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Essay 3: Personal Essay — “Kimmerer”
(50 pts.) Length: 4-6 pgs. Due Date: Check Canvas

Task: Select one of the two options below and write a personal
essay that responds to the questions and quotes.

Option
One

In “Allegiance to Gratitude,”
Kimmerer introduces the Thanksgiving Address used by indigenous people to give
thanks to the land. She states that “it is the credo for a culture of
gratitude” (115). In fact, throughout the chapter she writes about gratitude
and reciprocity:

You can’t listen to the
Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude
seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society,
contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than
scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.
Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The
Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need.
Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a
gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy
(33-34).

———————————————————————————

Cultures of gratitude must also
be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is bound to every other
in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a
duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to
support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of

pure water, then I am
responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s
education is to know those duties and how to perform them (36-37).

How can having
an outlook of gratitude and reciprocity change one’s view of one’s relationship
with the world and its, to quote Emerson, “natural objects?” How is the
American Pledge of Allegiance different
from the Thanksgiving Address?

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

Option Two

What exactly is, according to
Kimmerer, a grammar of animacy? What does it mean to see the animacy of the
world and use a language that perceives it as such? How would such a
perspective change our / your understanding of the world we live in? What are
your thoughts about the following words: “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 [; it’s] all in the pronouns” (40)? How can adapting
a grammar of animacy offer us a fuller understanding of the world we live in
(and, to quote Emerson, the “natural objects” that we can share a “kindred
impression” with if our minds are open to their influence)? What does she mean
by it’s “all in the pronouns”?

Because this is a personal essay,
you do not need a formal introduction or conclusion, nor should you include a
traditional thesis statement, but you do need to craft an organized narrative
that addresses these questions in a personal way– and that narrative needs to
lead to your final insights and answers. You can consider the following outline
if you think it would help you to organize your writing.

1. Begin by introducing your
   reader to the fact that you are considering these questions (introduce us to
   the title, the author, a brief and general summary of what the chapter is about
   and then the nature of the questions). I would like you to frame your
   discussion around a story (for example going for a walk and thinking about
   these things—or visiting a specific place). A personal essay is both formal and
   creative. The story helps the reader to better understand the nature of why you
   are pursuing answers to this question (something much more interesting and
   valuable than the reality that I told you to address these questions).
2. In order to offer your very
   personal views about these questions, discuss and analyze some of the key
   passages in the chapter. Make sure that you specifically analyze and explain
   those passages before you discuss your views on them. As with the analysis
   essays you have already written, do not state that Kimmerer says anything she
   does not actually say.
3. For the final paragraph,
   take everything you have discussed and analyzed and come to a final insight
   about your views.

Note: This is not a formal essay;
however, you still need to pay attention to your writing and make sure that you
organize your narrative carefully. You are allowed, for this essay, to use “I”
or “you.”

à MLA Formatting:

1. In your introductory paragraph, refer to the title of the book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,
   Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and the author’s full
   name (Robin Wall Kimmerer). Make it clear that the “essay” you are writing
   about is a chapter from that book. Exampleà

• In “Allegiance to
  Gratitude,” from her book Braiding
  Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings
  of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
  writes about the importance of gratitude
  and reciprocity.
  • For the rest of the essay, use the author’s last name (Kimmerer). Do
    not repeat her full name again.
  • Once you have mentioned the title, do not mention it again. Do not
    write “in the essay.” We will know that you are discussing the essay.
  • For in-text citations / quotations, use the page number from the course
    reader. You do not need to mention the author’s last name in the citation
    because once you have introduced us to the title and the author’s name, we will
    know that you are only quoting that source because your task is to analyze that
    essay and that essay only.
  • Provide a works cited page. Here is the correctly formatted
    bibliographical citation. Pay attention to the italicized title of the course reader.

Kimmerer,
Robin Wall. “Allegiance to Gratitude.” English
1A Course Reader. Edited by Nathan Wirth, Nathan’s Mind, Inc. 2019

Kimmerer,
Robin Wall. “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.” English 1A Course Reader. Edited by Nathan Wirth, Nathan’s Mind,
Inc. 2019

à Checklist

à Make
sure your sentences are focused and that you take the time to effectively
combine sentences using coordination and subordination. Make sure that you are
taking advantage of adjective clauses and noun phrase appositives.

à Make
sure you meaningfully and effectively use coordinators, subordinators,
conjunctive adverbs and transitional expressions to provide, where appropriate,
clear transitions between your ideas.

à Make
sure you provide meaningful and relevant context for your quotations,
paraphrasing, and summaries. Be sure you also provide (a) relevant explanations
of them and (b) specific analysis.

à Do not use “I” or “you.”

à Final Draft: Upload your final draft to
Canvas. Check the course schedule for due dates and the upload link.

à Process
Letter: You must also include a process letter, in which you write about
your writing process for the essay. Please make this the first page of your
document (and it does not count as one of the required pages). You can find a
sample process letter in this course reader.

à Formatting: Check the formatting
requirements in this course reader before you upload your essay.

Haudenosaunee
Thanksgiving Address Greetings to the Natural
World

Pronounced: HO DEN OH SAW NEE

The People

Today we have gathered and we see
that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in
balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our
minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.

Now our minds are one.

The Earth Mother

We are all
thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life.
She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she
continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother,
we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds
are one.

The Waters

We give thanks to all the waters
of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is
life. We know its power in many forms- waterfalls and rain, mists and streams,
rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of
Water.

Now our minds
are one.

The Fish

We turn our minds to the all the
Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water.
They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find
pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.

Now our minds
are one.

The Plants

Now we turn toward the vast
fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many
wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we
give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are
one.

The Food Plants

With one mind, we turn to honor
and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning
of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people
survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all
the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting of thanks.

Now our minds
are one.

The Medicine Herbs

Now we turn to all the Medicine
herbs of the world. From the beginning they were instructed to take away
sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are
still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for
healing. With one mind, we send

greetings and
thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines. Now our minds are
one.

The
Animals

We gather our minds together to
send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many
things to teach us as people. We are honored by them when they give up their
lives so we may use their bodies as food for our people. We see them near our
homes and in the deep forests.

We are glad they
are still here and we hope that it will always be so. Now our minds are one

The Trees

We now turn our thoughts to the
Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and
uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and
other useful things. Many people of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace
and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.

Now our minds are one.

The
Birds

We put our minds together as one and
thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave
them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The
Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds-from the smallest to the
largest-we send our joyful greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

The Four Winds

We are all thankful to the powers
we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they
refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help us to bring the change of
seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us
strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds.

Now our minds are one.

The
Thunderers

Now we turn to the west where our
grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices,
they bring with them the water that renews life. We are thankful that they keep
those evil things made by Okwiseres underground. We bring our minds together as
one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

Now our minds are one.

The Sun

We now send greetings
and thanks to our eldest
Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels
the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the
source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to
our Brother, the Sun.

Now our minds
are one.

Grandmother Moon

We put our minds
together to give thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights the

night-time sky. She is the leader
of woman all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides.
By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the
arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks
to our Grandmother, the Moon.

Now our minds are one.

The Stars

We give thanks to the Stars who
are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the
Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things.
When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together
as one, we send greetings and thanks to the Stars.

Now our minds are one.

The Enlightened Teachers

We gather our minds to greet and
thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When
we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed
to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring
teachers.

Now our minds are one.

The Creator

Now we turn our thoughts to the
Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of
Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth.
For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one
and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

Now our minds are one.

Closing Words

We have now
arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named,
it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we
leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

Now our minds are one.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

This
translation of the Mohawk version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address was
developed, published in 1993, and provided, courtesy of: Six Nations Indian
Museum and the Tracking Project All rights reserved.

Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural
World English version:
John Stokes and Kanawahienton
(David Benedict, Turtle Clan/Mohawk) Mohawk version: Rokwaho (Dan Thompson,
Wolf Clan/Mohawk) Original inspiration: Tekaronianekon (Jake Swamp, Wolf Clan/Mohawk)

The Pledge of
Allegiance

Original 1892 Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge
allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation,
indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all.

Note: Written in August 1892 by the
socialist minister Francis Bellamy [1855-1931]. Bellamy had hoped that the
pledge would be used by citizens in any country.

1923 Version: I pledge allegiance to the
Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which
it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Note: At this time, the words,
“the Flag of the United States of America” were added

1954 Version: I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Note: In 1954, in response to the
Communist threat, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words
“under God.” Bellamy’s daughter objected to this alteration.

Allegiance to Gratitude by
Robin Wall Kimmerer

(from her book: Braiding
Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,
Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)

There was a time, not so long ago, when
my morning ritual was to rise before dawn and start the oatmeal and coffee
before waking the girls. Then I would get them up to feed the horses before
school. That done, I would pack lunches, find lost papers, and kiss pink cheeks
as the school bus chugged up the hill, all before filling bowls for the cats
and dog, finding something presentable to wear, and previewing my morning
lecture as I drove to school. Reflection was not a word frequently on my mind
those days.

But on
Thursdays, I didn’t have a morning class and could linger a little, so I would
walk the pasture to the top of the hill to start the day properly, with birdsong
and shoes soaked in dew and the

clouds still
pink with sunrise over the barn, a down payment on a debt of gratitude. One
Thursday I was distracted from the robins and new leaves by a call I received
from my sixth-grade daughter’s teacher the night before.

Apparently, my daughter had begun
refusing to stand with the class for the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher
assured me she wasn’t being disruptive, really, or misbehaving, but just sat
quietly in her seat and wouldn’t join in. After a couple of days other students
began following suit, so the teacher was calling “just because I thought you’d
like to know.”

I remember how
that ritual used to begin my day, too, from kindergarten through high school.
Like the tap of the conductor’s baton, it gathered our attention from the
hubbub of the school bus and the jostling hallway. We would be shuffling our
chairs and putting lunch boxes away in the cubbies when the loudspeaker grabbed
us by the collar. We stood beside our desks facing the flag that hung on a stick
at the corner of the blackboard, as ubiquitous as the smell of floor wax and
school paste.

Hand over heart,
we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge was a puzzlement to me, as I’m
sure it is to most students. I had no earthly idea what a republic even was,
and was none too sure about God, either. And you didn’t have to be an
eight-year-old Indian to know that “liberty and justice for all” was a
questionable premise.

But during
school assemblies, when three hundred voices all joined together, all those
voices, in measured cadence, from the gray-haired school nurse’s to the
kindergarteners’, made me feel part of something. It was as if for a moment our
minds were one. I could imagine then that if we all spoke for that elusive
justice, it might be within our reach.

From where I
stand today, though, the idea of asking schoolchildren to pledge loyalty to a
political system seems exceedingly curious. Especially since we know full well
that the practice of recitation will largely be abandoned in adulthood, when
the age of reason has presumably been attained. Apparently my daughter had
reached that age and I was not about to interfere. “Mom, I’m not going to stand
there and lie,” she explained. “And it’s not exactly liberty if they force you
to say it, is it?”

She knew
different morning rituals, her grandfather’s pouring of coffee on the ground
and the one I carried out on the hill above our house, and that was enough for
me. The sunrise ceremony is our Potawatomi way of sending gratitude into the
world, to recognize all that we are given and to offer our choicest thanks in
return. Many Native peoples across the world, despite myriad cultural
differences, have this in common—we are rooted in cultures of

gratitude.

Our old farm
is within the ancestral homelands of the Onondaga Nation and their reserve lies
a few ridges to the west of my hilltop. There, just like on my side of the
ridge, school buses discharge a herd of kids who run even after the bus
monitors bark “Walk!” But at Onondaga, the flag flying outside the entrance is
purple and white, depicting the Hiawatha wampum belt, the symbol of the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy. With bright backpacks too big for their little
shoulders, the kids stream in through doors painted the traditional
Haudenosaunee purple, under the words Nya
wenhah Ska: nonh a greeting of
health and peace. Black-haired children run circles around the atrium, through
sun shafts, over clan symbols etched on the slate floor.

Here the
school week begins and ends not with the Pledge of Allegiance, but with the
Thanksgiving Address, a river of words as old as the people themselves, known
more accurately in the Onondaga language as the Words That Come Before All
Else. This ancient order of protocol sets gratitude as the highest priority.
The gratitude is directed straight to the ones who share their gifts with the
world.

All the classes
stand together in the atrium, and one grade each week has responsibility for
the oratory. Together, in a language older than English, they begin the
recitation. It is said that the people were instructed to stand and offer these
words whenever they gathered, no matter how many or how few, before anything
else was done. In this ritual, their teachers remind them that every day,
“beginning with where our feet first touch the earth, we send greetings and
thanks to all members of the natural world.”

Today it is
the third grade’s turn. There are only eleven of them and they do their best to
start together, giggling a little, and nudging the ones who just stare at the
floor. Their little faces are screwed

up with concentration and they
glance at their teacher for prompts when they stumble on the words. In their
own language they say the words they’ve heard nearly every day of their lives.

Today we have
gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of
life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with
each other and all living things. So now let us bring our minds together as one
as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People. Now our minds are one.¹⁰

There is a pause and the kids
murmur their assent.

We are
thankful to our Mother the Earth, for she gives us everything that we need for
life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she
still continues to care for us, just as she has 
from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send thanksgiving, love,
and respect. Now our minds are one.

The kids sit remarkably still,
listening. You can tell they’ve been raised in the longhouse.

The Pledge
has no place here. Onondaga is sovereign territory, surrounded on every side by
the Republicforwhichitstands, but
outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Starting the day with the
Thanksgiving Address is a statement of identity and an exercise of sovereignty,
both political and cultural. And so much more.

The Address
is sometimes mistakenly viewed as a prayer, but the children’s heads are not
bowed. The elders at Onondaga teach otherwise, that the Address is far more
than a pledge, a prayer, or a poem alone.

Two little girls step forward with arms linked and take up the words
again:

We give thanks
to all of the waters of the world for quenching our thirst, for providing
strength and nurturing life for all beings. We know its power in many
forms—waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans, snow and ice.
We are grateful that the waters are still here and meeting their responsibility
to the rest of Creation. Can we agree that water is important to our lives and
bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to the Water? Now
our minds are one.

I’m told that
the Thanksgiving Address is at heart an invocation of gratitude, but it is also
a material, scientific inventory of the natural world. Another name for the
oration is Greetings and Thanks to the Natural World. As it goes forward, each
element of the ecosystem is named in its turn, along with its function. It is a
lesson in Native science.

We turn our
thoughts to all of the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse
and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful
that they continue to do their duties and we send to the Fish our greetings and
our thanks. Now our minds are one.

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can
see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With
our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant
life for many generations to come. Now our minds are one.

When we look about us, we see that the berries are still here,
providing us with delicious foods. The leader of the berries is the strawberry,
the first to ripen in the spring. Can we agree that we are grateful that the
berries are with us in the world and send our thanksgiving, love, and respect
to the berries? Now our minds are one.

10 *The actual wording
of the Thanksgiving Address varies with the speaker. This text is the widely
publicized version of John Stokes and Kanawahientun, 1993.

I wonder if
there are kids here who, like my daughter, rebel, who refuse to stand and say
thank you to the earth. It seems hard to argue with gratitude for berries.

With one mind,
we honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden, especially
the Three Sisters who feed the people with such abundance. Since the beginning
of time, the grains, vegetables, beans, and fruit have helped the people
survive. Many other living things draw strength from them as well. We gather
together in our minds all the plant foods and send them a greeting and thanks.
Now our minds are one.

The kids take
note of each addition and nod in agreement. Especially for food. A little boy
in a Red Hawks lacrosse shirt steps forward to speak:

Now we turn to
the Medicine Herbs of the world. From the beginning they were instructed to
take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are so
happy that there are still among us those special few who remember how to use
the plants for healing. With one mind, we send thanksgiving, love, and respect
to the Medicines and the keepers of the Medicines. Now our minds are one.

Standing around us we see all the Trees. The Earth has many families of
Trees who each have their own instructions and uses. Some provide shelter and
shade, others fruit and beauty and many useful gifts. The Maple is the leader
of the trees, to recognize its gift of sugar when the People need it most. Many
peoples of the world recognize a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With
one mind we greet and thank the Tree life. Now our minds are one.

The Address
is, by its very nature of greetings to all who sustain us, long. But it can be
done in abbreviated form or in long and loving detail. At the school, it is
tailored to the language skills of the children speaking it.

Part of its
power surely rests in the length of time it takes to send greetings and thanks
to so many. The listeners reciprocate the gift of the speaker’s words with
their attention, and by putting their minds into the place where gathered minds
meet. You could be passive and just let the words and the time flow by, but
each call asks for the response: “Now our minds are one.” You have to
concentrate; you have to give yourself to the listening. It takes effort,
especially in a time when we are accustomed to sound bites and immediate
gratification.

When the long
version is done at joint meetings with non-Native business or government
officials, they often get a little fidgety— especially the lawyers. They want
to get on with it, their eyes darting around the room, trying so hard not to
look at their watches. My own students profess to cherish the opportunity to
share this experience of the Thanksgiving Address, and yet it never fails that
one or a few comment that it goes on too long. “Poor you,” I sympathize. “What
a pity that we have so much to be thankful for.”

We gather our
minds together to send our greetings and thanks to all the beautiful animal
life of the world, who walk about with us. They have many things to teach us as
people. We are grateful that they continue to share their lives with us and
hope that it will always be so. Let us put our minds together as one and send
our thanks to the Animals. Now our minds are one.

Imagine
raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority. Freida
Jacques works at the Onondaga Nation School. She is a clan mother, the
school-community liaison, and a generous

teacher. She explains to me that
the Thanksgiving Address embodies the Onondaga relationship with the world.
Each part of Creation is thanked in turn for fulfilling its Creator-given duty
to the others. “It reminds you every day that you have enough,” she says. “More
than enough. Everything needed to sustain life is already here. When we do
this, every day, it leads us to an outlook of contentment and respect for all
of Creation.”

You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy.
And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary
idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing
abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating
unmet desires.

Gratitude cultivates an ethic of
fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you
that you already have everything you need. Gratitude doesn’t send you out
shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity,
subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land
and people alike.

We put our
minds together as one and thank all the birds who move and fly about over our
heads. The Creator gave them the gift of beautiful songs. Each morning they
greet the day and with their songs remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The
Eagle was chosen to be their leader and to watch over the world. To all the
Birds, from the smallest to the largest, we send our joyful greetings and
thanks. Now our minds are one.

The oratory is
more than an economic model; it’s a civics lesson, too. Freida emphasizes that
hearing the Thanksgiving Address every day lifts up models of leadership for
the young people: the strawberry as leader of the berries, the eagle as leader
of the birds. “It reminds them that much is expected of them eventually. It
says this is what it means to be a good leader, to have vision, and to be
generous, to sacrifice on behalf of the people. Like the maple, leaders are the
first to offer their gifts.” It reminds the whole community that leadership is
rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom.

We are all
thankful for the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the
moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help to bring
the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages
and giving us strength.

With one mind
we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds. Now our minds are one.

As Freida
says, “The Thanksgiving Address is a reminder we cannot hear too often, that we
human beings are not in charge of the world, but are subject to the same forces
as all of the rest of life.”

For me, the
cumulative impact of the Pledge of Allegiance, from my time as a schoolgirl to
my adulthood, was the cultivation of cynicism and a sense of the nation’s
hypocrisy—not the pride it was meant to instill. As I grew to understand the
gifts of the earth, I couldn’t understand how “love of country” could omit
recognition of the actual country itself. The only promise it requires is to a
flag. What of the promises to each other and to the land?

What would it
be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a member of
the democracy of species, to raise a pledge of Interdependence? No declarations
of political loyalty are required, just a response to a repeated question: “Can
we agree to be grateful for all that is given?” In the Thanksgiving Address, I hear respect
toward all our nonhuman relatives, not one political
entity, but to all of life. What happens
to nationalism, to political boundaries, when allegiance lies with winds and
waters that know no boundaries, that cannot be bought or sold?

Now we turn to
the west where our grandfathers the Thunder Beings live. With lightning and
thundering voices they bring with them the water that renews life. We bring our
minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the
Thunderers.

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest brother the Sun. Each
day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a
new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send
greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun. Now our minds are one.

The
Haudenosaunee have been recognized for centuries as masters of negotiation, for
the political prowess by which they’ve survived against all odds. The
Thanksgiving Address serves the people in myriad ways, including diplomacy.
Most everyone knows the tension that squeezes your jaw before a difficult
conversation or a meeting that is bound to be contentious. You straighten your
pile of papers more than once while the arguments you have prepared stand at
attention like soldiers in your throat, ready to be deployed. But then the
Words That Come Before All Else begin to flow, and you start to answer. Yes, of
course we can agree that we are grateful for Mother Earth. Yes, the same sun
shines on each and every one of us. Yes, we are united in our respect for the

trees. By the time we greet
Grandmother Moon, the harsh faces have softened a bit in the gentle light of
remembrance. Piece by piece, the cadence begins to eddy around the boulder of
disagreement and erode the edges of the barriers between us. Yes, we can all
agree that the waters are still here. Yes, we can unite our minds in gratitude
for the winds. Not surprisingly, Haudenosaunee decision¬ making proceeds from
consensus, not by a vote of the majority. A decision is made only “when our
minds are one.” Those words are a brilliant political preamble to negotiation,
strong medicine for soothing partisan fervor. Imagine if our government
meetings began with the Thanksgiving Address. What if our leaders first found
common ground before fighting over their differences?

We put our
minds together and give thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights
the nighttime sky. She is the leader of women all over the world and she
governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time
and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. Let
us gather our thanks for Grandmother Moon together in a pile, layer upon layer
of gratitude, and then joyfully fling that pile of thanks high into the night
sky that she will know. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our
Grandmother, the Moon.

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry.
We see them at night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew
to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home.
With our minds gathered as one, we send greetings and thanks to all the Stars.
Now our minds are one.

Thanksgiving
also reminds us of how the world was meant to be in its original condition. We
can compare the roll call of gifts bestowed on us with their current status.
Are all the pieces of the ecosystem still here and doing their duty? Is the
water still supporting life? Are all those birds still healthy? When we can no
longer see the stars because of light pollution, the words of Thanksgiving
should awaken us to our loss and spur us to restorative action. Like the stars
themselves, the words can guide us back home.

We gather our
minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help
throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the
way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and
thanks to these caring Teachers. Now our minds are one.

While there is
a clear structure and progression to the oratory, it is usually not recited
verbatim or exactly the same by different speakers. Some renditions are low
murmurs, barely discernible. Some are nearly songs. I love to hear elder Tom
Porter hold a circle of listeners in the bowl of his hand. He lights up every
face and no matter how long the delivery, you wish it was longer. Tommy says,
“Let us pile up our thanks like a heap of flowers on a blanket. We will each
take a corner and toss it high into the sky. And so our thanks should be as
rich as the gifts of the world that shower down upon us,” and we stand there
together, grateful in the rain of blessings.

We now turn
our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for
all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on
Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds
together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the
Creator. Now our minds are one.

The words are
simple, but in the art of their joining, they become a statement of
sovereignty, a political structure, a Bill of Responsibilities, an educational
model, a family tree, and a scientific inventory of ecosystem services. It is a
powerful political document, a social contract, a way of being—all in one
piece. But first and foremost, it is the credo for a culture of gratitude.

Cultures of
gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is
bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a
duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am
in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water,
then I am

responsible for returning a gift
in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and
how to perform them.

The Thanksgiving
Address reminds us that duties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles
were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain
fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining
life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then
asking “What is our responsibility?” is the same as asking “What is our gift?”
It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our
gifts.

It’s such a
simple thing, but we all know the power of gratitude to incite a cycle of
reciprocity. If my girls run out the door with lunch in hand without a “Thanks,
Mama!” I confess I get to feeling a tad miserly with my time and energy. But
when I get a hug of appreciation, I want to stay up late to bake cookies for
tomorrow’s lunch bag. We know that appreciation begets abundance. Why should it
not be so for Mother Earth, who packs us a lunch every single day?

Living as a
neighbor to the Haudenosaunee, I have heard the Thanksgiving Address in many
forms, spoken by many different voices, and I raise my heart to it like raising
my face to the rain. But I am not a Haudenosaunee citizen or scholar—just a
respectful neighbor and a listener. Because I feared overstepping my boundaries
in sharing what I have been told, I asked permission to write about it and how
it has influenced my own thinking. Over and over, I was told that these words
are a gift of the Haudenosaunee to the world. When I asked Onondaga Faithkeeper
Oren Lyons about it, he gave his signature slightly bemused smile and said, “Of
course you should write about it. It’s supposed to be shared, otherwise how can
it work? We’ve been waiting five hundred years for people to listen. If they’d
understood the Thanksgiving then, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

The
Haudenosaunee have published the Address widely and it has now been translated
into over forty languages and is heard all around the world. Why not here in
this land? I’m trying to imagine how it would be if schools transformed their
mornings to include something like the Thanksgiving Address. I mean no
disrespect for the whitehaired veterans in my town, who stand with hand on
heart as the flag goes by, whose eyes fill with tears as they recite the Pledge
in raspy voices. I love my country too, and its hopes for freedom and justice.
But the boundaries of what I honor are bigger than the republic. Let us pledge
reciprocity with the living world. The Thanksgiving Address describes our
mutual allegiance as human delegates to the democracy of species. If what we
want for our people is patriotism, then let us inspire true love of country by
invoking the land herself. If we want to raise good leaders, let us remind our
children of the eagle and the maple. If we want to grow good citizens, then let
us teach reciprocity. If what we aspire to is justice for all, then let it be
justice for all of Creation.

We have now
arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named,
it is not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we
leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
And now our minds are one.

Every day, with these words,
the people give thanks to the land. In the silence that falls at the
end of those words I
listen, longing for the day when we can hear the land give thanks for the
people in return.

Learning the Grammar of
Animacy by
Robin Wall Kimmerer

(from her
book: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and
the Teachings of Plants) To be native
to a place we must learn to speak its language.

I come here to
listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine
needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the
voice in my head until I can hear the voices outside it: the shhh of wind in needles, water trickling
over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in
my ear, and something more—something that is not for me, for which we have no
language, the wordless being of others in which we are never alone. After the
drumbeat of my mother’s heart, this was
my first language.

I could spend
a whole day listening. And a whole night. And in the morning, without my
hearing it, there might be a mushroom that was not there the night before,
creamy white, pushed up from the pine needle duff, out of the darkness to the
light, still glistening with the fluid of its passage. Puhpowee.

Listening in
wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I
think now 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. A tongue
that should not, by the way, be mistaken for the language of plants. I did
learn another language in science, though, one of careful observation, an
intimate vocabulary that names each little part. To

name and describe you must first
see, and science polishes the gift of seeing. I honor the strength of the
language that has become a second tongue to me. But beneath the richness of its
vocabulary and its descriptive power, something is missing, the same something
that swells around you and in you when you listen to the world. Science can be
a language of distance which reduces a being to its working parts; it is a
language of objects. The language scientists speak, however precise, is based
on a profound error in grammar, an omission, a grave loss in translation from
the native languages of these shores.

My first
taste of the missing language was the word Puhpowee
on my tongue. I stumbled upon it in a book by the Anishinaabe ethnobotanist
Keewaydinaquay, in a treatise on the traditional uses of fungi by our people. Puhpowee, she explained, translates as
“the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.” As a
biologist, I was stunned that such a word existed. In all its technical
vocabulary, Wester science has no such term, no words to hold this mystery.
You’d think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific
language our terminology is used to define the boundaries of our knowing. What
lies beyond our grasp remains unnamed.

In the three
syllables of this new word I could see an entire process of close observation
in the damp morning woods, the formulation of a theory for which English has no
equivalents. The makers of this word understood a world of being, full of
unseen energies that animate everything. I’ve cherished it for many years, as a
talisman, and longed for the people who gave a name to the life force of
mushrooms. The language that holds Puhpowee
is one that I wanted to speak. So when I learned that the word for rising,
for emergence, belonged to the language of my ancestors, it became a signpost
for me.

Had history
been different, I would likely speak Bodewadmimwin, or Potawatomi, an
Anishinaabe language. But, like many of the three hundred and fifty indigenous
languages of the Americas, Potawatomi is threatened, and I speak the language
you read. The powers of assimilation did their work as a chance of hearing that
language, and yours too, was washed from the mouths of Indian children in
government boarding schools where speaking your native tongue was forbidden.
Children like my grandfather, who was taken from his family when he was just a
little boy of nine years old. This history scattered not only our words but
also our people.

Today I live far from our
reservation, so even if I could speak the language, I would have no one to talk
to. Ut a few summers ago, at our yearly tribal gathering, a language class was
held and I slipped into the tent to listen.

There was a great deal of excitement about the class
because, for the first time, every single fluent speaker in our tribe would be
there as a teacher. When the speakers were called forward to the circle of
folding chairs, they moved slowly—with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, only a
few entirely under their own power. I counted them as they filled the chairs.
Nine. Nine fluent speakers. In the whole world. Our language, millennia in the
making, sits in those nine chairs. The words that praised creation, told the
old stories, lulled my ancestors to sleep, rests today in the tongues of nine
very mortal men and women. Each in turn addresses the small group of would-be
students.

A man with long
gray braids tells how his mother hid him away when the Indian agents came to
take the children. He escaped boarding school by hiding under an overhung bank
where the sound of the stream covered his crying. The others were all taken and
had their mouths washed out with soap, or worse, for “talking that dirty Indian
language.” Because he alone stayed home and was raised up calling the plants
and animals by the name Creator gave them, he is here today, a carrier of the
language. The engines of assimilation worked well. The speaker’s eyes blaze as
he tells us, “We’re the end of the road. We are all that is left. If you young
people do not learn, the language will die. The missionaries and the U.S.
government will have their victory at last.”

A
great-grandmother from the circle pushes her walker up close to the microphone.
“It’s not just the words that will be lost,” she says. “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.” Puhpowee.

Jim Thunder, at
seventy-five the youngest of the speakers, is a round brown man of serious
demeanor who spoke only in Potawatomi. He began solemnly, but as he warmed to
his subject his voice lifted like a breeze in the birch trees and his hands
began to tell the story. He became more and more animated, rising to his feet,
holding up rapt and silent although almost no one understood a single
word.  He paused as if reaching the
climax of his story and looked out at the audience with a twinkle of expectation.
One of the grandmothers behind him covered her mouth in a giggle and his stern
face suddenly broke into a smile as big and sweet as a cracked watermelon. He
bent over laughing and the grandmas dabbed away tears of laughter, holding
their sides, while the rest of us looked on in wonderment. When the laughter
subsided, he spoke at last in English: “What will happen to a joke when no one
can hear it anymore? How lonely those words will be, when their power is gone.

Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told
again.”

So now my
house is spangled with Post-it notes in another language, as if I were studying
for a trip abroad. But I’m not going away, I’m coming home.

Ni pi je ezhyayen? Asks
the little yellow sticky note on my back door. My hands are full and the car is
running, but I switch my bag to the other hip and pause long enough to respond.
Odanek nde zhya, I’m going to town.
And so I do, to work, to class, to meetings, to the bank, to the grocery store.
I talk all day and sometimes write all evening in the beautiful language I was
born to, the same one used by 70 percent of the world’s people, a tongue viewed
as the most useful, with the richest vocabulary in the modern world. English.
When I get home at night to my quiet house, there is a faithful Post-it note on
the closet door. Gisken I gbiskewagen!  And so I take off my coat.

I cook
dinner, pulling utensils from cupboards labeled emkwanen, nagen. I have become a woman who speaks Potawatomi to
household objects. When the phone rings I barely glance at the Post-it there as
I dopnen the giktogan. And whether it is a solicitor or a friend, they speak
English. Once a week or so, it is my sister from the West Coast who says Bozho. Moktthewenkwe nda—as if she needed to identify herself: who else
speaks Potawatomi? To call it speaking is a stretch. Really, all we do is blurt
garbled phrases to each other in a parody of conversation: How are you? I am
fine. Go to town. See bird. Red. Frybread good. We sound like Tonto’s side of
the Hollywood dialogue with the Lone Ranger. “Me try talk good Injun way.” On
the rare occasion when we actually can string together a halfway coherent
thought, we freely insert high school Spanish words to fill in the gaps, making
a language we call Spanawatomi.

Tuesdays and
Thursdays at 12:15 Oklahoma time, I join the Potawatomi lunchtime language
class, streaming from tribal headquarters ia the Internet. There are usually
about ten of us, from all over the country. Together we 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. The missionaries took this
absence as further evidence of crude manners.

Many nights,
when I should be grading papers or paying bills, I’m at the computer running
through Potawatomi language drills. After months, I have mastered the
kindergarten vocabulary and can confidently match the pictures of animals to
their indigenous names. It reminds me of reading picture books to my children;
“Can you point to the squirrel? Where is the bunny?” All the while I’m telling
myself that I really don’t have time for this, and what’s more, little need to
know the words for bass and fox anyway. Since our tribal diaspora left us
scattered to the four winds, who would I talk to?

The simple
phrases I’m learning are perfect for my dog. Sit! Eat! Come here! Be quiet! But
since she scarcely responds to these commands in English, I’m reluctant to
train her to be bilingual. An admiring student once asked me if I spoke my
native language. I was tempted to say, “Oh yes, we speak Potawatomi at home”—
me, the dog, and the Post-it notes. Our teacher tells us not to be discouraged
and thanks us every time a word is spoken—thanks us for breathing life into the
language, even if we only speak a single word. “But I have no one to talk to,
“I complain. “None of us do,“ he reassures me, “but someday we will.”

So I
dutifully learn the vocabulary but find I hard to see the “heart of our
culture” in translating bed and sink into Potawatomi. Learning nouns was
pretty easy; after all, I’d learned thousands of botanical Latin names and
scientific terms. I reasoned that this could not be too much different—just a
one-for-one substitution, memorization. At least on paper, where you can see
letters, this is true. Hearing the language is a different story. There are
fewer letters in our alphabet, so the distinction among words for a beginner is
often subtle. With the beautiful clusters of consonants of zh and mb and shwe and kwe and mshk, our
language sounds like wind in the pines and water over rocks, sounds our ears
may have been more delicately attuned to in the past, but no longer. To learn
again, you really have to listen.

To actually speak, of course, requires verbs, and
here is where my kindergarten proficiency at naming things leaves off. English
is a noun-based language, somehow appropriate to a culture so obsessed with
things. Only 30 percent of English words are verbs, but in Potawatomi that
proportion is 70 percent. Which means that 70 percent of the words have to be
conjugated, and 70 percent 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. Nouns and verbs both are animate and
inanimate. You hear a person with a word that is completely different from the
one with which you hear an airplane. Pronouns, articles, plurals,
demonstratives, verbs—all those syntactical bits I never could keep straight in
high school English are all aligned in Potawatomi to provide different ways to
speak of the living world and the lifeless one. Different verb forms, different
plurals, different everything apply depending on whether what you are speaking
of is alive.

No wonder there are only nine speakers left! I try, but the complexity
makes my head hurt and my ear can barely distinguish between words that mean
completely different things. One teacher reassures us that this will come with
practice, but another elder concedes that these close similarities are inherent
in the language. As Stewart King, a knowledge keeper and great teacher, reminds
us, the Creator meant for us to laugh, so humor is

deliberately
built into the syntax. Even a small slip of the tongue can convert “We need
more firewood” to “Take off your clothes.” In fact, I learned that the mystical
word Puhpowee is used not only for mushrooms, but also for certain other shafts
that rise mysteriously in the night.

My sister’s
gift to me one Christmas was a set of magnetic tiles for the refrigerator in
Ojibwe, or Anishinabemowin, a language closely related to Potawatomi. I spread
them out on my kitchen table looking for familiar words, but the more I looked,
the more worried I got. Among the hundred or more tiles, there was but a single
word that I recognized: megwech,
thank you. The small feeling of accomplishment from months of study evaporated
in a moment.

I remember
paging through the Ojibwe dictionary she sent, trying to decipher the tiles,
but the spellings didn’t always match and the print was too small and there are
way too many variations on a single word and I was feeling that this was just
way too hard. The threads in my brain knotted and the harder I tried, the
tighter they became. Pages blurred and my eyes settled on a word—a verb, of
course: “to be a Saturday.” Pfft! I threw down the book. Since when is Saturday a verb? Everyone knows it’s a
noun. I grabbed the dictionary and flipped more pages and all kinds of things
seemed to be verbs: “to be a hill,” “to be red,” “to be a long sandy stretch of
beach,” and then my finger rested on Wiikwegamaa: “to be a bay.” ” Ridiculous!”
I ranted in my head. “There is no reason to make it so complicated. No wonder
no one speaks it. A cumbersome language, impossible to learn, and more than
that, it’s all wrong. A bay is most definitely a person, place, or thing—a noun
and not a verb.” I was ready to give up. I’d learned a few words, done my duty
to the language that was taken from my grandfather. Oh, the ghosts of the
missionaries in the boarding schools must have been rubbing their hands in glee
at my frustration. “She’s going to surrender,” they said.

And then I swear
I heard the zap of synapses firing. An electric current sizzled down my arm and
through my finger, and practically scorched the page where that one word lay.
In that moment I could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the
shore and hear it sift onto the sand. 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. “to be a
bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to
shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of
baby mergansers. Because it could to otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a
waterfall, and there are erbs for that too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach,
to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive.
Water, land, and even a day, the language 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 I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what
wells up all around us. And the vestiges of boarding schools, the soap-wielding
missionary wraiths, hand their heads in defeat.

This is the
grammar of animacy. Imagine seeing your grandmother standing at the stove in
her apron and then saying of her, “Look, it is making soup. It has gray
hair.”  We might snicker at such a
mistake, but we also recoil from it. In English, we never refer to a member of
our family, or indeed to any person, as it. That would be a profound act of
disrespect.  It robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a
mere thing.  So it is that in Potawatomi
and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the
living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.

To whom does our
language extend the grammar of animacy? Naturally, plants and animals are
animate, but as I learn, I am discovering that the Potawatomi understanding of
what it means to be animate diverges from the list of attributes of living
beings we all learned in Biology 101. In Potawatomi 101, rocks are animate, as
are mountains and water and fire and places. Beings that are imbued with
spirit, our sacred medicines, our songs, drums, and even stories, are all
animate. The list of the inanimate seems to be smaller, filled with objects
that are made by people. Of an inanimate being, like a table, we say, “What is it?” And we answer Dopwen yewe.
Table it is. But of apple, we must say, “Who
is that being?” And reply Mshimin yawe. Apple that being is.

Yawe—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 it 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 of the animate world.

English
doesn’t give us many tools for incorporating respect for animacy. In English,
you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of
reducing a nonhuman being to an it,
or it must be gendered, inappropriately, as a he or a she. Where are
our words for the simple existence of another living being? Where is our yawe? My friend Michael Nelson, an
ethicist who thinks a great deal about moral inclusion, told me about a woman
he knows, a field biologist whose work is among other-than-humans. Most of her
companions are not two-legged, and so her language has shifted to accommodate
her relationships. She kneels along the trail to inspect a set of moose tracks,
saying, “Someone’s already been this way this morning.” “Someone is in my hat,”
she says, shaking out a deerfly. Someone, not something.

When I am in
the woods with my students, teaching them the gifts of plants and how to call
them by name, I try to be mindful of my language, to be bilingual between the
lexicon of science and the grammar of animacy. Although they still have to
learn scientific roles and Latin names, I hope I am also teaching them to know
the world as a neighborhood of nonhuman residents, to know that, as
ecotheologian Thomas Berry has written, “we must say of the universe that it is
a communion o subjects, no a collection of objects.”

On afternoon,
I sate with my field ecology students by a wiikwergamaa
and shared this idea of animate language. One young man, Andy, splashing
his feet in the clear water, asked the big question. “Wait a second,” he said
as he wrapped his mind around this linguistic distinction, “doesn’t this mean
that speaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to
disrespect nature? By denying everyone else the right to be persons?

Wouldn’t things be different if
nothing was an it?”

Swept away with
the idea, he said I felt like an awakening to him. More like a remembering, I
think. 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
retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that 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.

Another student
countered Andy’s argument. “But we can’t say he or she. That would be
anthropomorphism.” They are well-schooled biologists who have been instructed,
in no uncertain terms, never to ascribe human characteristics to a study
object, to another species. It’s a cardinal sin that leads to a loss of
objectivity. Carla pointed out that “it’s also disrespectful to animals. We
shouldn’t project our perceptions onto them. They have their own ways—they’re
not just people in furry costumes.” Andy countered, “But just because we don’t
think of them as humans doesn’t mean they aren’t beings. Isn’t it even more
disrespectful to assume that we’re the only species that counts as “persons”?
The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of
respect and moral concern, is to be a human.

A language teacher I know explained that grammar is just the way we
chart relationships in language.

Maybe it also reflects our
relationships 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. It’s all in the pronouns.

Any is right.
Learning the grammar of animacy could well be a restraint on our mindless
exploitation of land. But there is more to it. 
I have heard our elders give advice like “You should go among the
standing people” or “Go spend some time with those Beaver people.” They remind
us of the capacity of others as our teachers, as holders of knowledge, as
guides. Imagine walking through a richly inhabited world of Birch people, Bear
people, Rock people, beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons
worthy of our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world. 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, possibilities, the things we might see through other
eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. We don’t have to figure out everything by
ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us.
Imagine how much less lonely the world would be.

Every word I
learn comes with a breath of gratitude for our elders who have kept this
language alive and passed along its poetry. I still struggle mightily with
verbs, can hardly speak at all, and I’m still most adept with only kindergarten
vocabulary. But I like that in the morning I can go for my walk around the
meadow greeting neighbors by name. When Crow caws at me from the hedgerow, I
can call back Mno gizhget andushukwe!
I can brush my hand over the soft grasses and murmur Bozho mishkos. It’s a small thing, but it makes me happy.

I’m not
advocating that we all learn Potawatomi or Hopi or Seminole, even if we could.
Immigrants came to these shores bearing a legacy of languages, all to be
cherished. But to become native to the place, if we are to survive here, and
our neighbors too, our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so
that we might truly be at home.

I remember the words of Bill Tall Bull, a Cheyenne elder. As a young person, I spoke to him with a heavy heart, lamenting that I had no native language with which to speak to the plants and the places that I love. “They love to hear the old language,” he said, “it’s true.” “But,” he said, with fingers on his lips, “You don’t have to speak it here.” “if you speak it here,” he said, patting his chest, “They will hear you.”

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