The Grammar of Animacy

“A bay is a noun only if water is dead.”

In Potawatomi, 70% of words are verbs. Water is grammatically alive. Mountains are animate. Fire is animate. “We would never refer to a member of our family as ‘it.’ That would be a profound act of disrespect.”

The deepest challenge to naming-as-mastery: a language that treats naming as kinship, not dominion.