I have for a long time felt sad and angry about  the crimes committed by the US federal government, missionaries and religious schools toward Indigenous Americans.  I found it abominable  that these original people, here long before white people, were brutally deprived of their language and their culture,  let alone  the lives lost and the tremendous physical and emotional damage done to their children and families.  But in reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an Indigenous scientist, professor and botanist, I realized there also has been  great damage done to us all, including our very planet, by the destruction of Indigenous culture and peoples.  

Note that although I am angry at those who perpetrated this destruction, I don’t blame them,  For centuries practically all dominant, powerful peoples  have seen other cultures  as inferior and to be used as objects; if not slaves, surfs and peasants.  I even learned recently that  Lincoln,  whom many see an our greatest president, saw American Indians as inferior “foreigners” (!).  He continued to support many of the vicious policies instituted by Andrew Jackson and other Army officers,  encouraging white settlers to drive the Indians out of their lands. Although anti-slavery from childhood, it wasn’t even until late in his Presidency did he even  begin to consider that Blacks were equal to Whites in intelligence and morality.  And under his watch, 38 Dakota Indians were hung for killing a settlement of Whites in Minnesota.  But he never ordered the execution of any of the Confederate officers for killing many,  many  more people.   But then they were White!    

Returning to Kimmerer, she describes her people as regarding all of nature as our relatives, to be treated with respect and love.  This includes all trees, animals, fish, insects and even the air we breathe and the rocks, rivers, streams and oceans that occupy our planet with us. The Indigenous people killed animals for food and cut down trees to build cabins, but they did so almost in a spiritual sense, thanking the animals for “giving’ their lives so the people could survive. They had an attitude toward nature that I wrote about in an earlier blog on the Wintu Indians of the Northern California.

One fascinating fact Kimmerer  points out is that 70% of the words in English are nouns, 30% verbs, but in Potawatomi, an indigenous language of her tribe,  the percentage is 70% verbs, 30% nouns.   This makes the perception of reality and communication much more alive, fluid and vivid in that tribe.  She points out that when, in English, we use the word “bay”  we envisage  a still body of water with static land surrounding it.  But if used  as a Potawatomi verb wiikweganaa, it is seen as in movement, as alive.   As Kimmerer puts it, to be a bay “. . releases the water from bondage and lets it live.  It . . .holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a block of baby mergansers.   Because it could do otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too.”  Note that she even sees all these non-human entities as having volition.  Even what we think of as objects, like rocks, mountains, and fire, are regarded by these people as animate, as “our relatives.”  She even considers the possibility of calling them “persons.” questioning why only humans deserve the title of person. (The list of inanimate things in this language is small and made up mostly of things that are created by humans.)  

Just think about how much richer our language and very existence would be if we saw the world outside of us as contiguous to our existence, as a sense of self that is partially merged with other beings instead of objects to be exploited.  We would regard everything outside of as alive, as animate.  I doubt we would feel so free to destroy, kill,  constrain that which is not us, such as animals, plants, fish, trees, etc..  

It is obvious we cannot begin to learn Native American languages, but we can experiment thinking about and experiencing things as a Potawatomi person would do.  To greet the trees around us and thank them for providing shade and beauty, enriching our lives.  To thank those trees that have been felled to provide us paper for our books and computer paper. To thank the plants, animals, fish and birds who have given their lives up to us for food.    And to see all other beings in our world as our relatives and to love them and work toward preserving them.