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2023-2024 Common Read - Braiding Sweetgrass: Learning the Grammar of Animacy

"If a maple is an it, we can take up the chainsaw. If a maple is a her, we think twice." p. 57

White-breasted nuthatch in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Keywords

Animacy: attribution of conscious life to objects in and phenomena of nature or to inanimate objects. (MW)

Anthropomorphism: an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics. (MW)

Exploitation: make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage. (MW)

Lexicon: the vocabulary of a language, an individual speaker or group of speakers, or a subject. (MW)

Syntax: the set of rules and principles in a language according to which words, phrases, and clauses are arranged to create well-formed sentences. (OED)

Talisman: an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. (MW)

Additional Resources

Native American Language Loss

Native American language loss over time

The Language Conservancy 

Contact

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