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Nature is speaking mountain

Are you? How would we react if Nature had a voice and told us just how it felt about the way we were treating it? What if through our thoughtlessness and carelessness we not only hurt Nature emotionally and physically, but also made Nature resent us? Conservation International has given a voice to Nature; which allows us to hear and see what Nature would say to us if it could.


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WATCH RELATED VIDEO: Nature Is Speaking – Lupita Nyong'o is Flower - Conservation International (CI)

Speaking English, gardening and enjoying nature with our family in beautiful Abiada, northern Spain


Don't have an account? Sign up. Sign up or log in to save your favorite stories and lessons, create custom collections, and share with others. A cemetery seemed an odd place to contemplate the boundaries of being. Sandwiched between the campus and the interstate, this old burial ground is our cherished slice of nearby nature where the long dead are silent companions to college students wandering the hilly paths beneath rewilding oaks.

The engraved names on overgrown headstones are upholstered in moss and crows congregate in the bare branches of an old beech, which is also carved with names. Reading the messages of a graveyard you understand the deep human longing for the enduring respect that comes with personhood.

You are. He was. Tiptoeing in her mud boots, Caroline skirts around a crumbling family plot to veer into the barberry hedge where a plastic bag is caught in the thorns. We have a special grammar for personhood. We use instead a special grammar for humans: we distinguish them with the use of he or she, a grammar of personhood for both living and dead Homo sapiens. As a botany professor, I am as interested in the pale-green lichens slowly dissolving the words on the gravestones as in the almost-forgotten names, and the students, too, look past the stones for inky cap mushrooms in the grass or a glimpse of an urban fox.

She has collected their assignment, a written reflection on a cemetery walk last week, as baseline data. New to them, perhaps, but in fact ancient—the grammar of animacy.

For me, this story began in another classroom, in another century, at the Carlisle Indian School where my Potawatomi grandfather was taken as a small boy. My chance of knowing my native language and your chance of ever hearing it were stolen in the Indian boarding schools where native children were forbidden to speak their own language. Within the walls of that school, the clipped syllables of English replaced the lush Potawatomi sounds of water splashing on rocks and wind in the trees, a language that emerged from the lands of the Great Lakes.

Our language hovers at the edge of extinction, an endangered species of knowledge and wisdom dwindling away with the loss of every elder. So, bit by bit, I have been trying to learn my lost language.

My house is spangled with Post-it notes labeling wiisgaak, gokpenagen, and ishkodenhs. There are words for states of being that have no equivalent in English. The language that my grandfather was forbidden to speak is composed primarily of verbs, ways to describe the vital beingness of the world. Both nouns and verbs come in two forms, the animate and the inanimate. You hear a blue jay with a different verb than you hear an airplane, distinguishing that which possesses the quality of life from that which is merely an object.

Birds, bugs, and berries are spoken of with the same respectful grammar as humans are, as if we were all members of the same family. Because we are. There is no it for nature. I greet the silent boulder people with the same respect as I do the talkative chickadees. The language we speak is an affront to the ears of the colonist in every way, because it is a language that challenges the fundamental tenets of Western thinking—that humans alone are possessed of rights and all the rest of the living world exists for human use.

Those whom my ancestors called relatives were renamed natural resources. In contrast to verb-based Potawatomi, the English language is made up primarily of nouns, somehow appropriate for a culture so obsessed with things. At the same time that the language of the land was being suppressed, the land itself was being converted from the communal responsibility of native people to the private property of settlers, in a one-two punch of colonization.

Replacing the aboriginal idea of land as a revered living being with the colonial understanding of land as a warehouse of natural resources was essential to Manifest Destiny, so languages that told a different story were an enemy. Indigenous languages and thought were as much an impediment to land-taking as were the vast herds of buffalo, and so were likewise targeted for extermination. Linguistic imperialism has always been a tool of colonization, meant to obliterate history and the visibility of the people who were displaced along with their languages.

But five hundred years later, in a renamed landscape, it has become a nearly invisible tool. Beyond the renaming of places, I think the most profound act of linguistic imperialism was the replacement of a language of animacy with one of objectification of nature, which renders the beloved land as lifeless object, the forest as board feet of timber.

Because we speak and live with this language every day, our minds have also been colonized by this notion that the nonhuman living world and the world of inanimate objects have equal status. Bulldozers, buttons, berries, and butterflies are all referred to as it, as things, whether they are inanimate industrial products or living beings.

English has come to be the dominant language of commerce, in which contracts to convert a forest to a copper mine are written.

But I wonder if it was always that way. It is said that we are known by the company we keep, and I wonder if English sharpened its verbal ax and lost the companionship of oaks and primroses when it began to keep company with capitalism.

I want to suggest that we can begin to mend that rift—with pronouns. As a reluctant student of the formalities of writing, I never would have imagined that I would one day be advocating for grammar as a tool of the revolution. Some of the students in the cemetery have read the chapter in my book Braiding Sweetgrass that invokes the grammar of animacy. They are taken aback by the implicit assumption of the hierarchy of being on which English grammar is built, something they had not considered before.

They dive headfirst into the philosophical implications of English-language pronouns. Words make worlds. Nor does a language of animacy dictate that its speakers will behave with respect toward nonhumans. After all, there are leaders of indigenous nations, raised speaking a grammar of animacy, who willingly surrender their homelands to the use of mining or timber companies.

And the Russian language, while embracing animacy in its structure, has not exactly led to a flowering of sustainability there. The relationship between the structure of a language and the behavior characteristic of a culture, is not a causal one, but many linguists and psychologists agree that language reveals unconscious cultural assumptions and exerts some influence over patterns of thought.

I grew up on a farm and we called all of our animals it, but we took great care of them. In contrast, indigenous philosophy recognizes other beings as our relatives, including the ones we intend to eat.

Sadly, since we cannot photosynthesize, we humans must take other lives in order to live. We have no choice but to consume, but we can choose to consume a plant or animal in a way that honors the life that is given and the life that flourishes as a consequence. Instead of avoiding ethical jeopardy by creating distance, we can embrace and reconcile that tension.

We can acknowledge food plants and animals as fellow beings and through sophisticated practices of reciprocity demonstrate respect for the sacred exchange of life among relatives. The students we walk with in the cemetery are primarily environmental scientists in training.

The practice of it -ing everything in nature is not only prevalent, but is required in scientific writing. I have had the privilege of spending my life kneeling before plants. As a plant scientist, sometimes I am collecting data.

As an indigenous plant woman, sometimes I am gathering medicine. These two roles offer a sharp contrast in ways of thinking, but I am always in awe, and always in relationship.

In both cases the plants provide for me, teach me, and inspire me. Scientific writing prefers passive voice to subject pronouns of any kind. And yet its technical language, which is designed to be highly accurate, obscures the greater truth.

Yet English grammar demands that I refer to my esteemed healer as it, not as a respected teacher, as all plants are understood to be in Potawatomi. That has always made me uncomfortable. I want a word for beingness. Can we unlearn the language of objectification and throw off colonized thought? Can we make a new world with new words? There was one that kept rising through my musings.

So I sought the counsel of my elder and language guide, Stewart King, and explained my purpose in seeking a word to instill animacy in English grammar, to heal disrespect.

So I asked him if there was a word in our language that captured the simple but miraculous state of just being. And of course there is. However, those beautiful syllables would not slide easily into English to take the place of the pronoun it.

But I wondered about that first sound, the one that came to me as I walked over the land. Ki to signify a being of the living earth. Not he or she, but ki. Kin are ripening in the fields; kin are nesting under the eaves; kin are flying south for the winter, come back soon.

Our words can be an antidote to human exceptionalism, to unthinking exploitation, an antidote to loneliness, an opening to kinship. If words can make the world, can these two little sounds call back the grammar of animacy that was scrubbed from the mouths of children at Carlisle?

I have no illusions that we can suddenly change language and, with it, our worldview, but in fact English evolves all the time. Ki is a parallel spelling of chi —the word for the inherent life energy that flows through all things. Could ki be a key to unlocking a new way of thinking, or remembering an ancient one? But these responses are from nature writers, artists, teachers, and philosophers; I want to know how young people, the language makers among us, react. Our little environmental college is dominated by tree huggers, so if there were ever an audience open to ki, they would be it.

With ki and kin rattling around in their heads, the students walk together in the cemetery again, playing with using the words and seeing how they feel on their tongues and in their heads. Is there a possessive case? Where are the boundaries? As we stand beneath the stoutly branched oak, the students debate how to use the words. If the tree is ki, what about the acorns? They agree that the acorns are kin, a whole family of little beings.

The ground is also littered, in this unkempt portion of the cemetery, with fallen branches. But when I thought of that tree as ki, as a being, I suddenly saw how preposterous that was.

The tree did. I only picked it up from the ground.


Speaking & Presenting

Rather than performing plays, Word for Word performs short works of fiction, verbatim. Plants, animals, arachnids and the landscape itself come alive as their spirits speak. Coordinating this creative venture, Word for Word director Nancy Shelby has great love and respect for Sarris and his work. He moved back to the Bay Area and lives on Sonoma Mountain. He did a fundraiser for us at his house.

The voices that help Nature to speak are the voices we know very well from Julia Roberts, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Edward Norton, Penelope.

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Sandra is known for gathering the global spiritual community together to perform powerful and transformative ceremonies as well as inspires us to stand strong in unity as we do our own spiritual and social activism work while keeping a vision of hope and being a light in the world. She is passionate about helping people to reconnect with nature. Sandra also created The Transmutation App that alerts us to observe what we are thinking about right now and how to change our thoughts that feed ourselves, all of life, and the planet with love. Sandra Ingerman is one of the most highly regarded teachers of shamanism today. She has been teaching and practicing shamanism for 40 years. Sandra teaches workshops internationally on shamanic journeying, healing, and reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods. She has trained and founded an international alliance of Medicine for the Earth teachers and shamanic teachers. Sandra is recognized for bridging ancient cross cultural healing methods into our modern culture addressing the needs of our times.

New Conservation International Video Series – Nature is Speaking

nature is speaking mountain

Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Your chances of encountering a mountain lion are small. If at any time you spot a mountain lion, report the sighting or encounter to your local forest ranger station or visitor center as soon as possible. Remember: You are responsible for your safety and for the safety of those around you.

Even as we lean on nature as a source of healing during the COVID crisis, environmental protections are being rolled back as never before.

#TBT: You Should Listen to What Mother Nature Has to Say


Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Climate change is leading to widespread elevational shifts thought to increase species extinction risk in mountains. Consequently, upslope range shifts generally resulted in modeled species at lower elevations expanding into areas of lower human pressure and, due to complex topography, encountering more intact land area relative to their starting position.

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Part of that is sharing an immediate concern and recognition of the alarming situation of our natural world today with global warming, climate change, the tragic loss of biodiversity, and their effects on us all. With so many species on the brink of disappearing forever, we find ourselves immersed in the Sixth Mass Extinction Event. This one not caused by a rogue asteroid or massive volcanic eruptions, but rather by us — humans. Caused by us, it is our problem and therefore only up to us to solve it. For ourselves and for the future. Please feel free to share this page with family and friends to help spread the message.

Apr 14, - “I am nature's oldest temple.” Lee Pace stars Nature Is Speaking's “Mountain”.

#11. Nature Is Speaking: Lee Pace is Mountain

Mountains rise all over the world, including the oceans. They usually have steep, sloping sides and sharp or rounded ridges, and a high point, called a peak or summit. Most geologists classify a mountain as a landform that rises at least 1, feet meters or more above its surrounding area. A mountain range is a series or chain of mountains that are close together.

Indigenous Communities


People who give to Nature and Culture believe that indigenous communities are a critical component of conservation. They are guardians of the forests they have lived in for thousands of years. Over the past 20 years, Nature and Culture has worked with more than 30 indigenous communities who are all deeply committed to the protection of their land. We provide extensive technical and legal support that help them attain their goal of protecting their extraordinary ancestral homelands.

They are sending humans a message that concerns us all. Are you curious what that is?

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill.

These toads mostly occur in sandy coastal lowlands but also venture into valleys and onto mountain slopes. They spend most of their time away from water, even venturing into suburban gardens, but are seldom found more than a few kilometres from their breeding habitat in generally permanent water bodies. These water bodies include sluggish rivers, lakes, vleis, pans and dams.




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  1. Hanomtano

    from the very beginning it was clear how it would end

  2. Dagar

    Where can I find out more about this?