Entrance Slip: October 21

 I read the excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass and was deeply moved by this chapter. Beyond just the generally beautiful concept of the grammar of animacy, I really appreciated her insight into Indigenous ways of knowing and being. I think it has had the most profound effect on me in years in terms of my own relationship to Indigenous culture and the idea of assimilation. The stories of the elders who speak Potawomi fluently were very impactful on having me be able to move from sympathy to empathy when it comes to internalizing the horror of residential schools. I will never know what it was like, but hearing stories like this allow me to be deeply reverent for the survivors and cultures that endured that experience.

I think the idea of animacy is an incredible way of observing the world, and something I bring into my writing in poetry or storytelling, which makes sense of why it’s such an integral part of Indigenous language. It reminds me of the idea of personification as a literary tool, even though as Dr. Kimmerer explains, it’s so much more than having the tree or rock be a person, it’s about allowing them to live as a rock or a tree, and justifying their right to life through that body. 

I think it is incredible powerful to use these tools to help students breathe literal life into science. It’s not just about like charges attracting like charges in magnetism. I can see how having my students be able to describe behaviour in the context of living could be very impactful for their understanding of a concept. I am excited to share this approach and this idea of care for our environment around us as we stop thinking of ourselves as separate from nature. I would also love to learn more terms like “puhpowee” in order to explain other concepts to my students and have them see how there are tools beyond the English language to help them visualize or describe subtle works of the world! I think it would be a great way to also involve the different cultures from students and have them embrace their own languages or other languages in terms of science. For example, I could have students research words in other languages to describe questions or phenomena they’re curious about. It’s fascinating how even though it’s not common in English, I understood immediately the feeling behind “being” a Saturday.