Reading: curling up with a book undisturbed on a wintery evening by the fire, is a reality that just is not mine for the moment. But, I hunger for stories and so I plough through audio books while driving. My preference nowadays are memoirs and thought provoking non fiction. And just as a beautiful cover would catch my eye in a bookshop and happen to be the perfect book for a long flight or that wintery evening by the fire, the right audio books seem to come my way.
Without reading the description, I downloaded from my free library app, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer and listening to her speak her own words was like coming home. I think everyone the world over would benefit so greatly from her story and in turn, the world as a whole would benefit.
Robin speaks of the Potowatami language and with such beauty she describes the word for ‘bay’.
” ‘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 its bondage and lets it live” (apologies that I cannot cite a page because I was listening)
What a respectful way to refer to non human living beings/entities in the world. By animating what Latin based languages understand as inanimate things, life and caring are breathed into them. Understanding a tree not as an inanimate thing but as ‘being a tree’- living and thriving, nurturing its surroundings that nurture it back. If we all thought of the ocean in the same way, would we think twice before harming it? If we considered it not to be a thing but a living dynamic entity that nurtures its life within as well as around it as a tree nurtures us and all the animals that call it home, would we care for it? protect it? ask first its blessing before taking from it*? give thanks? Do the limitations of our language predicate our inability to interpret the natural world as a thing only to be used, an object like a computer or paperweight, a commodity? Given the origin of the English language, it is not surprising that the natural world is so relegated. But, could our perceptions be changed?
The image below is so utterly disturbing and deeply heart wrenching. This whale and her unborn baby, among untold millions of others who call the oceans their home, are suffering horribly. I call on anyone who will listen to reassign the ocean from a thing into ‘being an ocean’ as the Potowatami would say. The ocean is a living entity that nurtures us and in turn, we must nurture it back or there will be nothing left for either of us to give.
*Robin describes this as both a left and right brain activity. The right brain intuits what the plant is non verbally saying while the left brain analytically observes if the population can sustain harvesting. And never more than half is taken if the answer to both both hemispheres of request is yes!
