American Robin
A little bird's testimony of colonization
For as long as I remember I have loved Robins. Growing up in the Netherlands my family was blessed to have a backyard with a little pond that was frequently visited by all sorts of small birds. The first song I ever wrote was an environmental protest song to try and stop my parents from weeding the garden, pruning the plants, and mowing the grass, which I felt were all grave injustices.
I think the European Robin was one of the first birds I knew by name. When I first met the little orange-chested bird, it was introduced to me as Roodborstje (literally translated: ‘Little Red Chest’). Apparently, the color orange was not commonly referred to as a separate color from red in most of Europe up until the sixteenth century. As such, the Robin became known in France as Rouge-gorge (‘Red Throat’), in Sweden as Rödhake (‘Red Hackle’) and in England as Redbreast. But in the fifteenth century, it became rather fashionable in England to give human nicknames to the animals people interacted with on a regular basis. And so the Daw became ‘Jack the Daw’, became the Jackdaw. The Pie became ‘Margaret Pie’, became the Magpie. And the Redbreast became ‘Robin Redbreast’, became the Robin.
You can take the people out of their land, but you can never truly take the land out of the people. So when European settlers colonized North America and they saw a bird with an orange chest, they named it ‘Robin’, after the Robin of their homelands. And that’s how the American Robin got its name. But the thing is… the American Robin is a completely different bird from the European Robin. The American Robin is a much larger bird from the Thrush family, whereas the smaller European Robin belongs to the Flycatchers. The European Robin enjoys its solitude, whereas the American Robin tends to join large flocks of other birds, especially during the fall and winter. An entire ocean separates these two birds, and the only thing they have in common is their orange marking. But even the placement of that marking for the European Robin is on its face, throat, and chest, whereas it covers the belly and chest of the American robin. Long story short: it’s a completely different bird!
Another Robin, the Native American author Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote the brilliant works Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, gave a talk on “The Grammar of Animacy” for the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In it, she reflected on the importance of learning the names of the beings in our natural environment in order to show our respect and appreciation, and to enter into meaningful relationships with them. Carl Linnaeus, the so-called father of modern taxonomy, used Latin to create an intricate system of names for all sorts of beings in the natural world. He named the American Robin the Turdus migratorius, ‘a migratory bird of the Thrush family’. One of Dr. Kimmerer’s criticisms of Linnaeus is that he completely ignored and overrode the already-existing names of these beings. Reflecting on her own indigenous heritage, she shares the story the Anishinaabe and Cree peoples use to explain how all beings were named. In the story, Nanabozho, a very wise man, listened to what nature’s elements called themselves. Instead of giving them names, he listened and learned their names.
This reminded me of Surah Al-Baqarah, ‘The Cow’, the second chapter of the Qur’an, in which we are taught a very similar story. In the Islamic narrative of origins, God created humanity as stewards on earth, exemplified by Adam, peace be upon him. As a part of the creation process, we are told, Adam was taught the names of all things. “And He taught Adam the names, all of them” (Qur’an 2:31). ‘Name’ is a word with many layers of meaning. Words and names are how we make sense of the world. They enable us to distinguish between different parts of creation and even to reach beyond it in our imagination. Words are both the prison and the key of humanity. Although God is beyond our understanding and everything we could ever imagine, we are taught His Names, the Asma Allah al-Husna (‘the Most Beautiful Names of God’), which we often reduce to the symbolic number of 99, referring to the endlessness of their real amount. And though these Names will never truly reach the Named, they allow us to enter into a relationship with Him. In many ways, knowing the ‘name’ of a thing, refers to knowing its essence. The fact that Adam was given ‘the names’, means that humanity has the ability to understand the true essence of creation. But in order to get there, Adam had to listen as God taught him all the names, including his own.
In his most influential work of poetry, the Masnavi, the 13th-century poet and Islamic scholar Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi writes about the prophet Solomon, peace be upon him. Solomon was known to communicate with nature and speak the language of the birds. Rumi playfully describes how Solomon used to go to the garden of the Temple and talk to the herbs growing there: “He saw that a new plant had grown there; then he would say, ‘Tell your name and use - what medicine are you? What are you? What is your name? To whom are you hateful and to whom are you useful?’ Then every plant would tell its effect and name, saying, ‘I am life to that one, and death to this one. I am poison to this one and sugar to that one: this is my name inscribed on the Tablet by the Pen of the divine Decree” (Masnavi 4.1287ff.).
But the European settlers did not listen, they imposed. They took it upon themselves to name, and in doing so, revealed their ignorance of the true name of the bird they referred to as the American Robin. Robin may have been a beautiful name that arose from a loving relationship with their neighborhood friend in England, but it wasn’t the name of the bird they met in North America. In Surah Al-Hujarat, ‘The Rooms’, the forty-ninth chapter of the Qur’an, God tells us: “O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may (get to) know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous among you. God is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware” (Qur’an 49:13). If the European settlers had had any sincere interest in getting to know the peoples whose land they were trespassing on, they might have learned the stories from the Shíshálh people about the American Robin.
The Shíshálh people know the orange-chested bird as Ch’álhch’ílh. The bird itself taught them this name, for it is based on its song. A Shíshálh legend tells us that the Ch’álhch’ílh did not always have an orange chest. When the world had just begun, some Shíshálh people were living in a cave. They had been challenged with a period of cold and stormy weather and had remained within the safe embrace of their cave for a long time. They were running out of firewood and food, so they sent out some of their young men to search for both. A grandfather took the responsibility to keep the fire burning whilst the young men were out. The women and children gathered around the fire and covered themselves in blankets to try and stay warm. After a while, they fell asleep. The grandfather had tried to stay awake to keep the fire burning, but eventually, he also fell asleep, tired and hungry as he was. When a Ch’álhch’ílh came out to sing its morning song, it noticed that there was no fire in the cave. It feared that the children and babies would get ill without the fire’s warmth, and so it flew in right away. It sat down next to the fire and flapped its wings until the embers began to glow again, and their warmth reached the children. The red glow of the fire became so hot that the bird got quite uncomfortable. But it was more concerned with the well-being of the children than with getting burned, so it kept flapping its wings. Later that morning, the bird heard the young men come back, and decided it was time to leave. It flew out of the cave, just as the men entered, and they noticed something they had never seen before. The chest of the bird now had the color of glowing ember.
The European settlers were not interested in getting to know the stories of the Shíshálh people. Instead, a genocide took place and most Shíshálh people died of disease and violence. It is estimated that there were up to 20,000 people in the Shíshálh Nation before the arrival of European settlers. In the official census of 1881, this number was down to only 167.
When existing within a dynamic of equality, the exchange of names and languages can be a beautiful thing. A Dutch man named Johan might introduce himself as John in England, Johannes in Germany, Jean in France, Juan in Spain, Giovanni in Italy, Janek in Poland, Ioannis in Greece and Yahya in Turkey. His true name is not denied, challenged, or replaced. He simply translates it as he travels and gets to know his neighbors. But it becomes problematic when something or someone’s true name is denied. Because a name is a testimony of one’s history, culture, roots, and ultimately, one’s essence. That’s why it’s so painful for the people of Al-Khalil, Palestine, to have the name Hebron imposed on their city as its only true name. Or their land referred to as Israel. It denies their existence, history, and culture and ultimately, the true essence of the place.
In A Native Hill, Wendell Berry writes: “There is an ominous - perhaps a fatal - presumptuousness in living in a place by the imposition on it of one’s ideas and wishes. And that is the way we white people have lived in America throughout our history, and it is the way our history now teaches us to live here.” It is the recognition of the same ignorance that is revealed by naming instead of learning the names that leads Berry to conclude that “we haven’t yet, in any meaningful sense, arrived in these places that we declare we own.”
The territory now known as the United States and Canada knew many different languages before European settler-colonialism, approximately 296 of them. Many of these languages have gone extinct, but some of them live on and others are being revived, such as the language of the Shíshálh people, she shashishalhem. The Navajo language is the most widely spoken Native language in the United States. The 200,000 Native Americans speaking it call the American Robin téél halchíʼí. The Cherokee language is threatened with extinction with only ca. 2,000 speakers, but those who fight to preserve their history and culture call the little bird Tsi-quo-quo (ᏥᏉᏉ).
Although it is late, terribly late, it is never too late to do what is right. After a long struggle, the Shíshálh people gained self-governance over some of their historic territories, as Canada finally recognized their Nation. Minneapolis recently renamed its largest lake Bde Maka Ska (Dakhóta name for ‘White Earth Lake’) to correct the historical wrong of naming it Lake Calhoun after the former US Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. If you ask me, I’d say it’s about time we start following the sunnah of Adam, and we start learning some names.
So beautiful and rich with love, knowledge, history, and the honoring of the indigenous - humans, birds, and life. Thank you for such a learned and relevant piece for our times!