The Language Matters (Pt 1)
It’s an early afternoon at the College of Menominee Nation, sometime last fall. I’m sitting in the back of one of my favorite classes, Introduction to Sustainable Development. My instructor (a dear mentor, community leader, elder and friend) is leading a thought exercise through whether or not trees think, feel. Some of us nod our heads but most of us stare blankly. Those of us nodding are asked to answer a very difficult question and my friend, across the room, looks to me. I can tell what she’s thinking and she can tell what I’m thinking, though neither of us is really thinking in words. I raise my hand, take a deep breath and try to explain what is happening in my mind:
“That’s not a useful thing to ask because it’s impossible to know. I can’t think like a tree because I’m not a tree. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t, because my way of experiencing things is not the only way. A tree probably can’t think like me because they’re not a human. It’s probably not in words because trees don’t use human language. You can’t apply human metrics for experience to non-human things, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t experience things as deeply and real as we do.”
I have a tendency to sound very aggressive when I get excited and after I finished speaking, I was worried I had come off as angry. He bowed his head and thought quietly for a moment, nodding. “We need a new language,” he said, probably realizing for not the first time the enormity of the change needed to achieve the sort of goals he (and I) believe we should be setting.
I think back to this conversation often, because as I dip my toe further and further into academia, it becomes increasingly more apparent that precision of language matters even more than most people give it credit. Often, to communicate the ideas I have, I have to hyphenate and invent words I am not so sure have ever been used together in a sentence. I find myself using longer and longer, more complex words for concepts that I feel in my gut: heteronormativity, anthropocentrism, pseudoindigeneity. Often, this comes at the cost of what it is I really want to do, which is to communicate these concepts (largely considered the meat of academics and high intellectuals) to normal human beings in such a way that everyone understands. The bulk of my work is aimed at making my community and communities like mine stay engaged in work that they might otherwise feel is too big, and to advocate for their needs and concerns to the elite whenever I find myself at those tables. I am in a constant state of code-switching, often without even realizing I am doing it.
Currently, I am working on preparing a panel for our college’s Earth Day celebration. I have invited a number of very intelligent, thoughtful, talented people to come and speak about the impacts that human activities have on wildlife. But while explaining my ideas to the committee, I found my code betraying me.
“Wait wait, hold on,” one of my mentors said (herself a very learned woman). “Anthropo… what?”
“Anthropocentrism,” I said, and one of the other millennials in the room nodded vigorously.
“What the heck is that?”
“It’s the idea that the way that we view the world only encompasses a human perspective, that our concerns are the only ones that really matter and deserve moral consideration.”
“But isn’t that like… what’s wrong with that?”
“Well, the issue is that when we take into account only our perspectives, we do a lot of harmful things and feel justified because we’re putting the emphasis on our needs first and only. So like, with the Back 40 mine. We’re justified in that because people need jobs and to feed their families. That’s anthropocentric — it’s putting human needs first. But we’re also doing a lot of harm to the wildlife in the area and they’re not getting anything out of it. They’ll get sick, they’ll die, they’ll have to migrate. But anthropocentrists don’t care about that, because they’re not humans. It’s the default way of thinking for a lot of people and I think that’s a problem we need to address, because as Native people, we’re taught that we have an inherent responsibility to take care of the home that we’re given and that means being a good relative to the non-humans too.”
“But you’re still saying we, and our.”
“Yeah. Because we can still identify as ourselves, we can still be humans and take responsibility for our actions. But we need to recognize that we’re not the only ones on this planet — we share this home with other species, who deserve consideration too.”
There is a word in my language that paints the path away from this way of thinking, and roughly translated, it comes out to “all my relatives.”
I am not fluent in my language, but I am slowly building up my vocabulary. As I do, I find that the way that I look at the world is changing with it. I am in a constant state of trying to do less harm. I am frequently seeing the holes in logic, written in the space that English words long ago chose not to occupy. Out and about in the world, I don’t feel as alone as I used to. I walk through a forest the way I walk through my own neighborhood. I hear the birds and I smile at them the way I would a friend.
I will admit that while I was perfectly willing to go along with it, I did not used to think of language programs as the first line of defense against climate change. When people used to ask, I would respond with a vague “our language is everything,” and I am mildly embarrassed to realize I was right even if I didn’t know why. Language has a direct impact on the way that you think. Your language is your brain’s toolbox — the contexts you have words for are the ones that you think in. You cannot really begin to imagine a new world until you have words to describe it in, even if it’s just to yourself.
In the next post, I’m going to address one way that I think we can use this to our advantage to combat “climate change” denial in the English-speaking world and how our cautious use of terms around this very complicated subject have done more harm than good.
