40 Days of Peace Day Fourteen

The Language of Animacy

To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language.

-Robin wall Kimmerer

“Listening in wild places,

we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I think now that it was a longing to comprehend this language I hear in the woods that led me to science, to learn over the years to speak fluent botany.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer

Indigenous languages speak volumes to their nature and how they experienced the natural world as part of the sacred hoop. As you begin to study Lakota, Dakota or many of the indigenous languages you start to understand how they see and experience the world.
There is no word for “Goodbye” in Lakota. Instead they have sayings such as “see you soon” Tókša akhé (later again)

Aƞpétu kiƞ lé taƞyáƞ máni yó/ye (walk well today)

Aƞpétu kiƞ lé taƞyáƞ úƞ wo/we (be well today)

Tókša akhé waƞčhíyaƞkiƞ kte. (I will see you again.)

When colonization took over North America, it wasn’t just the land that was stolen, it was also culture and language. Stolen by force through, for one, residential schools… Children had their names stolen and we’re forcibly given “English” names. They’re sacred hair was cut and children we’re punished for speaking or practicing their culture. Their mouths would be washed out with soap for “talking that dirty Indian language”. “The engines of assimilation worked well”

The last residential school in the US closed in 1973. Today, there is a movement to teach, reclaim and share their language and culture.

In Braiding Sweetgrass Robin shares a story of her time in an Potowatomi (Anishinaabe) language class. A great-grandmother in the class shares, “It’s not just the words that will be lost. The language IS THE HEART OF OUR CULTURE; it holds our thoughts, our way of seeing the world. It’s too beautiful for English to explain.”

“Together in their class they learn to count and to say pass the salt. Someone asks, ‘How do you say please pass the salt? Our teacher, Justin Neely, a young man devoted to language revival, explains that while there are several words for thank you, there is no word for please.
FOOD WAS MEANT TO BE SHARED, no added politeness needed. It was simply a cultural given that one was asking respectfully.”

And seeing through their own lens, without pause for understanding, the missionaries saw them as savage and crude.

After many years spending time with our Indigenous relatives, I will say that their heart to share their food and anything they have, has not been lost. We are always greeted with generous hearts when we visit.

“The English language is a noun based language, somehow appropriate for a culture obsessed with things. Only 30 percent of English words are verbs, but in Potawatomi that proportion is 70%. Which means that 70% of the words have to be conjugated, and 70% have different tenses and cases to be mastered.

European languages often assign gender to nouns, but Potawatomi does not divide the world into masculine and feminine.”

The more I learn about indigenous language, the more I love the people and understand the hearts of the original care takers of the earth. These are a people with beautifully, generous hearts. A culture of quiet listeners, who observe before speaking. A culture that honors and respect time visiting and sharing. And a culture that loves to laugh!

One of Robins language teachers reminds the class, “the Creator meant for us to laugh, so humor is deliberately build into the synax. Even a slip of the tongue can convert, ‘We need more firewood’ to ‘Take off your clothes’.” Tehehe!

The grammar of animacy

In the english language water is water, not alive or dead. But in Potawatomi and most indigenous languages, water is given life through language.

“A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa -to be a bay -releases the water from bondage and lets it live.” In this WORD, the water is alive, it has a choice, to be a bay or a stream, an ocean or a waterfall. “ ‘To be a hill on a sandy beach’, ‘to be a Saturday’, ‘to be a waterfall’… all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land and even a day, the language is a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms.”

THIS IS THE LANGUAGE of nature.

“We use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family.

Because they are our family.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer

In Potawatomi, all beings that are imbued with spirit, our sacred medicines, our songs, drums, and even stories, are all animate. Rocks are animate, as are mountains, and water and fire and places. The list of inanimate objects seems to be smaller, filled with objects that people make.

Aloha is being a part of all, and all being a part of me. When there is pain - it is my pain. When there is joy - it is also mine. I respect all that is as part of the Creator and part of me. I will not willfully harm anyone or anything. When food is needed I will take only my need and explain why it is being taken. The earth, the sky, the sea are mine to care for, to cherish and to protect. This is Hawaiian - this is Aloha!

Yawe and Yahweh

Yah-weh… is the Hebrew word for “God”, meaning breathing in and out the “breath of life”. It was used to “name God”.

Yawe in the Potawatomi language is -the animate to be.

I am.

You are.

S/he is.

“To speak of those possessed with life and spirit we must say yawe. By what linguistic confluence do Yahweh of the Old Testament and yawe of the New World both fall from the mouths of the reverent? Isn’t this just what is means to be, to have the breath of life within, to be the offspring of Creation? THe language reminds us, in every sentence, of our kinship with all the animate world.

The English language doesn’t give us many tools for incorporating respect for animacy. In English, you are either a human or a thing.” _Robin Wall Kimmerer

“We must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

— Thomas Berry

Can you see how our vision of the world, through words that bring an apple and rock to life, changes EVERYTHING?

When we can see that a rock has life, created by the Creator, we can look at it with new eyes. What purpose does this rock carry? Is there medicine in this stone?

And this water running in my sink, it is the sister of the water in the river down the road?

Changing the language of a rock, to give it life, helps us see that every tiny drop of life created HAS PURPOSE. Every single cell, every atom, every star, every stone, every cow, every child, every raindrop…. all works of art with “being” and purpose. We’re all pieces of art… masterpieces in progress!

How we use our words is a powerful tool…. I imagine we should use their powers for good!

“The animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on extinction-not just for Native peoples, but for everyone. Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion -until we teach them not to. We quickly restrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make the maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into “natural resources”. If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.”

Just because you don’t think of them as humans doesn’t mean they aren’t BEINGS.

“A language teacher I know explained that grammar is just the way we chart relationships in language. Maybe it also reflects our relationship with each other. Maybe 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 recognizes the standing of other species.

Nature reminds us of the capacity of others as our teachers, as holders of knowledge, as guides.

We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the possibilities. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. Imagine how less lonely the world would be.

Our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we might truly be at home.” _Robin Wall Kimmerer

The law of the land is written on the heart…

and so is the language of nature.

Shams of Tabriz’s 40 Rules of Love

Rule 14

God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you. Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.