“The biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, observes that the indigenous Potawatomi language…
“The biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, observes that the indigenous Potawatomi language is rich in verb forms that attribute aliveness to the more-than-human world. The word for “hill,” for example, is a verb: to be a hill. Hills are always in the process of hilling, they are actively being hills. Equipped with this “grammar of animacy,” it is possible to talk about the life of other organisms without either reducing them to an “it” or borrowing concepts traditionally reserved for humans. By contrast, in English, writes Kimmerer, there is no way to recognize the “simple existence of another living being.” If you’re not a human subject, by default you’re an inanimate object: an “it,” a “mere thing.” If you repurpose a human concept to help make sense of the life of a nonhuman organism, you’ve tumbled into the trap of anthropomorphism. Use “it,” and you’ve objectified the organism and fallen into a different kind of trap.”— Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (via probablyasocialecologist)