Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants — page 7
friend studying for an exam and saying Look it's studying That would be rude But that is how we speak of other beings such as plants animals and the earth herself I think that is no mistake English is the language of capitalism capitalism It's the language of objects And subtly or maybe not so subtly subtly it gives us permission to think about the world as our own property property where we can do whatever we want It puts the earth outside of our circle of compassion and care because it's just stuff In Potawatomi and many other Indigenous languages it is not possible to speak of living beings as it Sure we still have words for objects desk tractor phone but they do not describe anything living Objects made by humans are inanimate Indigenous Indigenous languages have their own grammar of respect which I refer to as the grammar of animacy We use words to address the living world just as we use for our family Because they are our family Many of us feel deeply uncomfortable calling the living world it and yet we don't have an alternative other than he she or they I began to wonder if there were ways to bring animacy into the English language I asked my Potawatomi language teacher about this and if we have a word for a living being Not a thing a being He said Yeah we have a beautiful word bimaadizi aki Earth life an earth being I knew that bimaadizi aki would not slip easily into English but ki does Ki describes a being To make it plural add an n making it kin So when the geese fly overhead we can say Kin are flying flying south for the winter they'll come back soon Every time we speak of the living world these pronouns allow us to embody our relatedness to them Our connection to them capitalism an economic system in which resources and means of production are privately owned and prices production and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market BRAIDING SWEETGRASS FOR YOUNG ADULTS