Often throughout the course of this class, conversation took on an integrative tone: just as often as we discussed individual behavior, we would discuss politics, the environment, and the ways in which all are connected within the greater system of our world – and potentially, our universe. A series of writings reference and evaluate this notion, but none do so with a perspective so unique as “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
Since early high school, I’ve had a keen awareness of the subjective nature of word choice and the effect that particular speech has on perceptions and worldviews. I also find it interesting that people generally refer to non-human, non-pet objects with inanimate pronouns such as “it,” but I never connected those two concepts. I hadn’t considered that the root of perceived in animacy was language itself rather than the conditioning of an entrenched worldview – a growth from that root. After reading “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” I realized that the language which we choose to apply isn’t only telling of political proclivities or value preferences; it is also telling of the ways in which we relate to everything around us.
I’m talking about viewing objects as equal participants in reality rather than things which have supporting roles in the film of reality, featuring us. Kimmerer notes that whether or not language allows non-human, non-pet objects to have experience influences the ways in which we view and treat all that surrounds us.1 For instance, In Potawatomi, wiikwegamaa means “to be a bay.” In this language, the bay has an experience. It is animate. In English, we would say, “that is a bay,” or perhaps, “we’re at the bay.” We can only view the bay as a location in the context of our own experience or the experience of another observer. In Potawatomi, observation is not a precondition for experience. The bay exists because it experiences being a bay.
Image of The Bay of Islands in New Zealand, taken from <https://www.newzealand.com/us/bay-of-islands/>
This difference in viewing the bay has implications for disparity in the bay’s treatment because in one worldview, the bay demands respect, for it experiences its own being. In another, the bay is exploitable since it exists in our experience, giving us license to do what we want with it. From this, we can gather that our first steps toward sustainable living must be collective re-evaluation of requisites for perceived animacy and re-learning how to relate to our surroundings.
Works Cited
1. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.” Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous
Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013