Earth Day | Arán & Im | Indigenous Language as a Gift

“Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.”
-John O’Donohue

The crowd at UM Ann Arbor during Michigan's Teach-in on the Environment in March 1970.

I learned recently that the seeds for what would become Earth Day were actually planted here in Ann Arbor. On March 11, 1970, a group of students at the University of Michigan held the Teach-In on the Environment. It was the prototype for what would become the worldwide celebration of Earth Day just a few weeks later, and what one historian has since dubbed “the most famous little-known event in modern American history.” 

The month prior, students from fifty universities across the US had come to Ann Arbor for a workshop on how they might plan their own local Earth Day teach-ins. As it turned out, the March event was larger and more successful than the Ann Arbor students could have imagined. More than 13,000 people turned out for the launch event at Crisler Arena (where the Chicago cast of Hair performed); there were more than 125 workshops, events, and rallies spread out over four days. A writer for the New York Times called the event “by any reckoning…one of the most extraordinary ‘happenings’ ever to hit the great American heartland: Four solid days of soul-searching, by thousands of people, young and old, about ecological exigencies confronting the human race.”

Manchán Magan performs Arán & Im at ZingTrain in Ann Arbor.

In her new essay Ancient Green: Moss, Climate, and Deep Time in Emergence Magazine, scientist, author, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer, writes about how mosses can teach us strategies for enduring the climate crisis:

If time is a line, as western thinking presumes, we might think this is a unique moment for which we have to devise a solution that enables that line to continue. If time is a circle, as the Indigenous worldview presumes, the knowledge we need is already within the circle; we just have to remember it to find it again and let it teach us. That’s where the storytellers come in.

Max and I had the opportunity to attend a performance last night by one such storyteller, an Irish writer and documentarian named Manchán Magan. Manchán is currently on a tour of the US and Canada performing “Arán & Im” (Irish for Bread & Butter), a theatrical performance in which he bakes sourdough bread while exploring the wonders of the Irish language. 

Much of what Manchán discusses during the performance (and more) can be found in his book, Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape. Columnist Jennifer O’Connell, writing in the Irish Times, called the book, “a rip-roaring, archaeological and anthropological exploration of the lyricism, mystery and oddities of the Irish language, and the layers of ancient knowledge encoded within.” It’s possible that, reading this–even if your ancestors were Irish–you may never have considered the idea of Irish as an indigenous language. The truth is that Irish is more than 2,000 years old, and much like the indigenous languages of the Americas, it is intricately linked with the natural and spiritual worlds.

The book and Manchán’s performance open with an invocation by the ancient poet and druid Amergin, thought by some to be the first words spoken in Ireland. Amergin used his words to envision and manifest the world he and his fellow citizens intended to create in Ireland: “I am wind on sea/ I am ocean wave/ I am roar of sea/ I am stag of seven tines/ I am hawk on cliff/ I am shining tear of sun/ I am gentle herbs…”  

Manchán explains that everything he writes in “Thirty-Two Words” is a reflection of Amergin’s poem; like the Irish language, the words are a gift from our ancestors which remind us that we are all connected:

They reveal a language that not only describes things but also summons them into being, a language that communicates not only to others but to the psyche and the subconscious, a language that is deeply rooted in the environment and can connect us to our surroundings in remarkable ways.

Knowth passage tomb near Drogheda, County Meath. What can ancestral knowledge teach us about how to care for the world in a more sustainable way?

As Earth Day approaches, I am also reminded of the Irish writer and academic Michael Cronin, whose work at this moment feels like a bridge between Kimmerer’s words and Manchán’s. In Irish and Ecology/An Ghaeilge agus an Éiceolaíocht, Cronin suggests that whereas in the past, conversations around the Irish language were commonly connected to political history, we are at a moment where there is much to be gained from globalizing the Irish language because of its roots in nature and place. Cronin argues:

It is by situating the Irish language in the context of indigenous ecological struggles around the world that we end up with a more realistic and more fruitful concept of what is necessary and what is possible in terms of relating indigenous language rights to environmental progress.

To do this in the Irish language requires access and availability of resources for learners, and Manchán’s book is a great place to start. If you are interested in actually learning to speak Irish, most American cities with significant Irish American populations offer in-person classes at cultural centers or community colleges, and there are plenty of opportunities to learn online–from teachers in Ireland or using programs and apps like Rosetta Stone and Duolingo.

As Cronin proclaims, “These forms of reconnection are not an idle pastime for aesthetes with time on their hands but are a vital survival skill for reimagining a different kind of environmental future.”

Happy Earth Day!