Land, Love, Language
Healing Our Relationship with the Natural World
Prologue
What follows is my unabashed, enthusiastic reaction to a recent presentation by Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the best-selling book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” and several other books. Kimmerer also is a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, Center for Natives Peoples and the Environment, at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Along with my wife, Margaret, our daughter, Emily – and 900 others fortunate enough to obtain tickets to the sold-out lecture at the University of Wisconsin/LaCrosse – we relished Kimmerer’s message that our society needs to focus more on “belonging” instead of gauging our wealth and happiness by “belongings.”
“Land, Love, Language: Healing Our Relationship with the Natural World”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, March 21
The Prairie Springs Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Wisconsin/LaCrosse
See the presentation here until April 5
In humans’ relationships with the Earth, words matter, declared Robin Wall Kimmerer, who describes herself as a botanist, Potawatomi woman, and member of the Anishinaabe peoples of the eagle clan and the bear.
It’s typical for Americans to “think about the ‘land’ as natural resources - raw materials that we can extract from the earth to make the things that we want,” she said.
“What if instead of talking about natural resources, we talk about Earthly gifts? Wouldn’t that change everything? From those things to which we are entitled, to those things for which we are grateful?”
“It is our way that we always begin with gratitude,” Kimmerer said.
“When we first put our feet on the ground this morning, we had everything that we needed; that the land provided (gifts) for us; that first breath of air, a drink of water, companionship.”
Indigenous people have faced “linguistic imperialism . . . a tool of colonization,” since the arrival of European settlers in North America, she said. Kimmerer’s grandfather, as a 9-year-old in Oklahoma, was one of thousands of Native American children sent to the infamous Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Indian School, where the children were cut off from their native culture and language.
“What was so dangerous in our language that they thought needed to replace it?” Kimmerer said of the government policy to take the land from the native people.
In the western world, for example, land is understood to mean property, something that can be bought and sold. But in the indigenous cultures, Kimmerer said, “land is identity; it’s who we are; we’re inseparable from our land.”
“Land is also understood as our sustainer, the one who takes care of us, gives us everything that we need,” she continued. “The land is of course our home but it’s also home for our more than human relatives – our maple relatives, our bluegill relatives; we’re all part of this same home landscape.
“Land is also understood as our connection to our ancestors who brought us here, who connected us to this place from which we arose; Also the place for which we will become the ancestors.
How will we become good ancestors of this land?
THE LAND IS SACRED . . .
“Land is understood as the teacher, it’s the library, it’s the source of language.”
In Potawatomi, the roots for the words land and knowledge are the same. “It’s the source of knowing.” Indigenous people see land “as the pharmacy, as the healer of ills physical, mental, spiritual.”
“The land is not a place for which you claim or could buy rights; it’s the place for which you accept responsibility,” Kimmerer said. “No property or rights here, because the land is sacred.”
The “property” concept may in part arise from the belief in human exceptionalism – the assertion, Kimmerer said, that out of 200 million species with whom we share the planet, one member (humans) is at the top of the pyramid.”
Thus, “we are making decisions for our own benefit – not for the benefit of our more than human relatives,” she said.
However, Kimmerer continued, “we can change from the egocentric world view to ecocentric world view: We’re all relatives, in a web of interdependence - not a hierarchy of beings.”
“Who are we as people?” Kimmerer asked. “Are we masters of the universe or (only) one member of a connected, kinship network?”
“It’s lonely at the top,” Kimmerer said. “As a society, we suffer from species loneliness because we have separated ourselves from our kinfolk, our relatives . . . All other beings are our relatives and our companions and our teachers and our healers.
How can we begin healing species loneliness so that we can once again have a sense of belonging the land - which we deeply crave?”
“Our failure to feel that belonging is at the root of many of our social pathologies,” Kimmerer said.
“We are lonely for the counsel and the comfort and the wisdom of our more than human relatives.”
To reconnect with other living beings, we must speak of them respectfully, Kimmerer said. She proposed a grammar of animacy; of referring to our non-human relatives as beings, rather than things. She shortened the Potawatomi word Bmaadiziaki – meaning an earth being – to ki, a pronoun that can be used in place of “it” for our fellow beings. For plural, add an N to make it “kin.”
“What would it be like to speak of kinship with the living world – not of natural resources, not of objects?” Kimmerer asked. “These are the pronouns of the revolution that helps to topple human exceptionalism. Let’s erase human exceptionalism and replace it with kinship – the idea of the personhood of all beings.”
“It’s not our right to keep taking,” Kimmerer continued. “We should be asking what gifts can we give back in return for the privilege of living in this beautiful place.”
GRATITUDE
“Some of those gifts, those ways that we could reciprocate, would be of course our gratitude.
We always begin with gratitude.
Doing good science is a way to reciprocate the gifts of the earth.
Doing transformative art that changes peoples’ minds is a gift that we can give back.
Taking care of the land, good farming, regenerative farming, ecological restoration.
Indeed, education for justice.
“My shorthand for how do we reciprocate the gifts of the earth are these three things:
Raise good children!
Raise a garden – there is no faster way to begin learning from the land. . . . learning from our seeds, from the soil, from the rain.
Raise a ruckus – this, too, is our work; this is not a time to be silent – we live in urgent times, we live in mythic times . . .
For all of us to stand up, be counted, to raise our voices so we are not complicit with destruction, but we stand on the side of creation.”
PERSONHOOD FOR ALL BEINGS
When Kimmerer spoke to the UN General Assembly in commemoration of International Mother Earth Day in 2015, she supported a declaration on the rights of Mother Earth:
“(C)reating a whole new system of policy and law based in the ancient paradigm of personhood that tries to upend or rebalance property law with natural law,” she explained. “To shape an economy which no longer is based on exploitation but on reciprocity.”
“The idea of animacy of language and personhood of all beings has the potential for transformation to justice, to ecological justice, so that our land, our love for land, our language, and our laws are all aligned in favor of the flourishing of all beings.”
In the words of one of Kimmerer’s mentors, Onondaga Clan Mother Audrey Shenandoah, “Our job is to seek justice – justice not only for ourselves but justice for all creation.”
When a questioner noted the contrast between traditional Judeo-Christian religion and Indigenous spirituality, Kimmerer agreed.
“How did we go so far astray from our original teachings?” she wondered.
“All of us come from land-based people who had the understanding of the sacredness of the land and the land as gift. But divinity was chased from the land and put in the sky. That separation is at the root of human exceptionalism. How did we get to thinking of land as nothing more than stuff that belongs to us?”
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I read Braiding Sweetgrass and was moved, not just by her words but by her actions. What many of us need is for those who have knowledge, and strengths in communicating that knowledge ,to continue to speak out. (I'm looking at you Larry.) This inspires so many more of us who do not have those skills but have similar thoughts and feelings. Thank you.
(My favorite part of the book was when she shared that her people call a tree "she" not "it", and that if we all did so, we might be more hesitant to fire up our chainsaw!)
Love this.