Page 24 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

And yet in English, we speak of our beloved Grandmother Earth in exactly that way, as “it.” The

language allows no form of respect for the more-­‐than-­‐human beings with whom we share the Earth. In

English, a being is either a human or an “it.”

Objectification of the natural world reinforces the notion that our species is somehow more deserving

of the gifts of the world than the other 8.7 million species with whom we share the planet. Using “it”

absolves us of moral responsibility and opens the door to exploitation. When Sugar Maple is an “it” we

give ourselves permission to pick up the saw. “It” means it doesn’t matter.

But in Anishinaabe and many other indigenous languages, it’s impossible to speak of Maple as “it.” In

our language there is no “it” for birds or berries. The language does not divide the world into him and

her, but into animate and inanimate. And the grammar of animacy is applied to all that lives: sturgeon,

mayflies, blueberries, boulders and rivers. We refer to other members of the living world with the

same language that we use for our family. Because they are our family.

What would it feel like to be part of a family that includes birches and beavers and butterflies? We’d

be less lonely. We’d feel like we belonged. We’d be smarter.

In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers

who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from

mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.

Colonization, we know, attempts to replace indigenous cultures with the culture of the settler. One of

its tools is linguistic imperialism, or the overwriting of language and names. Among the many examples

of linguistic imperialism, perhaps none is more pernicious than the replacement of the language of

nature as subject with the language of nature as object. We can see the consequences all around us as

we enter an age of extinction precipitated by how we think and how we live.

So here, today—among a community of writers and readers, of storymakers—let me make a modest

proposal. Just a small thing: the transformation of the English language. Let me invite you to join an

experiment, for a kind of reverse linguistic imperialism, a shift in worldview through the humble work

of the pronoun. Might the soft green path to sustainability be marked by grammar?