We think language helps us accurately express what we see and think. But it’s a feedback loop in my opinion, and the language we speak affects how we see and think. The author gives the simple example of addresses being written “in reverse” in Japan. Which is funny, because even as a kid, I used to think that would be the right way to write an address, especially for someone who needs to deliver mail. Seeing the person’s name or street address first makes no sense. I need to know what country, then state, then city, before I even get to the street and the number of the address. And, in fact, I’m sure that’s how they use the address regardless of what order you write it in.

The author notes that we seem to address non-human beings – say, a deer or an owl – as “it”. I think we sometimes use it for a baby as well. It’s crying. It’s hungry.

Indigenous languages do not have a word for nature apparently.

What also resonated for me was how Indigenous people consider everything around us as relatives, instead of resources. Calling another human being as a “resource” is extremely common within the corporate culture. Think HR – human “resources”. I strive to change people’s language at work, asking leaders to call us team members instead of resources. This goes beyond that, as I’m now being asked to consider every “thing” that the earth offers us as “relatives”.

I find it a little hollow and even inhuman to celebrate that we managed to catalog and “save” the Yamana language, when the entire Yamana people have been exterminated due to “enslavement, disease, racism, and exploitation”. I don’t doubt that my ignorance is partially responsible for that viewpoint.

I love that Australian aboriginals, when they meet for the first time, “discuss family going back twenty generations or more to determine how they are associated and linked.”

Another thing that strikes me as absolute genius – not in an egoistic way, but in terms of truly being connected: the Mi’kmaq “name large pine trees by the sound of the wind moving through the branches one hour before sunset in October.”

Another mind-blowing detail (I don’t actually know how this one fits in this chapter): The Yup’ik can predict the weather two years in advance because it’s based on daily observational awareness passed down from generation to generation. Although the author reduces this to “pattern recognition”, it’s really the personification of knowing – truly knowing – everything around you as a “relative”.

The same kind of ancestral memory and deep connection apparently allowed the Maidu tribe to move to higher ground in 1861-1862 when California experienced historic rainfall and a megaflood.

Final deep insight: the English language has a plethora of nouns: individualism and objectification. Indigenous languages have an abundance of verbs: relationship and connection.