Tag: Language

Haunani-Kay Trask on the Interdependence of Cultural and Biological Diversity

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“Unremittingly, the history of the modern period is the history of increasing conformity, paid for in genocide and ecocide. The more we are made to be the same, the more the environment we inhabit becomes the same: ‘backward’ people forced into a ‘modern’ (read ‘industrial’) context can no longer care for their environment. As the people are transformed, or more likely, exterminated, their environment is progressively degraded, parts of it destroyed forever. Physical despoliation is reflected in cultural degradation. A dead land is preceded by a dying people. As an example, indigenous languages replaced by ‘universal’ (read ‘colonial’) languages result in the creation of ‘dead languages.’ But what is ‘dead’ or ‘lost’ is not the language but the people who once spoke it and transmitted their mother tongue to succeeding generations. Lost, too, is the relationship between words and their physical referents. In Hawai’i, English is the dominant language, but it cannot begin to encompass the physical beauty of our islands in the unparalleled detail of the Hawaiian language. Nor can English reveal how we knew animals to be our family; how we harnessed the ocean’s rhythms, creating massive fishponds; how we came to know the migrations of deep-ocean fish and golden plovers from the Arctic; how we sailed from hemisphere to hemisphere with nothing but the stars to guide us. English is foreign to Hawai’i; it reveals nothing of our place where we were born, where our ancestors created knowledge now ‘lost’ to the past” (Trask 1993/1999: 59-60).

From Huanani-Kay Trask’s book From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i. Beautifully written, heart wrenching, and informative, it addresses indigenous struggles in the Pacific and worldwide. Although written in 1993, sadly, 27 years later, it is still very much applicable today. How can make the world hear Trask’s words? How can we heed her warnings?

“The choice is clear. As indigenous peoples, we must fight for Papahānaumoku, even as she–and we–are dying. But where do people in the industrial countries draw their battle lines? On the side of mother earth? On the side of consumption? On the side of First World Nationalism? If human beings, Native and non-Native alike, are to create an alternative to the planned New World Order, then those who live in the First World must change their culture, not only their leaders. Who, then, bears the primary responsibility? Who carries the burden of obligation? Who will protect mother earth?” (Trask 1993/1999: 62).

References:
Trask, H. 1999 [1993]. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i. Revised Edition. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

To Be a Flower

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“Look how things sprout from other things. How nothing is itself all by itself–or without the contributions of other things. When you happen upon a flower, especially one whose otherworldly beauty and feminine fragility contrast sharply with its less endearing environment, you might immediately treat it as this localized ‘thing,’ as an object–one deserving of admiration–but an ‘object’ nonetheless: removed, unique, separate, and even audacious. What our linguistic conveniences blind us to is how that very flower is no more distinguishable from the dirt, the erratic weather, the traffic of pollen bearers that come from far off, the blazing sun, and even the occasional imprint of a boot worn by an uncharitable tourist, than a wave is distinguishable from the sea” (Akomolafe 2017: 123).

Bayo Akomolafe, in his book These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, sets out to write letters to his daughter in search of ‘home.’ What he finds on his journey is a never-ending procession of middles, not the illustrious homes found in the happy endings of fairy tales. In the ontoepistemology of new materialism (see works by Karan Barad) beginnings and endings are not possible, only emergences and becomings. The world is a meshwork of entanglements where nothing – not human bodies or minds, not flowers, not oceans, not waves – can be separated from the processes that make it. Akomolafe writes, then, that there must be a “redescription of the ‘human’ as a ‘becoming,’ not a final product. A doing, not a noun” (112).

These thoughts bring me back to my reading of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass. Her chapter “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” teaches us about the failings of the English language to breathe agency into the material world around us. Our language sticks us in this Cartesian and postmodern concept of the centralized human that arose during the Age of Enlightenment and has engulfed us throughout the unfolding of modernity. While English fails to realize the agency of the world around us, Potawatomi has ancient wisdom about the world embedded into its grammar structure. Kimmerer uses the English word ‘a bay’ and its somewhat equivalent Potawatomi word ‘wiikwegamaa’ to describe the difference between these two languages:

“A bay is a noun only if water is dead. The bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa–to be a bay–releases the water from bondage and lets it live. ‘To be a bay’ holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise–become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land, and even a day, the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the language I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us” (Kimmerer 2013: 55).

Akomolafe and Kimmerer speak to the same notion: that ‘things’ are constantly changing, always becoming, shaped by their agency and by the processes of the world around them. We must learn not to see ‘flower,’ ‘wave,’ ‘ocean,’ or ‘bay,’ but how these ‘things’ in this time came to be in this place. To BE a flower, to BE a wave, to BE an ocean and to BE a bay. This way of looking at the world opens up our minds to see our interconnectivity with the materials around us. How did we come to BE human? How did we come to BE ourselves, the you that is sitting now in the chair reading this post? I am as much shaped by my mother and father as I was by the woods I grew up in, and the microbes that live in my gut.

Next post: how Akomolafe’s writings ask us to treat COVID-19 — concepts of alterity, monstrosity, and more entanglements.

References:
Akomolafe, B. 2017. These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to my Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Kimmerer, R. W. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.

Swahili Tales (1/2)

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The Story of the Rich Man and the Poor Man

There once was a man from a poor family who went looking for a job. A rich man employed him as a pastoralist for his cows. One day, as he was working, a bird came up to him and landed on his shoulder. The bird said, “I have come to help you with your poverty, do you want my help?” The poor man had little to lose, and so he decided to trust the bird. He asked the bird what kind of help he could give, but the bird didn’t answer. Instead, he flew into the sky, and at this moment all of the cows disappeared. The poor man, unsure what to do, went to the rich man and told him that all the cows were mysteriously gone. Upon hearing this, the rich man fired the poor man and evicted him from his land. The poor man was forced to return to the bush, where he once again encountered the bird, who landed on his shoulder and spoke. “From now on you will be a rich man,” the bird said. But the man didn’t understand, he had just lost his job after all, how could he be rich? “Where is this wealth?” he asked the bird. The bird then told the poor man to follow him and flew into the forest, leading the man to where the cows had gone. The bird, landing for the last time on the man’s shoulder told him, “Now you are rich!” The poor man, now turned rich, was shocked at his good fortune and thanked the bird for his help.

Adapted from a story told to me by a man named Bashir during a short research period in Olasiti, Tanzania, 2013. During this time, I interviewed villagers (with the assistance of a Swahili – English translator) about traditional stories as told to them by their parents, grandparents, or other relatives. To be honest, I was not able to hear many stories, as people were often confused by my questions and worried about my intentions. Every few interviews I found a few gems, though, some of which did not translate well, and a couple which I recently found documented in an old notebook. Here is the first of two that I will share with you – next weeks will probably seem a bit more familiar!

Original Swahili:

Hadithi inahusu Tajiri na Masikini
Kuliluwa na mtu mmoja kutoka kwenye familia ya kimasikini. Siku moja alikuenda kutafuta kazi. Akatokea mtu mmoja nakumwajiri kama mfugaji wa mg’ombe wake. Siku moja alipokuwa kazini akatokea ndege mmoja nakutua kwenye bega lake. Ndege huyo alipokuwa kwenya bega lake akamwambia “Nimekuja kukusaidia kutokana na umasinini wako. Je, unataka msaada wangu?” Akachukua maamuzi ya kumwamini ndege. Yule na kumuuliza kitu gani unachotaka ili kunisaidia. Ndege huyo gafla akapaa juu na mifugo yote ikaondoka. Masikini ilibidi kurudi nyumbani kumtaarifu tajiri yake na hapo tajiri yake alichukuwa uamuzu wa kumfukuza. Alipofukuza maskini yule alibidi arudi porini na gafla akakutana na ndege yule. Ndege yule alipomwona yule maskini alimwambia “Kwanzia sasa wew ni taajiri.” Miskini yule alibidi kushanga makumuliza “Je utajiri huwo uko wapi?” Ndege yule alimwambia nifwate. Nasikini yule alipomfwata aliona ile mifugo iliyokimbia gafla ndege akamwambia kwanzia sasa mifungo hii itakuwa ndo utajiri wako. Maskini yule alishangaa nakumshukuru yule ndege.

Neologisms and The Power of Language

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“I have come to understand that although place-words are being lost, they are also being created. Nature is dynamic, and so is language. Loanwords from Chinese, Urdu, Korean, Portuguese and Yiddish are right now being used to describe the landscapes of Britain and Ireland; portmanteaus and neologisms are constantly in manufacture. As I travelled I met new words as well as salvaging old ones: a painter in the Hebrides who used landskein to refer to the braid of blue horizon lines in hill country on a hazy day; a five-year-old girl who concocted honeyfur to describe the soft seeds of grassed held in the fingers” (Macfarlane 2015: 13-14).

Language, like nature and like culture, is part of a vast web. In this web, interconnected signs, indices and symbols interact to create a form of communication unique to our species. In a time where languages are constantly being lost due to processes of globalization, colonialism, environmental degradation, and simply the passing of time, it is important to realize that there are ways to create and honor the dynamic fluidity of language as well. Robert Macfarlane’s book Landmarks celebrates the collision of nature and language, and how these two aspects inform culture in the past, present and future.

The Bureau of Linguistical Reality also acknowledges the power of language. They invite people to create new words (neologisms) that define what it feels like to live in the present day. Change is all around us, with advancements in technology, changing climates, politics, economics, etc., and again, simply the passing of time, and as humans we are sometimes left with feelings that cannot be defined by our current vocabulary. Through the sometimes serious, sometimes playful act of creating new words, creators of the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott, hope to facilitate conversations around climate change and a greater cultural shift taking place in our everyday lives.

References:

Macfarlane, R. 2015. Landmarks. London: Penguin Books.

Maa

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Day 67, 8 – 10 November 2014

There are (at least) two baby goats, one mama dog, four puppies, two children, me and my Maasai mama living in this room. It is dark and hot and smokey. Welcome to the world of the Maasai.

My mama is thirty years old and her name sounds like Melanie but with an N. Nelanie. Communication is near impossible except with gestures, short one-word sentences and laughter. She speaks no Swahili and I speak no Maa. She has three children, and her husband has three other wives (I think). Musa is the youngest (2), then Sirgoit (4) and Langona (10). Today we drank chai, washed dishes, made dinner, and then threw dirt on the roof of the house because of the rain (it being the first rain in awhile).

This house is a sauna that burns your throat and eyes. Some might call it ‘cozy.’ It consists of two wooden beds, a fire pit, and some shelving for pots and pans. The walls are made of thick dark clay and the only light comes from a tiny baseball-sized window and the ever-flaming smokey fire. I sit on my bed as Nelanie cooks chapati soaked in tasty fat. Sirgoit looks at me, his eyes big. He begins to bang on a water canteen, rhythmically, like a drum. I clap my hands on my knees and a big smile spreads across his face. We play simple music together while mama cooks a basic meal with flour, fat, and cooked cabbage. I will never forget Sirgoit’s young smile. He never once speaks to me, but his smile, laughter, and curious eyes are enough to know that he cares, and that through this strange experience we are connected.

Language learning is an important part of the anthropological process. Many languages, especially smaller or threatened languages, cannot be learned beforehand in classes or online, but must be learned simply through immersion.

I have had the amazing experience of being immersed in many different languages, some of them common, like Spanish, French, and Swahili, and some of the uncommon, like Marquesan and Maa. Above is an example of anthropological field notes and language jottings for your enjoyment and curiosity.