I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass, as thick and shining as the plait that hung down my grandmother’s back. But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself. So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. This braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinaabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story — old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with the earth, a pharmacopoeia of healing stories that allow us to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other.
Braiding Sweetgrass is exactly what Robin Wall Kimmerer promises in the Preface — a weaving of scientific fact, indigenous ways of knowing, and stories from her own life — but unlike three equal-sized hanks making one even plait, this book reads like a collection of loosely connected essays with each of them weighting her three strands differently. This led to an unevenness in my reading experience (I enjoyed some bits quite a bit more than others; was intellectually engaged with some bits more than others), but despite this being a more challenging read than I had been anticipating, I think that Kimmerer’s message is vital and ultimately well-presented: We owe a debt of gratitude to the earth and its gifts and it’s time that we forge a relationship to our planet that’s based on reciprocity and not exploitation; just imagine if we gave back nourishingly to the land, didn’t take more than we needed, and shared what we harvested. If that sounds like a utopia, it’s only because we of the dominant North American settler culture don’t recognise that people lived like that on these lands for millennia before Christopher Columbus showed up; why wouldn’t we want that for ourselves? Kimmerer (as a Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, an ecologist, a mother, and a member of the Potawatomi Nation) understands that our exploitation of the earth is both ecologically unsustainable and unhealthy for the human soul, and in Braiding Sweetgrass, she shows us another way. Well worth any quibbles I might have with the formatting.
Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.
Kimmerer at one point references “species loneliness” — a feeling of sadness and isolation stemming from a disconnection to the rest of Creation — and through sharing stories of a different way of engaging with the natural world from her indigenous heritage, she starts us on a path that could heal the planet and ourselves. If we begin to recognise non-human entities — from birds and animals to trees, rocks, and water — as our relations, we will begin to pour love into them, and feel love pouring back to us. As a biologist, Kimmerer is able to demonstrate that this kind of thoughtful interaction is vital for the healing for the environment, and as an Anishinaabe woman, she offers it as a defence against “windigo” thinking; the kind of monstrous greed and hunger that leads to emptiness and soul-sickness. The stories that Kimmerer tells — of mindfully picking sweetgrass, rehabilitating her pond over the course of decades, helping migrating salamanders to cross a highway in the middle of a rainy night — show that she has spent her life putting her philosophy into action; for the betterment of her surroundings and to the benefit of her own soul. Would that we all lived like this.
Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.
Again, I didn’t love every bit of the writing here (some bits felt a bit too long, too repetitive, too indulgent), but the overall message was essential and encouraging; healing the earth begins with healing my personal relationship to my surroundings, and that’s definitely something I (and every other individual) can work on.
