Indigenous languages have the power to inspire a closer connection to nature, they can make us see the world differently and hence inspire a closer connection to our natural environment – something that is necessary if we are to change the human behavior that has led to the ecological crisis. This blogpost is about the role of stories.
Stories express cultural values, traditions and philosophies of life that are related to the context people live in. The indigenous stories that I heard when I was staying with the Yawanawa last November always featured animals, plants, and other elements of the natural world as important characters or symbols. Some stories contained lessons about the origin of certain plants, traditions, or other phenomena. I for example heard stories about the origin of certain medicinal plants – ayahuasca, rapé, and chili pepper. Although I do recall these stories well enough to tell them here, I do remember that the origin stories of these plants always held knowledge on how the world as we know it came into being. One version of the origin story of Ayahuasca (there are several) for example told that earth as it is was already existing when the ayahuasca plants were gifted to it from the spirit world. Besides origin stories, there were also stories which I heard that contained lessons about what it is to be a good person, how to be respectful towards other people and towards the spiritual world.
Stories are often shared through songs. To give you an example, I learned that one of the first songs of the Yawanawa is called Kanarô, a type of bird. The song was adapted to the guitar by Shaneihu Yawanawa and Cacique Nixiwaka. As I was told in the village, kanarô is a storytelling about a longing (saudade in Portuguese, a word that is not directly translatable) for people far away. When you sing the song, you give your love to the bird and the bird can fly over to the people that are far away. When I was looking up the song to share it here, I found an additional explanation by Shaneihu Yawanawa who goes over the meaning of the song and its placement in the origin story of the Yawanawa. He adds that the kanarô can also bring your love to those on the other side.
Most of the indigenous stories that I heard (and I only heard a few) did not necessarily contain an explicit lesson on the relationship between humans and their natural environment, instead this relationship was self-evident. The philosophy or worldview within a certain group or culture determines how we tell stories and what stories we tell, and since such stories assume a certain worldview children who hear it will grow up to take it as self-evident. Stories are powerful, especially if they are told from a young age because the philosophy imbedded in them forms a seemingly self-evident framework for relating to the world. In September I was in Akasha, a village where ayahuasca retreats are being held near Rio de Janeiro under guidance of alternating indigenous tribes amongst which the Yawanawa. This is also where I got in touch with the Yawanawa family I later went to in the rainforest. In Akasha there was a book with drawings and stories from the Huni Kuin, another indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. One drawing particularly inspired me.
For me the faces drawn on the leaves of these plants showed how this child recognized these plants as persons, or as being ensouled or inspirited – a reflection of the worldview transferred through the storytelling I mentioned above. Imagine we would tell such stories everywhere, what would our relationship with nature be like then?
Right now, in most of the western world the implicit framework or worldview is that there is a separation between humans and nature, rather than humans being part of nature – we, for example, speak of the nurture/nature debate. This is far from universal. Instead, for many indigenous philosophies, and I think also various world religions (such as at least Hinduism and Buddhism), there is no such distinction. For the Yawanawa as well everything is part of the same one world in which humans have a reciprocal relationships with their natural environment: nature gives to humans and humans give to nature. Moreover, nature is ensouled or inspirited – as reflected in the drawing. Many medicinal plants, such as ayahuasca, are manifestations, embodiments or carriers of a spirit. In this way plants can serve as a messenger from the spirit world or they are a way to connect with the spirit world and receive its wisdom and spiritual insights. In the same way animals can be manifestations, embodiments or carriers of spirits – sometimes closely connected with a plant, such as the Ayahuasca vine and the snake. In this way humans, nature and the spiritual world are all connected.
Much of our human history is made up of stories and some say that the reason that humans are able to live in such large groups and societies in the first place is because of the stories that connect them (Yuval Noah Harari has written about this in Sapiens for example, although I am not a fan of this book). In any case, stories definitely shape our worldviews and philosophies of life. To solve the ecological crisis we are in now we have to radically change the worldviews that underly our current systems (such as capitalism) that allow for exploitation of nature to exist and persist. So be mindful of the stories you read, the stories you listen to, the stories you tell. Be conscious of the stories you feed your children with because they are powerful. Be open to and seek the stories outside of your cultural framework, outside of your worldview or philosophy of life – for example indigenous stories. I strongly believe they hold lessons we need to learn in order to restore our relationship with nature and solve the ecological crisis.
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