Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and
the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer ****
Braiding
Sweetgrass is an ambitious collection of essays that explores the intersection
of ecology, climate change, and Native American traditions, combining
scientific research with indigenous perspectives. Be prepared to be educated
and inspired by pecans, strawberries, and maple syrup.
Caveat
The
book is long and repetitive. One way to deal with this is to skip any essays that
do not pique your interest. Alternatively, skip this book entirely and read Braiding
Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the
Teachings of Plants
Some excerpts
Pecan mast fruiting metaphor/teaching
What we see is the power of unity. What
happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All
flourishing is mutual. Stick together, act as one. We Pecans have learned that
there is strength in unity, that the lone individual can be picked off as
easily as the tree that has fruited out of season.
Strawberry metaphor/gift
I was raised by strawberries, fields of them.
Not to exclude the maples, hemlocks, white pines, goldenrod, asters, violets,
and mosses of upstate New York, but it was the wild strawberries, beneath dewy
leaves on an almost-summer morning, who gave me my sense of the world, my place
in it. Behind our house were miles of old hay fields divided by stone walls,
long abandoned from farming but not yet grown up to forest. Strawberries first
shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift
comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you
without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to
you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed
and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery—as with random acts
of kindness, we do not know their source.
Gifts vs commodities
But what if those very same socks, red and
gray striped, were knitted by my grandmother and given to me as a gift? That
changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a
thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious
grandchild, I’ll wear them when she visits even if I don’t like them. When it’s
her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return. (Very codependent.)
Something is broken when the food comes on a
styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only
chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.
If the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in
motion, how wealthy we become.”Reciprocity.”
Why is anthropomorphism a problem? It
shouldn’t be.
Another student countered Andy’s argument.
“But we can’t say he or she. That would be anthropomorphism.” They are
well-schooled biologists who have been instructed, in no uncertain terms, never
to ascribe human characteristics to a study object, to another species. It’s a
cardinal sin that leads to a loss of objectivity. Carla pointed out that “it’s
also disrespectful to the animals. We shouldn’t project our perceptions onto
them. They have their own ways—they’re not just people in furry costumes.” Andy
countered, “But just because we don’t think of them as humans doesn’t mean they
aren’t beings. Isn’t it even more disrespectful to assume that we’re the only
species that counts as ‘persons’?” The arrogance of English is that the only
way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.
Ice is pure water and a very efficient way
to take the water out of the sap
When I returned in the morning, I found the
sap in the garbage can frozen hard. As I got the fire going again, I remembered
something I had heard about how our ancestors made maple sugar. The ice on the
surface was pure water, so I cracked it and threw it on the ground like a
broken window.
The Thanksgiving Address and the power
gratitude
Imagine raising children in a culture in which
gratitude is the first priority. Freida Jacques works at the Onondaga Nation
School. She is a clan mother, the school-community liaison, and a generous
teacher. She explains to me that the Thanksgiving Address embodies the Onondaga
relationship with the world. Each part of Creation is thanked in turn for
fulfilling its Creator-given duty to the others. “It reminds you every day that
you have enough,” she says. “More than enough. Everything needed to sustain life
is already here. When we do this, every day, it leads us to an outlook of
contentment and respect for all of Creation.” It’s such a simple thing, but we
all know the power of gratitude to incite a cycle of reciprocity. If my girls
run out the door with lunch in hand without a “Thanks, Mama!” I confess I get
to feeling a tad miserly with my time and energy. But when I get a hug of
appreciation, I want to stay up late to bake cookies for tomorrow’s lunch bag.
We know that appreciation begets abundance. Why should it not be so for Mother
Earth, who packs us a lunch every single day?
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