Wannabe Animist
Canebreak Rattler and the Myth of Human Supremacy
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I’m not sure when I first learned the word "animist,” but now I see it all over the internet circles I travel through/within. It’s gaining traction alongside terms like "ancestor/s” "grief” "decolonization” and "neo-liberal capitalism.” If New York magazine is hip enough to post a side piece on how "anti-capitalist” and "eat the rich” are the latest descriptors on Tinder dating profiles, then eventually, I suspect they’ll be writing about animism too. But what exactly is animism, and since it’s one of the supposed themes of this newsletter project, it seems I better try to articulate it.
Eytmology online describes it as:
"attribution of living souls to inanimate objects," 1866, reintroduced by English anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Taylor (1832-1917), who defined it (1871) as the "theory of the universal animation of nature," from Latin anima "life, breath, soul" (from PIE root *ane- "to breathe") + -ism.”
Thus, animism translates to the practice of breathing.
Wikipedia defines it as:
From Brittanica online- "animism, belief in innumerable spiritual beings concerned with human affairs and capable of helping or harming human interests.” While, unsurprisingly writer Hope Bolinger on Christianity.com, warns readers of animism’s dangers, "If we engage in animistic practices, not only do we disregard God’s power, but we also play with fire.” Oh the fun of a good internet search!
Most, if not, all indigenous world views could be considered animistic. And though our English lens/understanding of those views typically translates indigenous ways as metaphorical i.e. that River isn’t really alive, Willow Tree isn’t truly speaking here, I don’t think that is fair or accurate. Besides, there is a growing body of evidence that tells us, yes, actually Trees do communicate (mycorrhizal network anyone?), Rivers are sentient, Bears feel pain. I often think about this passage from one of my favorite books, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, where the medicine man, Ku’oosh first meets Tayo, for the first time. Tayo is home after a stint fighing in Vietman. Tayo’s relatives have sent him, against his reservations, to the medicine man, hoping Ku’oosh can re-member Tayo, make him “whole” again. Ku’oosh, has this to say regarding the white people who have taken over their lands:
He laughed. "They don't understand. We know these hills, and we are comfortable here." There was something about the way the old man said the word "comfortable." It had a different meaning-not the comfort of big houses or rich food or even clean streets, but the comfort of belonging with the land, and the peace of being with these hills.
I don’t know why exactly, but when I first read this section I burst into tears. Silko tells a damn good story, but also writes in ways where her words conjure things- you can almost miss strange details that transport you to the world and way Ku’oosh views/sees/hears things— the beautiful strange magic of the stacks of phone books, the hand packed earthen walls of his hogan, if you are not open to them, the comfort of belonging with the land he names. Once, a passage from this book was read out loud to me and the smokey scent being describe in the book filled the room I was in.
I don’t know about you but most of the white people I know do not exude a “peace of being with these hills.” Most modern people regardless of race, do not exude a “peace of being” with any hill, stream or mountain, field, forest, or valley. Though folks who live on land, and those who’ve inhabited places for longer than most (Activist Grace Lee Boggs being quoted as saying “the most radical thing I ever did was to stay put” comes to mind), certainly exude more peace than most. It seems to be me to be at peace with hills, to belong somewhere has to do with relationship, and also an understanding of who and what each being needs to be well, in spite of and especially so when it frightens us, or bothers us. Yes it frightens me knowing one of the native snakes to my home state of South Carolina is Timber Rattlesnake (widely considered to be the most venomous snakes of all snakes in the United States), also known as Canebreak Rattler (which disturbingly, is also the name of a popular semi-automatic pistol) and so every time I walk the pine forests or fields at my parents country home, I am ever so alert to the potential of running into one, though my father, an avid birder who’s been all over the state and the country, says he’s only seen one once in SC, killed and left by the side of the road- so many snakes killed by hit and runs. Yet, I also want Timber Rattler to be well, because I have a vague understanding that their health is somehow related to my own health and the health of others I love. Which also means, if I claim to care about this being, it behooves me to learn about them, to assume the associated risks when traversing in Timber Rattler’s home turf- this kind of thinking to me is what I understand an animistic world view to encompass. Now, of course, rattlesnakes of all kinds are persecuted because most of us are not taught about their habits, where they live, how to interact with them, and especially how incredibly rare a bite from a venomous snake really is; your odds of dying by a rattlesnake bite, or bite by any other venomous snake is so low it doesn’t even come up on a national database from the National Safety Council that compares odds of dying- your odds of dying by suicide, sunstroke, wasp sting, accidental opiod overdose, car crash or COVID19 are all far greater. Because really, how many of us spend enough time out of doors to encounter a venomous. In a Newsweek story from 2019 about another venomous snake common to the Eastern United states, the Northern Copperhead, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission was quoted as saying "Snakes have biological needs such as food and cover that must be met for them to remain in a location. If those needs are not met, they move on. When people choose to locate a home or camp in the woods or wilderness, snakes come with the territory. Increased awareness... usually leads to a new appreciation of them and their part in our world.”
Most people don’t know the name of the tree growing outside their window, much less ponder over how the pace of industrialization is impacting the fate of venomous snakes. How many parents think to engage their children with respect of the outside world by at the very least, speaking to them as I have raised my children to do, and also pointing out some of the dangers in a way that conveys some of those beings, the very least deserve to just do there thing- Rose’s thorn, Nettle’s sting, Pond’s depths, Cat’s claws. Now, my 2 year old says “Hello” to Cedar, Spruce, Owl, Frog, Eagle and many more we share our days with. She is learning not to rush at Birds she is excited to meet, to be mindful of edges between land and water, to pet gently Birdie dog and Sister dog, to resist pulling Cat’s tail. When we don’t engage in simple practices whereby we remember that our More than Human Kin* also share this world with us- the undomesticated ones in particular, it becomes all too easy to blame humans for the way things are. But not all humans are responsible for the current heartbreaking pace of climate destruction. It’s our world views, industrialization, and out of that an impoverished spirit more than anything. I am not a misanthrope though. If animism and indigenous stewardship and permaculture have taught me anything it is that plants and animals can benefit from humans just as much as we benefit from them. Such world views encompass humans who know their order of things, and aren’t living with a world view of "might equals right.”
The myth of human supremacy is one of the biggest ontological challenges modern humans face- and most of them don’t even know it’s a thing. Industrialization is the vehicle for most of this isn't? And if your thinking jumps too “is she a Luddite?” I would admit yes, I kinda am. I dream of a day when blackouts happen all over and we finally admit drilling the earth for every last drop of oil is not in fact creating less suffering. I’d happily go back to a locally organized village life centered around a return to the commons, food growing, horse and buggy - a handmade life. A place where “no cars go” (cue Arcade Fire). If all machines were to cease operation, there is no way we could continue to destroy the planet at the current pace. And the thing is for most of human time on Earth we have self-organized into place based anti-hierarchical communities. Animistic practices then are born out of place based living, where everything from structures to rituals to clothing to foods come from/ in regards to the gods of that place- weather, seasons, plants, animals and insects. It seems the more we as humans have been able to ward off these gods of places, the less we respect them or see them as anything more than a nuisance.
No Green New Deal is going to save us. Sure it might be a slightly lesser impact that our current addction to "Economic Growth.” Windmills and electric cars and light rails and whatever else people have dreamed of don’t excite me. Trans-humanism and futurism of all kinds scares the shit out of me. Even leading environmental groups and activists still speak a language of separation. The language itself of “sustainability” and “the environment” assumes these things are outside of us, as if just by doing XYZ we can achieve some net zero goal, without every really sinking home that we are actually made up of the environment around us. That a policy that doesn’t deep consider the needs of Chinook, Chum, Sockeye, and Coho Salmon, Gray Wolf, Bearded Seal, Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog, or Roseate Tern, as much or more than the needs of humans doesn’t impress me much.
The work of Robin Wall Kimmerer and her bestselling book, Braiding Sweetgrass, has certainly helped our collective society better understand indigenous spirituality, where she writes for example, about Maple trees in the essay Maple Nation- where clearly she and her peoples relationship with Maples is not metaphorical; her daily does of “Vitamin M” made me smile. There’s now even an indigenous women’s collective called Maple Nation! Perhaps Stephen Jenkinson spoke about animism during my time in the Orphan Wisdom School, though he too would have cautioned against applying it as a blanket term to describe a group of people, since one of the spells, as he calls it, of dominant North American society is the “spell of universality,” which in term nearly obliterates diversity- the colonizing whitewashed effect. Jenkinson did frequently remind us (his almost 99% white student body) that all "white” people come from somewhere, and that more than likely, we had earth based understandings and deep ways to live and be with one another and our more than human kin. All pre-christian peoples, my Celtic ancestors included, more than likely could be categorized as animists, as it is considered the oldest living spiritual world and/or earliest form of “religion.” Most animistic traditions are also classified as pantheistic (many gods), which is perhaps why they were so threatening to mono-theistic religions, Christianity in particular- whereby ONE bossy God pushed out all the other gods despite their (I’m imagining here) inclusiveness, saying to ONE GOD, “come on in, there’s room for more, the more gods the better!” Please don’t mistake my mention of pre-christian ancestral roots in what we now call British Isles, for any sort of comparison or conflation with the ongoing struggles for Land Back, tribal sovereignty and other movements of First Nations, Native Americans, and Indigenous peoples around the world.
Part of the biggest examples of white supremacy and cultural poverty I see happening in particular are in the white hippie and social progressive communities in places like Northern California and Western Washington, where I’ve lived for the past 16 years. I’ve participated in many ritual/ceremonial spaces with other white hippies, that I now deeply question, and then felt slightly uneasy about while simultaneously enjoyed singing together, dancing around a fire late late at night, calling in the 4 directions while someone beat a handmade drum. The ongoing mish mash of most likely stolen or mis-understood traditions: smudging with white sage a common one that thankfully seems to be falling out of popularity due to a lot of push back from native communities, as well as awareness about its overharvesting; a white herbalist teacher taught us to burn tobacco when harvesting a plant as a way to thank it, but meanwhile never mentioned where she learned it, just a “teacher;” to the a toss of hands when I’ved pushed back to friends on the inherent problem of white global tourism or flippantly using words like “Aho,” or, seeing absollutely no issue with their participation in things like Ayahuasca ceremonies or the so-called Native American Church whose CEO “believes the Book of Mormon is a true description of the historical evolution of Christianity in the Americas,” bothers me to know end. I know several people in my peripheral community with ties to the NAC- all of whom would identify as Earth lovers. Yet, I don’t see any of them privately or publicly grappling with it. Some, even are profitting off it via how they conduct their small businesesses. We white people have a lot of reckoning to do. At the very least, we need to get to know the places we live, we need to learn about our own histories and ancestral practices (which means doing the grief work around this and the erasure of these practices, so we can stop fucking stealing from other cultures who are trying their darndest from the little I can tell, to hold on to their cultures). We need to continue to amplify and support Land Back and tribal sovereignty movements, and personal and national reparations projects.
“When I share the untold history of this region, the response from individuals of European descent is often a history lesson of how the Romans colonized the English or the English colonized the Welch, Irish, Scottish, etc. The want me to relate to their suffering. They seem to say, It’s just the way of the world. Oh well, too bad, better luck next time.
I see this type of response as a resistance to the fact of the continued oppression of Indigenous peoples by the dominant culture of which the lesson giver is a part. Don’t resist.” - Rena Priest, Desire in the City of Subued Excitement
A world view where Rivers talk and Storms frighten you to your senses and Field grasses whisper omens of bounty or lean days ahead and Cedar Trees and Orca whales are revered and respected as holy kin and there are entire songs and dances that humans do together to celebrate the birth of a new Beaver or Moose or Whale or grieve the dying of Western Red Cedar sounds pretty fucking amazing to me. I hope it’s becoming clear too, that I don’t think of an animistic world view as a simplistic romantic view of the world, whereby Oak and Tobacco and Salmon and White Tail Deer and Wheat’s lives only matter in what I, the human have to gain from them. Though, their lives have been incredibly altered so that I can keep on living. Howeer, Their lives matter in and of itself themselves- and they always have and they always will. But unfortunately, such is the sway and swell of the myth of human supremacy that we in the United States, and all those living under an industrialized western view of the world seem to possess- that the more than human world exists only to serve us. But just because someone or something is in the world does not mean it’s ours to take (Jenkinson drove this home in OWS, and it’s seared into my brain forever more). Read that again. Maybe say it out loud to yourself to really let it settle in- Just because something or someone is in the world, does not mean it is yours to take. And by something or someone it could mean, yes lands stolen, but it also could mean a song, a recipe, a certain gesture used only at certain occasions by people of a certain age.
So when I heard about this word, animism, or that people I know and follow online are now calling themselves animists, I thought, yes, me too. But self-identifying instead of being named by others who are thereby endowing me a name that I have actually worked for, is really kind of a sad thing in a way. Perhaps it’s more true the to say I am a wannabe. I am an aspiring animist. A wanna be animist. A fledgling animist with no elders or teachers or intact groups of like minded animists living a place based life with others to witness and practice and create life and ritual together though island life at times felt as close as I might get in my lifetime. Animism at its heart is a place based endeavour. Though the sentiment behind it as a generalized type of spiritual practice and philosophy help navigate me. What’s trickier still is that “animism” and the identifying as one is part of what colonization has done to us. None of the local tribes where I live would identify as animists. The indigenous Gaels of Scotland don’t identify as such. The very first reason being that it’s not a word in their languages, but also because when you start to name a way of being that has sprung from the place you actually make your home in, I would guess that this having to name the ways you are, that some kind of disruption/trauma i.e. colonizing force has taken place. Thus, animism applied as a blanket term is something to stay alert too, AND it is still a useful word as a tool of lanuage to name this way of walking/seeing/listening and conjuring the world as tool of resistance to other language and ways of being currently offered/taught/forced on us under the spells of dominant north american civilization.
My views of the world means that it physically hurts me when I see Trees cut down to build ugly ass apartment buildings- but what about affordable housing? Yes we need affordable housing sure. But we cannot breathe without trees. We have enough houses already- aren’t you familiar yet with McMansion Hell?!?!? Why are human lives being valued more than Trees? And within those Trees are there not dozens of other beings whose lives matter too? This is the issue I take with most of the thinking, writing, media, and conversations, that all other humans around me are having every single fucking day. Yes I get by. Yes I pass, and pass quite well as a “normal” white middle aged lady- I “enjoy” my trips to Target, and a good Amazon order; that breakfast I made with Mexican grown tomatoes and butter from Wisconsin and eggs from California and Corn from Iowa sent somewhere else to be made into tortillas sure tasted delicious- but holy god what a fucking cost it is for me to eat breakfast every single day. What a cost it is to to be a modern human alive today. It’s no wonder that people who worshipped Corn and Cow and Cod and such also knew how to grow, and plant and procure food. There seems to be a fine line between animism and food rearing. Like the closer you are to your food the more in tune with those beings you become- well of course! For when you actually raise the food you are going to eat then you have to participate in the death of that food and then you actually realize how much it fucking costs to be alive- to just eat 3 square meals a day. That is some beauty grief wracking shit if you ask me. Who needs a Tesla when you can save seeds? Who needs action movies when you learn to raise and slaughter your own animals? But our current systemic issues- access to land, cost of living, generational trauma, racism, lack of child care, universal health care, and on and on feel incredibly difficult to surmount- how can I care about the fate of my home state of South Carolina’s American Ginseng or Big Brown Bat, when I’m stymied by the rising cost of food in the hellscape of industrialized agriculture?
As a person who deeply loves this Earth, it physically pains me and drains me when I have to navigate the Anthropocene and only the Anthropocene.
Since we humans are made up of our other than human kin, our inability to have even the slightest relationship of reverence with them, has a staggering cost in the long run. Perhaps that’s why I’ve wound up living semi-rurally for all of my adult life- I cannot listen well if I am always with humans who’ve also lost touch with how to relate to the other than human world. I’ve kept exquisite company with certain trees for as long as I can remember- Loblolly Pine, White Oak, Willow Oak, Live Oak, Cypress, Sweetgum, Sycamore, Alder, Madrona, Western Red Cedar, Grand Fir, Spruce, and Big Leaf Maple. When my beloved Sycamore tree of 1807 Wheat Street Columbia SC was cut down to its base, I wept and raged to my former landlord but she just shrugged- the tree was “too” close to the apartment building. That Sycamore was my beloved. Yet when was the last time anyone you know had a funeral for a Tree? I was out walking with my toddler last week and we came upon a desiccated frog flattened to pancake in the road. Later at bed time, during our routine of saying good night to our relations and neighbors- “Night Owl. Night Gan-Ma. Night Moon. Night Trees. Night Papa.” Aubrey said, “Sorry Frog.” And I knew instantly that she was talking about Frog we’d seen earlier and that I must have used those same words. Daily now she mentions it, “Sorry Frog. Sorry Frog.” Wrinkling up her face in grief and concern.
The animist I am in Whatcom County, WA is not the animist I am in the midlands of South Carolina, where my hometown is. In that way I am the word itself- a practitioner of breathing, being animated and animated by the world around me. Attuning my sleep in May to Whipporwhill’s call in the dark in Saluda County SC is unlike the way I attune to pacific tree frog’s courtingsong in the unthawing marshes of spring under Cottonwood trees of Whatcom County. My limited language skill prohibits me from fully expressing how my body/soul sees/hears/senses/bends/bears/attunes to these different beings in all kinds of weather. It’s also true that how/where/when one is making home impacts one ability to communicate- the way I hear Yarrow on a rocky slope by the sea is different than how I hear Yarrow growing in my verdant garden in Summer’s height is different still than how I hear Yarrow growing up between concrete cracks beside a downtown bus stop. I suppose this is just stating the obvious, but I am sure you, as I can remember doing time and time again, times when you engaged with someone, be it a place, a person someone, even a food someone, where you’re earlier “knowing” about it did not allow you to see or hear that someone. So yes I think we modern humans could all slow down, be present with who/what’s in front of you, and getting to know our other than human kin can also be as simple as saying “good morning” and “good night” and “thank you.”
Like any strong deep relationship it takes time. Hence the moniker, “fledgling animist.” Wrapped up in this beginners practice means, at least or me, there is a whole lotta grief, rage and regret wrapped up in what’s kept me apart for so long from my more than than human kin. Truth and reconciliation and reparations absolutely need to be part of this work as well. The personal practice must also extend out to the public and political spheres, and how could it not? I know that one way white supremacy culture works in my own life is in self criticism and perfectionism. I wrote some more about that here. Not being comfortable with my fledging wannabe animist self. My talking to more than human beings is still a quiet practice, but the more I do it, the more comfortable I become, like with anything we are new at right? Maybe when we get comfortable enough just saying hello to Mockingbird, Magnolia, Rat Snake, Blue Jay, then we might sing them a song or write them a prayer of blessing or even find a way to learn the original words of one of them and whisper it to them when we are feeling brave- the way I did some 13 years ago when I first learned the local name of “Mount Baker”- Komo-Kulshan aka the great white watcher (Lummi: Qwú’mə Kwəlshéːn; Nooksack: Kw’eq Smaenit or Kwelshán). And from that place, we are better able to advocate, educate others, enact policies that prohibit territorial destruction of Canebreak Rattler’s home, and the demolition of dams so Salmon can follow the scent they first laid own on their journey from upstream the river all the way to the sea and to resist daily the forces that keep us afraid and apart.
“Across the bay sits the town of Bellingham and the ‘usual and accustomed’ fishing, hunting and harvesting grounds of the L’haq’temish people. That’s the real name of our people, the people of the sea. We are called Lummi because that’s easier for the white people to say.”
-Rena Priest in her essay Desire in the City of Subdued Excitement
Post Script
Right when I had this essay set to publish I read this essay by Rena Priest in a newly out book called Wanting- which is a collection of women writing about desire. And she’s writing about some of what I’m writing here, except that she’s writing it from her home in lands that her people have cared for since time immemorial. Generation after generation after generation of her people tending a place, building and being in deep relationship with the others who also live in that place- Western Red Cedar, Salmon and so many others. Those lands being “Bellingham, Washington,” and the surrounding lands and sea which is now commonly referred to as the Salish Sea, much of which is the county I live in now. From Rena I learned where our county, Whatcom, got its name. "That creek is the creek for which the county is named: Whatcom. Xwot kwem: xwo = water, kwem = strong.” It really got me thinking, and also b/c I have a piece on the Land Back movement that I’m working and that’s what her desire is for, land back, and that way of being and living that comes from the land back to its original trustees before settlers "unsettled”(as Rena names it) that place and its inhabits. It’s astounding how one piece of writing can be so deep, so rich, so rife with sorrow and beauty. So it felt right to weave some of her writing into this piece. Thank you Rena.
*More than Human Kin is often written as Other than Human Kin, and is simply a way to call in non-human beings without typing them all out. For this includes not only insects and animals but places, bodies of water, weather patterns, etc.
To read (R), to listen (L) to watch (W)
R- Rena Priest’s essay, Desire in the City of Subdued Excitment can be found in the book, Wanting: Women Writing about Desire
L- Peter Micheal Bauer interviews anarcho-primetivist John Zerzan
R- The Gift of Strawberries by Robin Wall Kimmerer
L- Resist misanthropy- Stephen Jenkinson on For the Wild
and a song
L- Calling out to all the fellow animists- Sing to the Mountain by Elephant Revival
R- A link so you can buy an out of print copy of Henry’s Quest, a 1986 picture book by Graham Oakley- one of the best books about modern life as we know post oil collapse. (thanks Mom ;))