Reclaiming Our Family Tribe, with Language!

 As I was talking to a plant this morning in my garden, I was reminded of something that Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Wanting to learn the language of her native American ancestors, she began taking lessons in Potawatamee. There are only a handful of people now who grew up speaking that language, and they are very old. But fortunately there are younger people like Robin who realize there is more to language than words. There's a whole worldview at stake, and these younger folks are working to save the richness before it dies out. 

As Robin became more familiar with this old/new-to-her language, she realized something very striking. It had to do with how the native language refers to things other than people, in contrast to how we do this in English. As we know, everything that is not human is referred to as "it" in English (though of course we tend to call our pet animals by "he" or "she" as well). When we grow up speaking and hearing English, we are taught merely by the framework of this language to think of the natural world as separate from us and non-sentient. We humans are the center of the circle of life, and we are the only ones that really matter. Everything revolves around us. In contrast, native languages usually frame the world differently. They may not use gender nouns or modifiers, but they use the same respectful way in referring to a plant or animal or bird as to a person.  It's a bit like we would call the flower outside our door "he" or '"she", a more intimate form of address. The language paints a world where we are all related. All of life, from the beetle to the antelope, from the tiny algae to a giant redwood are important and honored. All play their own part. And all are our family. We humans are an equal part of that web, not the center, not the most important. We pay attention to the different relatives in our family, learn from them, cooperate with them.

When I came in from the garden for a break around lunch time, I found some workmen outside my back door working on the small room that houses the sprinkler system for this building. I have been nurturing some purple clematis to climb strands of twine up to my roof, and they are lush and beautiful this year. The workmen had plenty of room to walk under the clematis trellis to get to their destination. But as I watched in horror, they paid no attention to the vines at all, brushing them off the strings that held them, pushing them out of the way, roughly walking through. And I realized that they meant no harm. They probably didn't even notice what they were doing. But the plants were "it" to them, an"it" that was a bit in the way. There was no feeling that those beautiful plants were relatives, were part of their family. 

Realizing how much our language influences us has been a big ah-ha for me. It's so subtle that we don't even notice it, but the way we speak, the words we use and the form they take, builds a cultural structure that is pervasive. We have been programmed to be outside of the natural world. No wonder it is so hard for us to take care of the earth. We have been cut off from the rest of our rightful family because of the picture of the world that is painted by our language. Amazing. And sad. 

I already talk to my plants. But I hope this new awareness about language, my language of origin, is going to affect me in a big way. I might even make up a word that I will use in my head when I relate to everything not human, welcoming these honored beings into the family of life.  Plants, animals, bugs, birds, of course, but what about soil, wind, clouds, rocks? What about water? As I was drawing water out of the rain barrel at the edge of my garden this morning, using it to moisten the soil around some transplants, it suddenly hit me how huge this element is to us earthlings. We take it for granted, water. It is everywhere, coming out of our faucets, in our rivers, coming down as rain. But let yourself step back a few million miles and peer down in your imagination at the earth. Water, that wet, slippery, flowy stuff, is rather miraculous. Wow!