Nomad Mind and the Language of the Heart

John Burnside

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Chapter 10 Nomad Mind and the Language of the Heart

In: Practices and Mediations of SÃ¡mi Culture

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John Burnside

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 190â203

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004754997-012

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Abstract

The sense of finding a language of the heart is critical: for the language of the heart is also the language of the land. Over the last half-century or so, ecocritical theory has proposed a means by which the two may be reunited, through the practice of bioregionalism, that is, the practice of becoming Indigenous. It would be stirring, perhaps, to view the plight of local, and especially local Indigenous protestors as a David and Goliath struggle, but all too often, those who try to defend the land for its own sake are portrayed as Quixotic characters, merely tilting at windmills and doomed to tumble before the march of a force that, while it merits other, less neutral denotations, we still tend to present as âprogressâ. The alternative to this appropriation of place is a specific kind of nomad thinking â but, while occupation-think makes the mistake of seeing the nomad as essentially homeless, a wanderer on the face of the earth, a vagrant with âno fixed abodeâ, this is precisely the opposite of the nomadic condition. To replace occupation-think with nomad-mind is not to become homeless in one (set or fixed, stable or permanent) place, but to recognise that home is everywhere and anywhere, because home is not a matter of occupation, but of shared dwelling.

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Practices and Mediations of SÃ¡mi Culture

Indigeneity, Ethno-history and Art

Series:Â Arctic Humanities, Volume: 3

Cover Practices and Mediations of SÃ¡mi Culture

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004754997

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 06 May 2026

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - General
  - Cultural History

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Chapter 10 Nomad Mind and the Language of the Heart

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Practices and Mediations of SÃ¡mi Culture

Indigeneity, Ethno-history and Art

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