Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
AN INVITATION ΤΟ REMEMBER We are in the time of the Seventh Fire a time prophesied by my Anishinaabe ancestors A sacred time when our shared remembering transforms the world A dark time and a time filled with light We can choose to live in the dark or in the light We remember the oft used words of resistance They tried to bury us but they didn't know we were seeds I invite you to remember another way of being in the world in kinship To be in a relationship with all living beings our relatives relatives Often in the Western world kinship is thought of only as human relatives but in many Indigenous worldviews kinship includes plants and animals To remember what may have been buried by the noise of the world and by the commodification of nature A remembering of knowing you can be good medicine for the land And I hope a remembering of or an understanding of your gifts something that is unique to you and how to share them to contribute to the well being of the world The land is the real teacher All we need as students of the land is mindfulness mindfulness Paying attention is a form of reciprocity reciprocity with the living world and receiving receiving the teachings with open eyes open mind and an open heart reciprocity a mutual exchange or dependence that benefits both each and all but also includes mutual responsibilities BRAIDING SWEETGRASS FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Imagine how less lonely the world would be if we knew and believed that we didn't have to figure everything out by ourselves I have heard elders give advice like Go among the standing people or Go spend time with deer people They remind us that plants and animals can be our caretakers our healers our teachers and our guides They remind us there are intelligences other than our own Imagine how less lonely the world would be if we knew and believed that we didn't have to figure everything out by ourselves BEFORE YOU BEGIN GRAMMAR OF ANIMACY The English language is noun based which feels somehow appropriate appropriate for a culture so obsessed with things In English we would never refer to our friends or family as it Imagine seeing your best AN INVITATION TO REMEMBER
friend studying for an exam and saying Look it's studying That would be rude But that is how we speak of other beings such as plants animals and the earth herself I think that is no mistake English is the language of capitalism capitalism It's the language of objects And subtly or maybe not so subtly subtly it gives us permission to think about the world as our own property property where we can do whatever we want It puts the earth outside of our circle of compassion and care because it's just stuff In Potawatomi and many other Indigenous languages it is not possible to speak of living beings as it Sure we still have words for objects desk tractor phone but they do not describe anything living Objects made by humans are inanimate Indigenous Indigenous languages have their own grammar of respect which I refer to as the grammar of animacy We use words to address the living world just as we use for our family Because they are our family Many of us feel deeply uncomfortable calling the living world it and yet we don't have an alternative other than he she or they I began to wonder if there were ways to bring animacy into the English language I asked my Potawatomi language teacher about this and if we have a word for a living being Not a thing a being He said Yeah we have a beautiful word bimaadizi aki Earth life an earth being I knew that bimaadizi aki would not slip easily into English but ki does Ki describes a being To make it plural add an n making it kin So when the geese fly overhead we can say Kin are flying flying south for the winter they'll come back soon Every time we speak of the living world these pronouns allow us to embody our relatedness to them Our connection to them capitalism an economic system in which resources and means of production are privately owned and prices production and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market BRAIDING SWEETGRASS FOR YOUNG ADULTS
While I have some hesitation hesitation about using a word inspired by the Potawatomi language as I don't in any way want to engage in cultural appropriation I am proposing ki as a new pronoun A way of remembering our connection connection and responsibilities to the earth and all living beings I'm learning just how widely ki is used in languages around the world Often referring to life energy it is also an alternate pronunciation for chi life force or life energy In French qui is the word for who In Spanish it is quien The grammar of animacy extends beyond the characteristics of the living beings you may be learning about in biology For example ki includes rocks mountains water and fire As well as beings that are imbued with spirit like our sacred medicines and drums Even stories are animate kin our relatives all living beings cultural appropriation the disrespectful and unacknowledged adoption of a part of culture or identity by members of another culture or identity A grammar of animacy could lead us to completely new ways of living in the world A world with an equality of species not a domination of one A world where we have relationships with and a responsibility to water and wolves and one another A world that recognizes the importance of other species It's all in the pronouns TREATMENT OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES The Potawatomi and Anishinaabe languages are a reflection of the land and the people They are a living oral tradition which had not been written down in their long history until fairly recently A number of writing systems have emerged to try to capture the language in regularized orthography but there is no firm agreement on the preeminence of any one among the many variants of a large and living language Potawatomi elder fluent AN INVITATION TO REMEMBER
