Braiding Sweetgrass; Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed editions., 2015, Reissued in 2020  408 pp.

In a series of essays, Robin Wall Kimmerer brings her acumen as a botanist, professor, mother, indigenous scientist, and wordsmith to create an alchemy of clarity toward living on the Earth, our source.  Each essay stands beautifully on its own, and together they are transcendent.

How to Use Resources

The tensions between survival needs and the respectful use of resources are bedrock in native culture. Braiding Sweetgrass offers this ancient and sacred wisdom, supported by scientific study and contemporary retellings. Kimmerer, the alchemist, walks you into the woods, ponds, and prairies. She then reveals transformative truths in richly crafted tales and narratives. Want to know how to live on the Earth and not spoil it?  Read this book.

Fragrant Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass is “the fragrant, holy grass.” In Potawatomi, “it is called wiingaashk – the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth. Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten”(Preface). Sweetgrass is both a being and a metaphor of connection to source.  “A Sweetgrass braid is burned to create a ceremonial smudge that washes the recipient in kindness and compassion to heal the body and the spirit” (p. 301). Kimmerer seems to have smudged each page for the reader, because —despite the realistic portrayal of injustices to indigenous peoples and the planet—compassion, hope, and care are woven into each narrative thread.

Responsibilities to the Earth are Personal

“I am the woman with the basket” Kimmerer declares after an immersive walk into the woods searching for leeks, “and how I fill it is the question that matters.  If we are fully awake, a moral question arises as we extinguish the other lives around us on behalf of our own”(p.179).  In this essay, ‘The Honorable Harvest’, the elders, the Earth, cultures, hunters,  animals, and plants pass their wisdom through a judicious and compassionate writer to woo the reader to become a better version of themselves. This book does not have to be a beautiful elegy for a dying planet.  Kimmerer provokes a personal shift to recognize the responsibilities of reciprocity as we relearn how to live honorably with each other and Mother Earth. It’s one of those books you never forget and never cull from your shelves.