Rewilding Our Words: How Language Shapes Our Relationship with Nature

By:  Jacob Rodenburg

Words are powerful. They are the building blocks of our thoughts. We use them to make sense of our experiences, connect with each other, and imagine new ways of being in the world. But sometimes, our language limits us. It narrows our vision and defines what we value, especially when it comes to the natural world.

If we stop and think about it – our language is replete with anthropocentric or human centered terms.  Nature is a “resource,” valued only for its usefulness to us. Trees are seen as “lumber”. Insects are reduced to “pests.” Swamps are dismissed as wastelands. Soil is “dirt,” something to wash off. Mountains are “rich” in ore, just waiting to be mined.  This use of language impairs our connection to the natural world, diminishes our sense of belonging and our ability to see nature’s inherent worth.

Consider the term “vacant land.” It evokes emptiness, something waiting to be filled, usually with concrete. But what if we said “green space” instead?  Suddenly, the land becomes more alive. Valuable. Whole. We name it, and we give it meaning.

Imagine a vocabulary rooted in ecocentrism, where the Earth is not a supply warehouse, but a community of living beings. A forest is not a timber stand but a vibrant society of trees, fungi, birds, and mammals. Pollinators aren’t pests, they’re essential allies. Wetlands aren’t wastelands, they are nurseries teeming with life and purifying water. Soil is not dirt, but the living skin of the planet, teeming with more life in a handful than there are people on Earth.

Even the term “development” needs to be reimagined. Today, development often means leveling the land, clearing vegetation, and building over it. Progress is measured in poured concrete and rising towers. But what if we embraced the idea of developing nature as well? What if development also meant restoring habitats, planting native species, bringing biodiversity into our cities, and designing with nature rather than against it? What if the true sign of progress was a neighborhood alive with birdsong, shaded by trees, and connected by green corridors?

Let’s rethink the bottom line, too. Right now, it’s about profit. But what if our bottom line was the health of people and the planet? What if success meant human and natural communities thriving together?

Let us reimagine prosperity itself, not as accumulation, but as reciprocity. True wealth could be measured in clean air and water, healthy soil, thriving ecosystems and citizens who come to care for and tend natural spaces.  Instead of extracting value from the Earth, what if we grew value with it—investing in living systems that repay us a thousandfold in beauty, resilience, and health?

We need bold, new words that carry hope and possibility. Let’s create “nature-rich” cities so we are not nature-poor. Let’s redefine “inclusion” to include wild species and native habitats in the design of our buildings and streets. Let “community” expand to include the soil beneath our feet, the trees above, the rivers that wind through, and the birdsong at dawn.

We are not separate from nature. We are nature.  The Anishinaabe have a beautiful word to describe their connection to nature.  They say “Nda-nwendaaganag,” or all my relations, meaning the soil, water, rocks, trees, insects, birds, plants, mammals are all part of their kin.  Embedded in this word is a way of knowing that honours relationship, respect, responsibility and reciprocity (from Anishinaabe Scholar and Educator Nicole Bell). Indigenous knowledge systems teach us how to have a positive relationship with the land seeing it not as property, but as our relative, not as a resource, but as teacher and provider. These teachings offer essential wisdom for our time, reminding us that to live well, we must live with the Earth, not above it.

In our modern cities and suburbs, we often practice a quiet kind of “nature apartheid” places only for people including vast zones of concrete and glass, while we relegate nature to slivers of green confined to parks and preserved areas. But we can change that. We can rewild our backyards, our schoolyards, even our rooftops. We can design buildings that host birds, pollinators, and plants. We can create green corridors, where life flows again.

Let us speak a new language, one of kinship, not conquest. Let us name the world as if we belong to it, not as its masters, but as its kin. The words we choose shape the world we create. So let us speak with wonder, let us animate the land so it becomes vital and alive.   Let us listen, again, to the Earth, and answer with language that heals.