Democracy of Species

I shit you not when I tell you this has become my Bible. My sacred text. I'm so moved. Dare I say spiritually shook.

This is a collection of 3 essays that show different ways in which indigenous language, knowledge, and wisdom allow humans to form a gratitude-, reciprocity-based relationship to the more-than-human. The author is a scientist herself and, while acknowledging the scientific language as a helpful tool, urges us to interact with the world in this intuitive way that we experience when truly immersed in nature. Urges us to see nature not as "it" but as a complex web of life buzzing with wisdom that must be respected and honored. Urges us to take mindfully, and to find the ways in which we can give back.

Honestly I find it hard to put into words how beautiful this worldview is, how much it spoke to me, how I want to embody this, spread the word (truly I sound like a convert!!). Like this book features the rules of the Honorable Harvest and I swear this will become my Our Father. As a secular late-stage capitalism girlie I feel like this is the kind of stories and narratives of the world that fill my spirit with meaning, gives me a sense of communion and belonging, inspire me, give me direction. This truly IS my Bible, fight me!!!!!!

Penguin's 'Green Ideas' series is a new publication of twenty short books each written by an eminent environmental thinker and focusing on different aspects of our planet's environmental crisis. I am grateful to Penguin for sending me review copies of five of these works and, on the strength of what I have read so far, I look forward to completing the set myself.

Robin Wall Kimmerer's contribution to Penguin's Green Ideas series is her essay The Democracy of Species which, as I began to read it, I realised was already familiar to me. It is one of the chapters in her incredible book, Braiding Sweetgrass. If you haven't already read that tome then this little excerpt is an excellent introduction to Kimmerer's ideas and ways of viewing human relationships with the natural world. She focuses on how our language determines our attitude to the world around us, particularly contrasting the callousness of English against the inclusivity of her ancestral Native American language, Potawatomi. She also discusses the idea of the Honorable Harvest, a concept alien to Western thinking, in which one only takes as much as is needed rather than taking everything and then being surprised when nothing is left. In a week when the IPCC report declared Code Red for humanity almost entirely because of our voracious overconsumption of Earth's resources, The Democracy Of Species is a vitally important little book that everyone needs to read and act upon.