Reflections on Issue Nineteen
Terrain of Language
I’m pleased you found The Understory—my biweekly essays with critical perspectives on the climate emergency. If you’re here for the first time, hello! Enter your email below to get issues to your inbox, free.
Thank you to everyone who had a chance to read Issue Nineteen over the past week. For those who have yet to read it, the reflections from other readers below may be a good starting point, or you can read “Terrain of Language” first.
The Understory reflections between issues are intended to share thoughtful comments from subscribers that expand upon and challenge parts of the previous issue. I am immensely grateful for the comments added this week, and hope they provide further value in thinking about how our precise use of language can conscientiously create interconnection between humans and the more-than-human world which we so greatly need in our current moment.
As Shared by Peter Tavernise
“A key question is how we get folks, especially when they are young, out into nature to begin to help them appreciate and care for it. I love the recapturing and invocations of the collaborations (the moth-paintings and moths), yet we also need that people simply be outside in nature to experience it *as* themselves.”
What Peter evokes is that no book, regardless of its beauty and eloquence, can replace physical, sensuous experiences in and with the natural world. The Lost Words enchants parts of the Oxford Junior Dictionary omitted due to the perceived shift in the fabric of the “consensus experience of modern childhood.” For many of us, we would not choose to replace natural landscapes with technoscapes. But, as Macfarlane astutely points out, language powerfully directs human attention towards something and by proxy away from something else. And if we are honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that our attention is continually being directed towards consumption. A disproportionate amount of the language children and adults are exposed to in daily life is carefully and loudly constructed to manipulate attention. It is only when nature can be sold back to us in the form of holidays or bespoke experiences that we see the power of language conveying the importance of these experiences in the natural world for our well-being.
By reclaiming at least some of the attention for ourselves and our children, we can begin to shift our gaze back towards the very relationships that most sustain us. As David Abrams suggests, we need to first feel those connections to the natural world before we can begin to taste them.
“I know you're reading Tyson Yunkaporta, who says succinctly, ‘You want to know what your purpose is? I'll tell you, it's simple, to take care of the land.’ You elucidate the quality and character of that care clearly in the resources you've shared. It is a co-creative activity in the Creation that is ongoing, eternally present. If we can meet that with the depth of gratitude and reciprocity it calls us to, much will solve itself.
The saying and singing of the landscape is right there in the word: "en-chant-ing"
From this interview with Tyson Yunkaporta on the Jim Rutt Show:
Jim: ‘you talk about the fact that humans, at least at the moment are the custodial species for the earth. Tell us about that, and what does that mean?’
Tyson: ‘Yeah. Well, that comes out a lot of our old stories from all over. It’s our purpose for being here. Our emergence in this system has been because the system had need of a custodial species for its long longevity, but also to maintain increase within the system. So increase as opposed to growth. So not growing in the size of the system, but increasing the relatedness within the system, all of the connectivity, those infinite combinatorials, we’re supposed to oversee that. And about everything we do is supposed to work in with that, our culture, everything else, it’s not supposed to be something that’s separate from nature. There isn’t even supposed to be a separate concept for nature because we are nature. We occupy a very important ecological niche. It’s not an apex niche or anything like that either.’”
Peter and I have both been immersing ourselves in the writing and worldview of Yunkaporta through his book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, and some of the recent interviews he has given. Our role to be both custodians of the land and bring forward its continuous creation is not something delimited to volunteer days of shoreline clean up (but those are important too). This responsibility is much deeper and more pervasive. For those who live this responsibility daily, there is an existential understanding. They are simultaneously bringing the world into being and caring for the planet’s longevity.
Many of us are investing in learning how to be a custodial species, which in many ways entails unlearning the worldviews that we were raised with, particularly around the notions of growth that Yunkaporta shares. He flips the notion of growth on its head with the goal of “increase.” If we see our goal as to increase relatedness within everything, it provides a radically different framework for approaching that custodianship.
I am grateful that provincial and federal levels of government in Canada are also awakening to this realization. The investment in the Indigenous Guardian program is one part of that realization.
“Tyson: ‘We have a very important ecological niche. We’re supposed to be in this habitat, and anywhere where we’re not there, you might think of it as untouched wilderness, but that place will be dying because it needs us there. Those trees have evolved over a long time to even just need our urine. If you’re not pissing on the ground in those places, those plants will be suffering over time and you’ll see dieback in places, and wonder why is there a dieback happening there? And I’m looking at it and thinking, well, that needs a couple of decades of people pissing on those trees to make that place work again. And to be bringing shellfish and things up from the coast and sitting down and camping there because, those the things that are coming in from there. That environment is depending on us bringing those things into it just in our cultural practice, taking fish from the river and eating it there. I guess the same way with the bears and the salmon, those forests need those salmon there and the bears eating the salmon off in the trees because the trees have come to depend on what’s coming out of the salmon.’
And to prove his point, this article talks precisely about the Salmon, and what they bring upstream to feed the forest, and thus the bears and moose.”
The notion of landscapes and the myriad species that inhabit it needing human beings is inspiring and in many ways counter to the historical environmentalist narrative that was trying to escape our anthropocentric importance. But, as Yunkaporta shares, we are not a species apart from nature, because “there isn’t even supposed to be a separate concept for nature.” So if we can accept the relationality that the Aboriginal Australian worldview provides, it opens up a different sense of responsibility and even meaning in our lives.
Given that Beth O’Brien also shared a comment on Issue Nineteen, I think this is a perfect opportunity to bring in Viktor Frankel and his writing from Man’s Search for Meaning (Beth is a logotherapist):
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.”
If we acknowledge what the more-than-human world is asking of us humans, we can answer with our own lives of being responsible custodians of it. And in this pursuit, we will find the vast meaning that so many of us search for in our lives.
“Returning to your thesis, we do clearly need to be the caretakers and become those who can love, serve, preserve and enrich the land. I want to live in such a culture.”
See Peter’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his
As Shared by Anne-Marie Brest
“As I open to the chapter titled "REFRAME” of the book ALL WE CAN SAVE, a compilation of essays by women at the forefront of the climate crisis, to prepare for my book circle, I notice the illustration for that chapter by Madeleine Jubilee Saito with the inscription: "The problem of the climate crisis is a failure of language. The right word would be as long as the lives of my grandchildren and their grandchildren".
And here you are, talking about the Songlines and walkabouts of the Aboriginal Australians. And what comes to mind is that the Songlines are indeed as long as (and actually much longer than) "the lives of the grandchildren and their grandchildren" and that, as you so well explain, by losing our Songlines, we have lost ourselves and our land has become dead. The silver lining is that it's not too late to start singing a new world into being.
p.s. I also really enjoyed the extract of the interview of Arkady by Chatwin and it reminded me of the Buddhist notion of emptiness, especially of emptiness of time. Fascinating.”
Thank you Anne-Marie for continuing to expand my understanding of Buddhist practices and teachings (amongst many other things). It seems the concept of emptiness centres on attention. It does not mean an experience is empty, but rather we must approach it as empty so as not to have our attention pulled away from direct experience. In this comparison, I became aware of the common thread of “attention” spanning so many sections of Issue Nineteen and The Understory more generally. We are carefully learning how to be disciplined in our attention, such that we approach our way of being to be responsive situationally. Your insights into the parallels between the Buddhist notion of emptiness and singing the Songlines/being in Dreamtime brings another layer of complexity to how we consider being in broader relationship.
See Anne-Marie’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to hers
As Shared by Mitch Taylor
“It is so very refreshing to read this issue and reflect on how the language we use in our day to day urban lives has changed so dramatically from the simple everyday agrarian vocabulary we grew up with on the Canadian prairies in the 1950s. Virtually every conversation concerned grains, vegetables, weeds, flowers, shrubs, trees, and the anticipated effects of rain, fog, snow, cloud cover, or frost on our growing plants, coupled always with the uncertainties of receiving the correct balance of life-giving sunshine. Everyone opined on the effects of temperature, wind, rain, insects or birds, of storms, cyclones, blizzards. Those types of conversations consumed most of our verbal interactions with others but also filled most people's minds in quiet times too. Definitely a farmer was a vital component of the natural order or life, and most of us have lost that connection completely.
That distinct vocabulary that defined and informed the relationship of humans with nature is nearly all gone now. Weather today is mostly reduced to a discussion of what we will wear to deal with it, the food in the supermarket is available regardless of sun, rain, heat, or cold.
Your articulate article is an excellent reminder that we can still reconnect with the rhythm of the natural world just by our thoughts, the words we use, and those reflections could lead us to reflection, re-involvement and climate action.”
Given that both my in-laws grew up on farms in the agrarian communities of southern Manitoba, I’ve had the chance to learn through their lived experiences. I suspect that the conversations Mitch mentions shared both a fondness for all the living systems that the farmers were in relationship with, as well as countered by hostility for the many challenges in livelihoods created by those dependencies. One of the conversations we continue to return to is the chemical exposure of their childhoods due to widespread use on nearly every farm in their community. These chemicals promised a degree of control and certainty in a relationship that would seem all but entirely uncertain. I suspect alongside the words such as weeds, insects, and storms were the chemical brand names of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides that were their countermeasures.
To be in relationship with the more-than-human world is to be vulnerable to it. Yes, we are dependent on the creation process of agriculture for our food, but our inherent vulnerabilities are minimal as Mitch identifies. The language of relationality with the more-than-human world is nuanced as Robert Macfarlane wrote, “landscape offer us experiences of great grace and beauty, but also despair, hard labour and death.” To speak the language of landscapes is to also be vulnerable to their myriad effects.
See Mitch’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his
As Shared by Beth O’Brien
“Yet another wonderful soulful insight into the relationship between the natural environment and the people who live within it. Of course I am attracted to your words on the First Nation people of Australia, as I am Australian. Their rich relationship with the environment spanning over 60,000 years can teach us a great deal. How is it that the mutualism of their dual relationship with the environment has been spoiled by the other inhabitants of Australia, who over only 250 years have changed that relationship into a one way symbiotic gain, where the environment has not received the care needed? Of course the First Nation's people are and have been very concerned that their caretaking that has been of the highest level is not considered and applauded, and that the environment is at peril.
When you speak about Songlines, I can't help but think of the Songline that is mirrored in the massive highway across the Nullarbor plain from Perth to Adelaide, being accurately replicated to the Songline. The walking routes so carefully majestic in their understanding of place, astrology and geography, and then so beautifully spoken and song, and sometimes drawn and written into the being of every generation, and so soulfully passed down to family. An Aboriginal Elder told me that we don't own the land, "it owns us". In those 3 simple words she enunciated the fullness of an important part of their cultural beliefs. In the movie called “Australia” with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, you can see the Elder man calling home the lost boy. Not the greatest movie but it does mention Songlines.”
As I have never been to Australia, I feel fortunate that Beth shared her experience of living there and being brought up in its culture. In learning about the Songlines, I was captivated that they spanned the entirety of Australia—meaning they also sit underneath the man-made environments that have been constructed atop of them. So while I am not surprised that the highway runs along one of the Songlines, it is dispiriting to learn about the highway from our colonial mindset. The 1,660 kilometre stretch of highway Beth refers to is known as the Eyre Highway. It was named by the Western Australian Nomenclature Advisory Committee in 1943 after the explorer Edward John Eyre, who was purportedly the first European to cross the Nullarbor by land in 1840–1841. Of course, Eyre was accompanied by an Aboriginal (Wylie) who helped him navigate the landscape. While this was a discovery for Eyre, undoubtedly they were traversing the Songlines that could be traced back to Wylie’s Ancestors dating back over 55,000 years. In the extensive description of the Eyre Highway on Wikipedia, there is not a single mention of Songlines nor any acknowledged lineage of the route existing before Eyre was guided on the journey.
“One of the many elements I admire of our First Nation people is their true existential nature and understanding of their place and purpose in the story of life. They don't mention time, as a man-made construct, but they do value ancestors and descendants, and being in the present moment.
When I worked at a university I looked after the marketing and events of a social science faculty. Amongst that faculty was the School of Anthropology. Two of the professors of Anthropology had worked for years with some indigenous communities at the top of Australia, as the local mobs mapped out the stories, the water holes, the food resources, the sacred places, the safe from the weather places, and the resting places. The map was an atlas of all that information, written and illustrated. it was one of the most beautiful artworks I had ever seen. The atlas was replicated by the State Library, as the original was to return to its home. I had the task to collect from the airport two Elders who would speak to the media and academic staff and students about the Atlas before they took it home. In the journey from the airport to the campus, I lost my directions a bit. I pulled over to look up the street directory and re-navigate my route. They both laughed hard at me, and said, "you don't even know your own land". They asked me if I wished them to call my grandmother so she could "sing" me home. What a wonderful time I had hosting those women.
Even though I was brought up in a non-indigenous home, I think my parents had an inkling about the power of nature. My mother always made me hang out the washing in bare feet to make a daily connection to the earth. My father who taught me to swim believed that learning to float was important for safety, but it also had a spiritual connection to the environment. As you lay flat in the water he used to say "are you in communication with the water or the sky?" always made me/ still does make me really deeply think about that connection.”
Macfarlane shared “skying” in Landmarks, which has since become a word I’ve come to use and really enjoy. It also validates the importance of aimlessly looking up at the sky. If we have a word for it, the very act is justified as important, right?
In researching Issue Nineteen, I felt as though I needed to see some of these representations of the Songlines. Reading about them created a curiosity to seek out maps and atlases—our visual guides to colonization. At some point in The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram talks about the care we need to take around the visible representations of mystery which were intended to be invisible and hence unknowable. Yunkaporta includes illustrations to start each chapter of Sand Talk, while also being deliberate about what it is his place to share. Alas, I decided these visualizations of the Songlines were not mine to share, as I do not truly know them. But I do know the sky, and will leave a picture of it here to encourage everyone to go skying.
See Beth’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to hers
I hope this week between issues provides the space for further discovery and reflection. Go forth and make a difference in the week ahead. See you next Saturday with Issue Twenty.
Adam
If you liked this Issue, please subscribe. The Understory is free and will come to your inbox weekly.
Why I Write The Understory
We have crossed the climate-change threshold from emerging to urgent, which demands a transformative response. The scale of the issue demands not only continuous focus but also the courage to take bold action. I've found that a persistence of climate consciousness improves resilience to the noise and distractions of daily life in service of a bigger (and most of the time invisible) long-term cause.
The Understory is my way of organizing the natural and human-made curiosities that capture my attention. Within the words, research, and actions of others lies the inspiration for personal and organizational journeys. I hope that my work here will help to inform not just my persistent consciousness, but yours as well.
The richness of these conversations, and the interweaving threads, continues to grow, much like the understory of the forest for which it is named! Thank you again for all you do.
Thanks to Robert for sharing the "Skying" reference.