I teach this really neat course called Theory of Knowledge. I could talk about it all day. It’s changed the way I see the world. I’m always trying to acquire more knowledge because of it. Part of the framework requires us to look at the ways that language, indigenous knowledge, politics, religion, and technology influence knowledge creation and production. Students are always most resistant to learning how traditional, Indigenous knowledge is often in tension with modern, Western knowledge. One of the people I have them listen to is Robin Wall Kimmerer. I read her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants to better teach ideas from indigenous knowledge to students. One idea that she explores is the idea of animacy and how if we changed the way we see things existing in the world, then we would change our relationship with the earth. I have always been fascinated with my pets, my dad’s vegetable garden, my mom’s roses, my grandparents plum and apricot trees, and the plants that I willingly let loiter in my apartment. :)
Below is Kimmerer addressing the idea of animacy and the limitations of English in describing nature and life.
____________________________________________________________________________________
“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 medicine, 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 Yaweh 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, ot 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.”
____________________________________________________________________________________
Rocks are Alive: A Vignette
“Are rocks alive?”
I ask my class while looking at them with a don’t-discredit-me-as-your-teacher-by-asking-that question grimace.
“NO!!!” The incredulous students shout at me.
Others, quiet, are contemplating. I can tell because they fix their eyes on me. They always look away or look down like their searching for an answer in their notes or their books when they don’t know. But the ones who are with me are with me and I can feel their solidarity in their stares even though they don’t say anything.
“A rock can’t be alive! Why would you even think that a rock is alive?”
Pause.
“When I was little, I used to look at the porous rocks and think that they breathed better than the smooth rocks.”
Low chuckles hum across the class. Like if a laugh was also a mumble. But it isn’t a laugh that assumes I’m ridiculous. It’s more knowing. I think that they think I’m onto something?
“We were told in our IB Bio class that there are eight qualities that living things have, and a rock doesn’t do any of them!”
“Let’s hear ‘em?”
“Rocks don’t reproduce!”
“How do small rocks come into existence? Or sand?” My grandpa once told me to never respond to a question with a question, but I always thought it was clever.
“They don’t grow!”
“Have you ever heard of sediment? Or seen a cave rock?”
“There isn’t adaptation through evolution!”
“Don’t rock cycles prove that rocks are always changing? And, consider: a smooth rock in a river is adapting to their environment.”
“It’s environment!” someone tries to correct me to objectify the rock. I ignore it.
“They don’t metabolize!”
“How do you know?”
Quiet.
I can feel how uncomfortable they are with dealing with uncertainty.
One of the quiet ones, “Well, if the characteristics of life were created by Western scientists, then they might be limited in their understanding of what makes something alive.”
No one fights back on that one.
“Have you always thought rocks are alive, Ms. Vaughan?” a student asks jokingly, but also with some earnest curiosity.
“I think so…but beyond what I’ve already mentioned, I think it felt concrete for me when I was in Southeast Asia and looking at the rocks in the ocean there. They sustained so much life that I couldn’t help but think that they were alive, too.”
“There were reefs on the inside of some of the rocks. From the outside, it appeared to be solid, but it was more like a rock wall that protected reefs inside. And I couldn’t help but think that the rocks were nice enough to make this little hole as an offering: ‘Come look at the beauty inside, silly human.’”
“Rocks don’t have consciousness,” a still incredulous student proclaims, interrupting the contemplation that is happening in the room.
“We wouldn’t know for certain if they did,” someone whispers to themselves, but loud enough for the class to hear.
Class ended shortly after. I had a sub for the rest of the day as I was hosting verbal examinations for IB. I came back to my room at the end of the day, and this was on my table.
The next day, we chuckled together, and then they asked me what I thought of their gift.
“I’m kinda sad that you moved them out of their habitat.”
“You don’t REALLY think that rocks are alive, do you? I’m going to tell [the IB Biology teacher] that we are being taught by someone who thinks that rocks are alive," one of the still incredulous students threatens(?) me with.
“So many scientific discoveries help us understand that plants and animals are so much smarter than we assume.” I don’t back down. How could rocks not be alive when we came from them? ;)
Post a Comment