Word by word, I trudge closer, stumbling through the underbrush of sound and meaning... As I understand the place of the noun in the Ojibwe mind, it is unprejudiced by gender distinctions. That is some relief. Yet there occurs something more mysterious. Alive or Dead. Each thing is either animate or inanimate, which would at first seem remarkably simple and sensible, for in the western mind the quality of aliveness or deadness seems easy to discern. Not so. For the Anishinaabeg, the quality of animation from within, or harboring spirit, is not limited to animals and plants. Stones, asiniig, are animate, and kettles, akikoog, alive as well...
--Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
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