This week, I was going to write about the many plants, some wild and others cultivated, that have been growing in our little garden.
However, I also started reading a truly beautiful book called:
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
After only a few chapters, I found myself moved by Robin's poetic approach to storytelling, and grateful for her generous sharing of Indigenous-American history and creation stories.
I learned about the Grammar of Animacy, and an idea occurred to me about how else I might introduce my lovely green and flowery friends that dwell in the garden.
You see, the grammar of animacy, Robin writes, is the way in which many indigenous peoples talk about things, specifically, not as
things at all but rather as different peoples.
And not just the plants and animals, which the western scientific community recognise as animate life, but indeed all kinds of naturally occurring things; places, rivers, stones, mountains, even a day of the week can be spoken of as a living thing.
And that by recognising the life imbued in all things they become by the power of language, inherently sacred, worthy of respect, and important members of the greater ecological community. In short, beings to be cherished and protected.
She quotes one of her early language teachers for saying that grammar is just the way we chart relationships in language. And then goes on to write in her own words.
“That a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole new ways of living in the world, other species a sovereign people, a world with a democracy of species, not a tyranny of one-with moral responsibility to water and wolves, and with a legal system that recognises the standing of other species. It’s all in the pronouns”.
As I reflected on her words, it occurred to me that a fear of anthropomorphism creates a human-centric worldview, that is entirely hinged upon arrogant, ignorant;
other-ness.
To look upon any aspect of nature or its non-human creatures as a mere resource.
A perspective ripe for manifesting systems of domination and exploitation, as it tragically, historically already has.
Conversely, as Thomas Berry wrote:
“We must say of the universe that is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”
The more I learn about indigenous peoples, both past and present, the more I find myself believing that it would be a better world if we all finally held up indigenous perspectives as the model of true sustainability and wisdom that they always were.
Or at the very least, to respectfully emulate their wisdom as we recognise the harms caused by war, land theft, colonization and environmental degradation.
After all we were all of us indigenous to somewhere, once upon a time, before we were ourselves conquered and brought into this self perpetuating and destructive cycle of civilization.
I particularly love how Robin puts the following:
“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 neighbours too, our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy. So that we might truly be at home”
A statement as true here in Australia as it is anywhere in the world.
Such a simple practice towards sustainability, and really it costs us nothing, perhaps a little discomfort as we adjust our language and thinking, but well worth the effort.
Certainly, I intend to go forward with the newfound practice (especially around our kids) of talking about whos of the land and not the "its".
To speak to the life in our world and not merely her “resources”.
And with that, let me introduce some of my friends:
