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

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She brings these frameworks of understanding together in original ways, taking "us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" Elizabeth Gilbert. A mesmerizing storyteller, she shares legends from her Potawatomi ancestors to illustrate the culture of gratitude in which we all should live. woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabeckwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. The worst is that there's really nothing to object on the content of the book, one would have to be an asshole to be against appreciating nature and indigenous knowledge.

After reading this, I feel compelled to observe nature more closely, plant vegetables, look at possible relationships between plants, tap maple trees for syrup, something! Paul and I haven’t finished the book yet but it’s totally beautiful, captivating informative, sweet (smiley moments of sweetness), with great ancestor-tales side by side with scientific details and poetic language ….And don’t get me started on Kimmerer’s references to Skywoman and Nanabozho as “immigrants,” or her uncomfortable references to the Ojibwe stories about a cannibal monster. But I believe it is my job to walk as close to this latter world as I can without destroying my relationship with the former world. Robin Wall Kimmerer argues that science can be infused with folklore, stories, and history to enrich it and enhance it. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most—the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain and a meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page.

I want to also talk a little bit here about the quality of the prose, of the author’s ability to enchant the reader and capture the essence of the natural world through playing on every sense is of the highest quality. This is not a problem unique to Kimmerer as an environmentalist--we are all hypocrites, in the paradigm of climate change. I particularly liked her descriptions of clearing algae from a pond, the tedious process of syrup making from tree to table and helping salamanders cross a busy road as they crawled to their mating site. Rather than a linear story, each chapter is like an essay, and some blew me apart; others were more quiet and horrifying. Robin Wall Kimmerer has written an extraordinary book, showing how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people.Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. Only when people understand the symbiotic relationships that sustain them can they become people of corn [light people who live with gratitude and humility], capable of gratitude and reciprocity. A few weeks ago a friend began mentioning Braiding Sweetgrass on Facebook, then Tracy joined in and mentioned it again and I ended up visiting her—only our second in-person meeting in 23 years; how I originally met her when she, a complete stranger, rescued me at the desolate taxi-less train station of my childhood town on a dark night in 1999, well, it’s one of those stories with octopus legs into the future that is far too long to tell in a book review. And to end on a note of hope—because this really is a book of hope and potential restoration: Respiration—the source of energy that lets us farm and dance and speak.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. In the end, if Kimmerer thinks that her book is in any way going to help white Americans become Indigenous, which is the implication of the chapters in part four, Braiding Sweetgrass, she’s fooling herself, not to mention her readers.

Volume 4 of the Kinship series revolves around the question of interpersonal relations Which experiences expand our understanding of being human in relation to other-than-human beings? From 'Witness to Rain' [essay], BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2015 by Milkweed Editions.