Matters of Language
Personification is for EverythingRobyn Kimmerer, an Indigenous American, raised English speaker, discusses distribution of word types in English in comparison with her preferred, native language, Potawatomi. In Potawatomi 70% of the words are verbs: active, moving, living words, versus English’s 30% (Kimmerer, 2013, p.11-12). English’s noun heavy distribution reflects its object-oriented-ontology (Morton, 2013). By using English, one sees the world distorted by compartmentalisation, as a collection of objects rather than an interweaving, ever-complex web on inter-relationships. This way of perceiving centres humanity, as unique “persons” in an otherwise still and dead world. It’s all in the pronouns! As a *species* reliant on language as cornerstone of communication, and manifestation of self/culture, how we use grammar matters.
In Potawatomi, animacy is embedded into many *things* English considers objects, i.e. rivers, mountains, animals, insects, trees, etc, all ‘possible verbs in a world where everything is alive,’ (Kimmerer, 2013, p.15). Personhood becomes an action, a doing, a verb, rather than a thing. Being a person is an active becoming with and within other persons, there is an embedded sense of response-ability with personhood. We are what we do, not what we are, there is no stillness in being, but active unfolding. Within this understanding, “you are not a bad person for doing bad things,” becomes a scapegoat for cruelty. Verb-centric language creates intrinsic understanding of interconnectivity, as all actions/persons are fluid, foremost an interaction and therefore constantly in effect/affect one another. The language format forges constant observation of mutual influence, under guise of mutual reliance. Further, in Potawatomi most nouns are for settler-introduced objects; wood in a table will be a noun, unlike the tree from which it came which is a doing, living verb. ‘A bay,’ for example ‘is a noun if water is dead … trapped between its shores, contained by the word’ (Kimmerer, 2013, p.15). To see something as an object, is a grievance of freedom. Through this lens, English is a cruel language, one that makes grammatical excuse for violence, centres humanity, and spawns capitalistic thought. Timescale is to human lifespan, creating fabulated urgency to fill time with tasks, in an ever-shortening reduction; hours, minutes, second (Posthumanism & Technology, 2021). This timescale renders landscapes still, unbreathing, things, nouns. If resources were considered living persons, personhood considered to stem from action instead of mass, and action/persons in constant effect of one another, individualism, economy, and capitalism become unthinkable systems. Exerting cruelty on another for personal gain, is inherently exerting cruelty on the self.
Considering global warming, massacre of biodiversity, and wild place flattening (David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, 2020), ecological indigenous knowledge has begun to gain respect within academic, and some political settings. But the material skills shared are effectively useless when applied to land bound by private property laws, both personal and national (Kimmerer, 2013, p.20). What can we, *individuals*, rather, interconnected agents do to embody a shift from colonial-capitalist thinking whilst unravelling in that system? We need to shift the centre of power, who is heard, by changing who we listen to. We need to learn from non-white, non-capitalist communities, non-human communities! We must be in constant self-critique, remaining with the trouble of our ignorance as a fabric to make with rather than something that binds us.
From my trip to Camp Coorong, I take the skill of basket weaving, and how it stunk like sweet riverbeds and broke over time so I might make it again. From my learning from my brothers learning, I take the importance of stories, how they manifest themselves through all shapes and sizes, the importance of remembering, containing these stories, and embedding them into craftwork. From my reading of Kimmerer, I take recontextualization of my only language – English, as void of animacy, gifting personhood only to humans, and thus rooting, linguistically, the “Anthropocenic” superiority complex. I understand language is an operating system, and English will never describe what is happening to, or be able to forge change for our planet. From the Ibis folk, I say eat garbage! From ants, I see culture/organism binary as inseparable (Wheeler, 1911) (Changizi, 2010)( Aichert, Bochynek, Cossairt, Garnier, Rubenstein & Schiffers 2021). From eucaryotes, I take our ability to eat each other kindly (Journey to the Microcosmos, 2019) (Gilbert, Sapp & Tauber, 2012). From Gaia, I take rage. And from my points of agency, I take ‘response – ability’ to make-with a damaged planet compassionately (Haraway, 2016).