Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

This book goes beyond the need to stop climate change from heaping disasters on our planet and its inhabitants. It talks about the peaceful deep satisfaction of humans living in symbiosis with the land and its plants and animals and how the maker seems to have designed nature so that its components complement and serve each other. The author, an indigenous member of the Potawatome group of native Americans, has a PhD in botany, an area she chose because of her love for plants. She tries to balance her knowledge of Science with the legends of the Potawatome. These legends support a view of life that consists of gratitude for the land and its fruits as well as respect for how and how much they are used. They are almost as romantic as they are fanciful. The Potawatome believe that all parts of nature are close to sentient beings. In fact, plants gift their fruits to humans. Even fish are seen to gift their lives for food to humans.At first, I thought the author provided these native beliefs in order to explain how the world view of the Potawatome’s relationship with nature came about. As I read, it seemed that the author holds these ideas as highly valuable if not Potawatome gospel truth. She actually continues the practice as asking plants if she may have some. She doesn’t say how they answer, but it always appears to be “yes.” (From my limited experience with fishing, the desperate flopping of captured fish to escape seems to indicate no desire to gift their lives to anyone.) The author makes her points over and over again with different examples. My favorites were her recounting trips with her students to experience plants and earth in their natural habitats, where she correctly observes that the plants have taught the students what they’re about. Still, less repetition and fewer details about such things as making baskets from tree bark would have been appreciated. In fact, I fear those who most need to heed her message will be turned off by her adherence to Potawatome legends and prescriptions unrelated to preserving nature. She skims over use of seal-a-meal bags to gift hand grown rice and the ingredients in pancakes that are likely store bought. It was almost refreshing, however, that she put her daughters’ desire for a swimmable pool over the lives of tadpoles.I was disappointed that she quickly dismissed one effort at sustainability with no reason. Since, one of the Potawatome rules is that no one should ever gather more than half of the produce in an area in order that the site continues to provide, I expected more sympathy with the general idea. I also regret that there was not a word about evolution, and its role in the compatibility she sees between humans and nature before the world became industrialized. In fact, her book inspired me to conjecture that evolutions of varying life forms could be quite coordinated. We already know that species evolve when the climate changes so the same thing likely happens among different plant and animal species.I couldn’t believe the work she did in providing for her family via the Potawatome way while teaching classes and raising her children. When did she find time to write this fascinating book?If you enjoyed this book, you will enjoy the character Soledad in the book Inhabited. She is full blooded Lakota Sioux who uses sweetgrass in an unusual way, a way that rids a small Midwestern town of a menacing evil spirit.

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.

This excellent writer gently conveys her profound love and respect for the Earth and, in so doing, offers the reader a chance to also feel (or re-connect with) that as well. Beautiful and also super-important at this time when we humans are ravaging the Earth. Buy it, read it and give it to your friends as well!

A comprehensive story both personal and corporate, blending family adventures with important ecological findings. It give magical importance to everyday berries, wind power and yes, sweetgrass. Honoring indigenous family structures and the gifts of Mother Earth is the basic premise but told in entrancing prose. Needs to be read in small bites and savored.

This is a truly exceptional book. It is a letter of love, respect and gratitude to our Mother Earth. It is a prescription for how to restore our world and take the right path and turn back from the brink of our own destruction. The author puts her message across with gentleness and grace; this by no means lessens its impact.Wall Kimmerer draws on her own life experiences and her half North American Indian and half white settler ancestry. Her writing blends her academic botantical scientific learning with that of the North American indigenous way of life, knowledge and wisdom, with a capital W. She brings us fair and square to our modus operandi of live for today who cares about tomorrow, our throwaway society and our greed that can never be sated. It is clear that by comparison with our indigenous brotherhood we are absolutely the younger brother; the loafing teenager with no respect for anything their elders have to tell them, but rather thinking they know everything and they know best.The author, rightly in my opinion, says that all of the messages that we receive, practically on a daily basis, about the destruction that we have so far wrought to our home planet do not in fact spur us into action, but rather send those that care into a frozen state of despair. Her idea is rather to take relative baby steps to try to restore landscapes local to us. She gives an example of a wrecked landscape local to her that people are gradually trying to rescue and bring back to life with some success. It is also about developing a creed of gratitude and reciprocal relationship to our environment, only taking what is needed and never more. Wall Kimmerer gives plenty of examples of how this can be done.She is never sanctimonious and is the first to acknowledge that it is far easier to write about the correct way to live than to actually live it.For all who care about our planet and nature and for all who wish to learn about the balanced life that the North American Indians lived before the white settlers destroyed their culture and way of being, I would highly recommend this book to you.

I am a female forest firefighter in Northern Ontario Canada and this book came with me all fire season this year as my pleasure reading while out in the bush, and is now fully battered and loved and has ashy fingerprints ground into every page. I've always been a biology nerd and adore living and working in the bush , but this book managed to open my eyes and I felt like I was seeing everything in technicolor for the first time this year. The way I concieve of myself in relation to the natural world, as well as the philosophy from which I now interact with my environment on a daily basis has been completely revolutionized by this book. The very way that I walk through the woods is now different. Written with a fierce and honest beauty, Kimmerer's elegantly balanced prose is somehow ornate yet minimalistic all at once,. Her intersecting identities as indigenous, woman, mother, poet, and acclaimed biologist are all woven together in a beautiful tapestry in this work, which is itself a truly wondrous and sacred offering to creation. Her weaving together of traditional indigenous knowledge corroborated by today's biology has made the science of plants and ecosystems come alive for me in a way I've never experienced. It is now my favourite book of all time and I will read it again and again as long as I live and work in the forest. I encourage this book for literally anyone who even remotely 'enjoys the outdoors' or 'cares about the environment', especially those who live in North America and probably do not know nearly enough about the cosmology of the original peoples of this land. This land has rules, rules that indigenous people know and learned and honour and abide by, and we are all (uninvited and very violent settler colonizer) guests in this land and we have never bothered to learn the rules and customs and natural order of this place. She provides an excellent way forward for settlers who want to learn more and try to honour our precious environment and the land here and live right, without just co-opting or appropriating from native culture to try and do so. It's a complicated dilemma, how we can try to belong here in a place that our ancestors stole and colonized. But she handles that delicate dance with both grace and firm conviction. I wish this was required reading in highschools across the continent. I know I will be buying multiple copies over the years to give away!

I love this book. My all time favourite. A book full of information about ecology and botanical science, written in a beautiful, readable style. A rare combination of science, with native wisdom and knowledge.If I was marooned on a desert island, this would be the book I'd take. It's taught me that even if there were no other humans or animals about, I'd never need feel alone, if trees and plants were present. A great reminder that we humans have no more important a place, than any other species on this beautiful planet. I am so grateful and glad I read it.

This book was recommended to me by my great-niece as a book which has inspired her, and I am delighted to have read it. It is beautifully crafted, with such use of language that I felt the need to read several parts two or three times over to revel in the beauty of it. And I have learned from the wisdom shared in it. It has been a long read but a worthwhile one and it will influence my own stewardship of the world through the way that the author has twined together science and nature to teach me about the repricosity of living with the earth and its non-human people. A tiny bit preachy in parts, but not surprising when the message is so urgent. Thank you for fanning the fire!

Stunningly poetic. Informative, intriguing, inspiring. A book that took me by the hand and led me from despair to hope. A fabulous new way of looking at life and our place in the world. A marriage of science and creativity that faces problems and offers solutions. Braiding Sweetgrass has made a huge impact on the way I experience and live my life.