Can these stones live?
Some Indigenous traditions suggest that rocks are sentient. What does this mean for how we humans relate to them?
We begin with stones. In the Anishinaabe universe, even before the thoughts of Kiche Manidou—the Creator, or Great Mystery—there was what Louise Erdrich calls “a conversation between stones.”
When I was in ninth grade, my science teacher asked the class if stones were alive. We were learning the seven criteria of life. After reviewing the list, we said that no, stones were not alive. He asked us if we were sure. We went over the criteria again and told him yes, we were sure. He said that it might be that stones did things more slowly than we could measure. Could it be that we lacked the ability to see these things in stones? Or could the criteria be wrong? Then he smiled. This possibility—of something like a stone being alive—has stayed with me.
Ojibwe Anishinaabe author and academic Lawrence Gross would agree with this science teacher. In Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being, Gross writes about the Anishinaabe language being more suited for quantum physics than English because it understands the dynamic nature of creation. It is a verb-based language, meaning that it talks about what things do rather than what they are. We are not human beings; we are humans being.
