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The importance of language preservation

This passage in The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol made me think of the work that the Where Are Your Keys? folks are doing to preserve languages in the world.

Illuminated by... vision, I saw in my mind's eye that the original language of the people indigenous to a specific area on Mother Earth's body grows directly out of the land itself. The vibratory essence of the natural forces in a given area grow upward from the bowels of the land and surrounding elements to form the plant life and vegetation of that area. The indigenous people live, eat, and breathe these natural elements. They die back into them and new generations birth back out again in the passage of generations. The land literally teaches them how to live in harmony with it through this ingestion process. They take it into their bodies. It "speaks" to them. Then it comes out of their mouths as their language. They speak the vibrations of that land. Their language and creation myths are embodied vehicles for the wisdom of that place. I could now understand why maintaining the original language of indigenous people is important not just to their survival but to all of humanity. Original languages contain within their vibratory structure the operating rules for how to live in their home territory in a harmonious manner. The indigenous language is a nierica [doorway] by which to access the intelligence of place. Lose the language and you lose its vital instructions about right relationship.

Compare this to Charles Eisenstein's demonstration in Ascent of Humanity of language as a technology that, like all technology, separates us from nature and oneness. But he traces a spectrum of separation, from the mild to the extreme, starting with original languages and moving toward languages today.

Two different ways of looking that come to the same conclusion: some languages are closer to the land than others. Those who value sustainability would do well to include language preservation on their agendas.

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