Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, has been studying her ancestral language. She has found that Native languages in general extend the grammar of animacy to a wide range of objects that are regarded in English as inanimate. These beings are imbued with spirit. She points out that “English doesn’t give us many tools for incorporating respect for animacy. In English, you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an it.” Imagine walking the Bosque Trail in the company of nonhuman residents; plants and animals with names, personalities, gifts, and long histories of association with humans. Kimmerer has learned that it’s nearly impossible to learn a Native language, (especially considering that English has 30% verbs and Indigenous languages often have 70%) but we might expand our grammar. We should stop denying everyone else the right to be persons. The arrogance of English is revealed when we realize that grammar is just the way we chart relationships in language. A living landscape should not be regarded as “natural resources,” commodities to be bought and sold. If we were in the habit of referring to Stephenville’s heritage oak trees as grandfather oaks, for example, maybe municipalities would think twice before firing up the chainsaw.