Braiding Sweetgrass
2013
- botany
- ecology
- potawatomi indians
- indian philosophy
- philosophy of nature
- human-plant relationships
- effect of human beings on
- nature
- indigenous peoples
- philosophy
The story
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. 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. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.
What it’s like
Warm, unhurried prose that reads like a long conversation on a porch in late summer, with the sensory world rendered closely on the page: moss on a fallen log, the sweet green smell of cut sweetgrass, the dense fragrance of a wetland at dusk, the particular way a maple leaf turns in wind. Kimmerer moves between scientist's precision and storyteller's warmth, so a passage on mosses or goldenrod can slide into an old Potawatomi tale about the Skywoman and the gift of the earth without any sense of seam. The voice is intimate and reflective, patient rather than lyrical for its own sake, and the essays are short enough to dip into a few at a time. Its emotional register is quiet hope with a grief running underneath, the mood of a gentle, low-stakes calm where attention itself becomes the subject. There is no violence, no sexual content, and little fear; the only sharpness comes from honest talk about environmental loss and the harm people do to land. It suits a rainy Sunday, a slow morning with coffee, or a bedtime chapter, and it is for readers who want to slow down, notice what grows around them, and think about what they owe the living world.
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