The Democracy of Species
- Sep 21, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
★★★★☆
When I first found out about The Democracy of Species, I was thrilled to learn that Robin Wall Kimmerer had a new work out, no matter how brief. The library didn’t have it, nor was it available via interlibrary loan, which meant that no Kansas library had it either. In the end, my local library purchased it at my request (how great is that?), but in the meantime, I did some digging. It turns out this work is just one of 20 in a series published by Penguin UK (not in the U.S., of course) in late 2021 called Green Ideas that, according to its website, “brings you the classics of the environmental movement.” It goes on to state, “Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As humans have driven the living planet to the brink of collapse, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend it. Their words have endured, becoming the classics that define the environmental movement today. From art, literature, food and gardening, to technology, economics, politics and ethics, each of these short books deepens our sense of our place in nature; each is a seed from which a bold activism can grow. Together, they show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.” If there was ever a series crafted with me in mind, this is it. Though I purchased the set, the library copy of The Democracy of Species came in first, and so I started here, number 10 in the series.
Imagine my wild excitement turn to mild disappointment when I learned that this is not a new work by Kimmerer but three excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass, her 2013 masterpiece of ecological spiritualism. Still, it was a pleasure to revisit these pieces even if, on their own, they don’t quite add up to the larger work. And, as I imagine is the purpose behind Green Ideas, it is as good an introduction as any to Kimmerer, just a taste to see if it makes you hungry for more (hint: it should). The first chapter, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” gives birth to and explores the book’s title: “Maybe a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole new ways of living in the world, other species a sovereign people, a world with a democracy of species, not a tyranny of one—with moral responsibility to water and wolves, and with a legal system that recognizes the standing of other species.” The second chapter, “The Honorable Harvest,” explores, through traditional story and real-world examples, the rule of reciprocity that is the heart and soul of Braiding Sweetgrass. The third and final chapter, “People of Corn, People of Light,” takes the Mayan story of creation as not just history but as a lens through which we might understand our relationship with the earth, respectful and grateful for the world that sustains us, living with humility, recognizing that the world is a gift and responding accordingly, and understanding our own gifts as humans and realizing that a gift is also a responsibility. How will we use ours?
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