I understand the discomfort and the cognitive dissonance all this creates, because I feel it too, and I’m far from perfect or even consistent — but we must challenge ourselves to consider the principles of consent and will in our relationship to Other, as often as we can.

Particularly in European and Western cultures, we have continued to look at our non-human family through our humanness, falling into the traps of human exceptionalism and human privilege.

But we cannot replicate rituals of the past and apply them to the present because the covenant has been shattered into pieces, whether we like it or not. In the culture we live within, the animals and the land have no choice. Their will was broken. Their consent was violated. These are cold, hard, painful facts.

This is not to blame or shame, but to support the move towards an expansion of our understanding of how we might live in true and holy partnership with the land, Creation, and all her children.

We must find a new way, where consent and will are our guiding lanterns, leading us back to the old ways or a new way of being with the old ways — if that is to be our final fate one day.

To do that, we must acknowledge what has been absent and unspoken for so long. Centuries. Perhaps millennia.

And before going any further — we must listen for a response.

If the response does not come, well, that is not a sign to throw in the towel, but to keep naming that which has been absent and speaking that which feels unspeakable.

Learning from the silence and the non-responses.

Staying with the silence. As long as it takes.

Even if an answer never comes.

Thanks for stopping by! I’m a former somatic practitioner, breathwork therapist, group facilitator and trauma-informed leadership consultant. I share insights like this on healing trauma, somatic wellness, meditation and nature-based spirituality.

My writing sits at the intersection of decolonisation, inner child healing, folklore, ancestor work, and animistic relational health.

~Candy

20/05/2026

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