Page 26 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

pronoun “kin.” So we can now refer to birds and trees not as things, but as our earthly relatives. On a

crisp October morning we can look up at the geese and say, “Look, kin are flying south for the winter.

Come back soon.”

Language can be a tool for cultural transformation. Make no mistake: “Ki” and “kin” are revolutionary

pronouns. Words have power to shape our thoughts and our actions. On behalf of the living world, let

us learn the grammar of animacy. We can keep “it” to speak of bulldozers and paperclips, but every

time we say “ki” let our words reaffirm our respect and kinship with the more-­‐than-­‐human world. Let

us speak of the beings of the earth as the “kin” they are...

We are gathered here to tell a new story, to imagine how writers, as people of the seventh fire, can

mark the path, the many paths. To ask, as women, the descendants of Skywoman, how can we use our

gifts to tip the world back into balance? In a new world, how shall we make a home?

In the face of our fears, we will ask ourselves: what do we love too much to lose? And answer each

other: what will I do to protect kin? For in the words of the respected Onondaga Nation Clan Mother

Audrey Shenandoah, who would have so loved this gathering: “Being born as humans to this earth is a

very sacred trust. We have a sacred responsibility because of the special gift we have, which is beyond

the fine gifts of the plant life, the fish, the woodlands, the birds and all the other living things on earth.

We are able to take care of them.”

Robin W. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and

enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her first book,

Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding

nature writing. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific

Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants appeared in 2013. She lives in

Fabius, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor

of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for

Native Peoples and the Environment. Her literary essays appear in Whole Terrain, Adirondack Life,

Orion and several anthologies.