The last “Corner” examined how words make a difference. Today we will see that words also shape how you consider relationships and indeed reality.
Recently I have been reading a national bestseller – Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Elizabeth Gilbert describes it as “A hymn of love to the World.” In many ways, it has changed the way that I view Creation! Robin Kimmerer is, as she describes herself on the back cover, “a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation”. I have been deeply challenged by her eloquent writing as she opened my eyes to a world view quite different from that of my personal heritage. Let’s look at her words in the chapter Learning the Grammar of Animacy beginning on page 55:
“To whom does our language extend the grammar of animacy? Naturally, plants and animals are animate… but the Potawatomi understanding of what it means to be animate diverges from the list of attributes of living beings we all learned in Biology 101. In Potawatomi 101, rocks are animate, as are mountains and water and fire and places. Beings that are imbued with spirit, our sacred medicines, our songs, drums, and even stories are all animate. The list of the inanimate seems to be smaller, filled with objects that are made by people. Of an inanimate being, like a table, we say “What is it?” … But of apple, we say ‘Who is that being?’
English doesn’t give us many tools for incorporating respect for animacy. In English, you are either a human being or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an it, or we must be gendered, inappropriately, as a he or a she.
…Learning the grammar of animacy could well be a restraint on our mindless exploitation of land. But there is more to it. I have heard our elders give advice like ‘You should go among the standing people’ or ‘Go spend some time with those Beaver people.’ They remind us of the capacity of others as our teachers, as holders of knowledge, as guides. Imagine walking through a richly inhabited world of Birch people, Bear people, Rock people, beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons worthy or our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world. We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. We don’t have to figure out everything by ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us. Imagine how much less lonely the world would be.
Every word I learn comes with a breath of gratitude for our elders who have kept this language alive and passed along its poetry…. I am not advocating that we all learn Potawatomi or Hopi or Seminole, even if we could. Immigrants came to these shores bearing a legacy of languages, all to be cherished. But to become native to this place if we are to survive here, and our neighbors too, our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we might truly be at home.
I remember the words of Bill Tall Bull, a Cheyenne elder. As a young person, I spoke to him with a heavy heart, lamenting that I had no native language with which to speak to the plants and the places that I love. ‘They love to hear the old language,’ he said, ‘it’s true’. ‘But,’ he said, with fingers on his lips, ‘You don’t have to speak it here.’ ‘If you speak it here,’ he said, patting he his chest, ‘they will hear you.’”
What language do you speak, and how does that influence how you see and interact with Creation?
Thanks for listening.
— Joe Sheldon
Direct comments to Joe Sheldon at [email protected]
If you would like to receive additional information on Creation care, notices of special events, Creation walks I lead, etc. please contact me at the above address and I will add you to my e-mail list. Your comments are welcome.
