Who is this? Not “what”, but “who”… Our language shapes our perception and contributes to patterns of behavior. The way we regard the living world is inseparable from our treatment of the living world. This plant we call Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis) is a living being, with agency, integrity, and consciousness… potentially quite different from our own, but no less valid or real.
Taking my cues from my teachers and Indigenous and Earth-Reverent Peoples around the globe I attempt to honor and acknowledge the being-hood of, and our kinship with, plants, animals, fungi, (and beyond) with carefully chosen words. You will hear us refer to our more-than-human relatives as “she”, “he”, or “they”, avoiding wherever possible the objectifying “it”.
Objectification is, after all, a necessary aspect of exploitation, and it is our dominant culture’s view of nature as “stuff” which allows for the extraction, abuse, and defilement that has defined the last 500-2,000 years. Reanimating the living world, shifting our collective world-view, and restoring our bonds of kinship and reverence, will not be as simple as the pronouns we choose. But we believe it has value, and is an important piece of a larger shift the Earth is crying out for.