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Thoreau's Perception of Nature vs. Culture

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Thoreau's Perception of Nature vs. Culture

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Much unlike Kimmerer, Thoreau's belief is that all civilization is bad and humans have done nothing but harm the seemingly "unmediated" wilderness. To quote his essay "Walking," Thoreau (1862) believes that "almost all man's improvements, so called, as the buildings of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape..." (p. 2). Not only does Thoreau dislike the encroachment of civilization onto what he defines as wilderness, he believes that evidence of presence of humans is what truly makes nature less beautiful, and "more and more tame and cheap" (p. 2).

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Kimmerer's Perception of Nature vs. Culture

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Kimmerer's Perception of Nature vs. Culture

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In many of her pieces, Kimmerer speaks about how humans and nature are interconnected and that there should not be a hard line drawn between them. Additionally, unlike Thoreau, she does not believe that all human interaction with nature is negative, in fact she was stunned when her students had shared with her that they believed that there were no positive interactions between people and the land, stating "how is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment" (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 6)?
Furthermore, she ends the essay with the statement of "the plants can tell us their story; we need to learn how to listen" (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 10), which echoes her idea of the connections between nature and humankind: we are living co-dependently with nature, and we need to learn how we are all connected so that we can live with the knowledge that Skywoman has bestowed upon us.

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One of Thoreau's main perceptions of nature is that it is a sublime sanctum that is facilitated by God. In his essay "Walking," Thoreau (1862) states "No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers" (p. 2). Not only is this evidence of nature being a heavenly, sublime place, but it also gives us insight on what he believes his connection to nature to be; he is under the impression that he has special capabilities to be a "walker" that were granted to him from God.

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Long, J. S. J. (1824). Elijah Comforted By An Angel In The Wilderness. 

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Like many transcendentalists in his time, Thoreau also believed that God was closely related to nature; however, he was not under the impression that nature, was, in fact, a symbol for God - he believed that nature was a concrete thing (Menrisky, 2023). Instead, Thoreau believed that being able to experience nature was a privilege bestowed upon someone by the grace of God or from Heaven, as evidenced from the previous passage. Kimmerer's writing, however, does not focus on God or His relation to nature, drawing yet another distinction between the two writer's perceptions of nature.

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Throughout her writing, Kimmerer takes on an epistemological standpoint regarding her perceptions of the world. The most obvious representation of this is in Kimmerer's short essay "Skywoman Falling". In this, Kimmerer depicts the earth as a land grown by Skywoman herself with the generosity from "all of the animals gifts coupled with her deep gratitude. Together they formed what we know today as Turtle Island, our home" (p. 2). This personification of the creation of the world - and all the animals that inhabit it - grants agency to the world. Not only does this allow for additional empathy for the land around us, it also allows us to "know" the world around us, in a more literal sense. To personify and grant agency to something traditionally considered to be without a mind, allows us to know the world in a more intimate level, as if it were a family member or a close friend.

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Thoreau's standpoint is more of an ontological one - that is, what the world is. For Thoreau, it's obvious that he sees nature and wilderness as sublime and that it takes both a privileged and blessed individual to truly be able to experience it. "Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features," states Thoreau (1862) in his essay "Walking" (p. 11). For Thoreau, nature as an entity is almost a separate world in of itself when compared to civilization, and there is no personal interconnection between the land and humans; a person is more of an observer or admirer of the land, of nature herself, than an equal. While she is personified, she is still just a description and there is little there to grant her agency.

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One of the largest issues with the Wilderness paradigm is that it relies solely on ontological distinctions and viewpoints; that is, transendentalists like Thoreau are more concerned with what the world is which closely follows an ontological standpoint rather than an epistemological one (Menrisky, 2023). This is evidenced quite clearly in his writing, where he is more focused on what exists in nature and what/who it is "made" for, and less about the real meanings or how we know these things. While Thoreau also personifies nature, he instead sees nature as a higher being that humans cannot connect to or understand. Kimmerer, on the other hand, focuses more on an epistemological standpoint, or trying to find meaning in the world around her - how we know the world. One way that Kimmerer does this is by granting agency to nonhuman creatures and environments, both in "Skywoman Falling" and "Learning the Language of Animacy". This agency can help us understand the connections between nature and culture itself, which in turn gives us the ability to "know" the world around us intimately.

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Kimmerer's Use of the Potawatomi Language

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Kimmerer's Use of the Potawatomi Language

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Kimmerer speaks about her connection with language in her essay "Learning the Grammar of Animacy," where she speaks about her desire to learn her native language of Potawatomi. Kimmerer (2013) explains that in Potawatomi, objects of nature are not nouns, but in fact verbs. "A bay is a noun only if water is dead. ...But the verb wiikwegamaa - to be a bay - releases the water from bondage and lets it live" (p. 55). Not only is this a distinct difference from the English language, but Kimmerer (2013) shares that "...we would never refer to a member of our family, or indeed to any person, as it. That would be a profound act of disrespect. It robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a mere thing. So it is that in Potawatomi and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family" (p. 55). It's clear that Kimmerer, at least in a cultural sense, treats the natural world with the respect and compassion that she would her family or community, which is a defining factor in how she perceives nature.

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Evidence #2: Kimmerer's Connection with Language

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Evidence #2: Kimmerer's Connection with Language

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One thing that separates Kimmerer from Thoreau is that she has the knowledge of the Potawatomi language. As discussed previously, the Potawatomi language refers to things in nature not as objects, but as family members. Thoreau does not have this kind of background, and this likely will lead to a disconnect between their ideologies and their perceptions of the natural world. While Thoreau sees nature as this pristine and beautiful thing, he does not personify it as Kimmerer's native tongue does, which means he cannot see nature in the same perspective that she does. This is in view of the fact that it's hard for humans to empathize with something that doesn't have human characteristics (Menrisky, 2023); without the cultural background that Kimmerer has, Thoreau will likely be unable to ever truly personify nature - and, in turn, empathize with it.

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One of the most prominent differences between Kimmerer and Thoreau's perceptions of nature has to be their views on nature vs culture. For Thoreau, it's clear that he sees nature and culture in a completely separate lens, and, in fact, he outwardly condemns culture (in this case, civilization) in favor of nature. They are, in Thoreau's mind, completely separate entities, with civilization (culture) being the "bad" and wilderness (nature) being the "good". Kimmerer, on the other hand, sees things much less black-and-white, and sees nature and culture as interconnected. This is likely due to her background in ecology and her connection to her tribe, the Potawatomi, whose relationship with nature was familial and intimate instead of separate.

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The West marked two distinctly different things for these two communities: the white man and Native Americans; for Thoreau, the "west" was seen as this pristine, beautiful, untouched "virgin" place that human civilization just hadn't been able to poison yet (a common belief held by many transcendentalists at the time). This directly conflicts with Kimmerer's perceptions of the west, or at least her family history; the west is where her grandfather grew up and where her Tribe had thrived for many generations. This is a common issue when it comes to the wilderness paradigm; for "the presence and history of Indigenous Americans undermines the notion of  'virgin' American wilderness to begin with" (Menrisky, 2023).

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Gast, J. (1872). American Progress.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Learning the Language of Animacy. In Braiding Sweetgrass (pp. 48–59). essay, Milkweed Editions.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Skywoman Falling. In Braiding Sweetgrass (pp. 3–10). essay, Milkweed Editions.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). The Council of Pecans. In Braiding Sweetgrass (pp. 11–21). essay, Milkweed Editions.
King, B. (n.d.). Sky Woman.
Long, J. S. J. (1824). Elijah Comforted By An Angel In The Wilderness.
Menrisky, A. ENGL 2635E Lecture, January 30, 2023.
Menrisky, A. ENGL 2635E Lecture, February 06, 2023.
Menrisky, A. ENGL 2635E Lecture, February 22, 2023.

Thoreau, H. D. (1862). Walking.

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As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer's family has first-hand experience with the frontier's expansion and it's effect on many Native American Tribes. In The Council of Pecans, Kimmerer (2013) states that "our lands around Lake Michigan were wanted by settlers, so in long lines, surrounded by soldiers, we were marched at gunpoint along what became known as the Trail of Death. They took us to a new place, far from our lakes and forests. But someone wanted that land too, so the bedrolls were packed again, thinner this time. In the span of a single generation my ancestors were “removed” three times—Wisconsin to Kansas, points in between, and then to Oklahoma" (pp. 12-13). Her family was forcibly removed three times during the boom of westward expansion because they were occupying land that settlers wanted for themselves. The West for Kimmerer is a constant reminder of what happened to her grandfather and to thousands of other Native Americans in the 19th century due to the need for people to go out and claim the wilderness they thought they deserved.

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While Kimmerer and Thoreau both fall under the label of "Nature Writers," their perceptions of nature vary.

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In his piece Walking, Thoreau (1862) states that he "...will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free" (p. 4). Where eastward represents civilization, and westward represents true/"pure" wilderness. This closely aligns with Thoreau's beliefs that culture (civilization in this case) is a bad thing that should be avoided at all necessary, and nature (wilderness) is something to "walk towards," or, in a more extreme case - like Thoreau himself - abandon civilization for.  According to Thoreau, only then can someone be truly free; you must be detached as much as possible from civilization and live in wilderness to experience everything the world has to offer.