Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Paperback – August 11, 2015

Braiding Sweetgrass is a seminal novel that plants seeds in hearts and minds for a new society, one grounded in generosity and deep listening. The lovely prose is captivating and consciousness transforming as it opens the heart to new possibilities of perception in reverence of this beautiful Earth in all its effulgence. I recommend this book for anyone burdened by despair who has awakened to the destructiveness of a culture of capitalist greed and rampant consumerism. The book takes an honest look at our predicament and provides a path forward rooted in indigenous wisdom bolstered by scientific soundness of reason. Ity's stories are subtle teachings that bring moments of heartbreak and also of buoyancy. I hope you will read this book and find it as inspiring and hopeful as I did!

Beautiful, eloquent, captivating stories imbued with wisdom. Kimmers ability to eloquently weave science, indigenous wisdom and personal heart-centered storytelling makes for a moving and enlightening read.I do warn the reader, however, this book will make it harder to weed the garden, buy things you don’t truly need, be a consumer or excess, and walk in the woods without crying for what we have done to our brothers and sisters of the Earth.This book should be required reading of every high schooler in the US.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer gives a wildly new perspective on plant life and their relationship to humans. Wall Kimmerer takes us through experiences and knowledge she has gained in her life through her connection to both science and Indigenous Wisdom. Wall Kimmerer discusses the near annihilation of Indigenous people’s traditions, ideas, and languages. Not to mention their removal from their lands and their cultural assimilation into the new European-American culture. This was forced upon Indigenous people and there are still lasting effects to this day that they strive to counteract. Language is only carried on through elders that wish to pass on the language and culture to the youth. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and had felt disconnected from her Native American roots because of the strong American identity that had been forced upon Native Americans when Europeans arrived. By dedicating much of her time to the study of plants and the connections she can find to Indigenous Wisdom she has been able to combine both perspectives as objectively as she can.She stresses the importance of the relationship between humans and the natural world. She claims that Mother Earth is showing love to us with the gift of her plants and animals and that we must show our love back and treat her with respect. For example, you must ask plants permission before you utilize them, must give an offering (in many cases some tobacco sprinkled on the ground), and must show gratitude to the Earth and the plants that replenish us. On the other hand, Wall Kimmerer discusses the negative and surprisingly positive externalities that are observed due to humans and inflicted on the Earth. As you might have guessed pollution is a big negative effect along with overhunting and the disturbance of ecosystems. However, Wall Kimmerer discovers that harvesting sweetgrass in the way that she was taught through Indigenous people is actually beneficial for the sweetgrass. Without being harvested the sweetgrass starts to die because of overcrowding and other factors. However, the harvested sweetgrass plots were flourishing. This of course relates to the title of the book which draws on the idea that Sweetgrass was one of the four sacred plants to the Potawatomi people.Wall Kimmerer does an excellent job portraying the importance of having a mutual relationship between nature and humans. Prior to reading this book I had no idea that there was this vital relationship between us. Wall Kimmerer utilizes the relationship between her and her daughters to help readers understand that Earth shows love to us just as a mother does to her children. I thought that this was a brilliant comparison between two seemingly unrelated topics. It was a great way to explain that the plants that are provided for us on Earth aid us in living our daily lives to the fullest and it seems that we ignore her gift and repay her with pollution and overusing her gifts. Just as children sometimes forget the importance of their mothers and how grateful they should be for the numerous things they do for them everyday.Another concept that Wall Kimmerer presents beautifully that adds to the book as a whole is the relationship between corn, beans, and squash as described from stories she’d heard from other Native people. They were regarded as the Three Sisters. Kimmerer compares this to the structure of human families when she says “The firstborn girl knows that she is clearly in charge; tall and direct, upright and efficient, she creates the template for everyone else to follow. That’s the corn sister...This bean girl [middle sister] learns to be flexible, adaptable, to find a way around the dominant structure to get the light that she needs. The sweet baby sister is free to choose a different path, as expectations have already been fulfilled. Well grounded, she has nothing to prove and finds her own way, a way that contributes to the good of the whole” (p.132). The plants grow in the same way as the sisters progress in life. In their own ways to come together as a collective whole. This connection truly struck me because it reminded me of my own family and my two younger siblings. Surprisingly, her description matched my family pretty well. This is a terrific way to get the reader to truly humanize the plants in a sense. As a species we tend to place things that are not as advanced as us (by our own standards if I might add) in a category below us. Yet this comparison truly allows us to look at these plants as equals with social structures just as ours. They simply communicate through methods other than speech.Overall, this was a lovely book that picks up on the relationship between the human world and the natural world and really made me rethink a lot about picking random flowers on the street without asking them if I can first. She utilizes her life experience perfectly in order to recount her journey to a more respectful way of treating the environment around her. This book will make you rethink your actions towards the environment and get you thinking deeper about what we can do to keep plant knowledge alive.

I’m in a Facebook group that is what they call a “safe space.” It’s intended to be free from anything offensive, and I’ve genuinely learned quite a bit about how to be a more safe person. I was unaware of the term “ableist” prior to this group and I had no idea that there was anything called a “closed religion” or a “closed culture.” In one heated discussion thread, a member of the Orthodox Jewish community left the comment: “My religion is not for your entertainment.” Those words have stuck with me for a while. The remainder of the thread was an argument amongst two member of different Native American tribes, and the aforementioned Jewish person. One woman commented that, closed religion/culture or not, education goes a lot way to clear the path towards understanding, acceptance, and thus end discrimination and hatred towards any groups. That whole conversation has been taking up space in my brain for a long time.It’s not up to me to decide whether either of those points are correct. I think they both have value. However, I am an intensely curious human, so I struggle with the idea that closed religions or cultures should remain shrouded in mystery, but again, none of that is up to me. I do, however, sincerely appreciate the information I can find on closed religions and cultures, because I feel like I can be a better human by understanding others. Diversity is powerful, and a path to embracing diversity is forged through understanding and acceptance. When my co-admin of my online book club suggested this book for one of our selections, I jumped at the chance to read it.I was completely impressed that this woman decided to marry her love for botanical science with the Indigenous knowledge she grew up learning and continued to learn along the way. I will never underscore the importance of education, but as a former educator, I will also never underscore the importance of knowledge learned through lifetimes of doing. The Indigenous of North America have a vastly different relationship with the land than others, with the key being the word “relationship.” The view is that it has to be symbiotic, not one-sided, and it makes far more sense to me than the idea the land is simply there for humans to take from.Kimmerer’s book is like a series of vignettes; short stories, if you will, that illustrate how the Indigenous live with the land. I personally noticed that simply observing and appreciating the natural world can provide an abundance of insight that she was eventually able to apply to her institutional studies. Throughout this book, it is easy to see that she has a deep appreciation for all things “nature,” and I loved every part of it. I would recommend this book to anybody. There is a lot of knowledge contained within the stories in this book, and anybody with a heartbeat could benefit from reading it.