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Reviews tagging 'Genocide'
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
75 reviews
thereadinghammock's review against another edition
Moderate: Genocide and Colonisation
Minor: Racism and Grief
dominic_t's review against another edition
5.0
I had heard about the Three Sisters (squash, beans, and corn), and I loved learning about why they grow so well together. The beans' vines wrap around the corn, which lifts their pods off the ground so that they don't get eaten by predators. The beans also provide nitrogen, which helps the corn and squash. The squash reduces weeds. I really hope I have enough space someday to grow a Three Sisters garden.
I also loved the chapter "Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket." The author talks about the process of weaving black ash baskets, starting from picking out a tree to cut down. It was really fascinating hearing about every step of the process.
The chapter "Sitting in a Circle" talked about foraging in a cattail marsh. It was fascinating to hear all the ways that you can use cattails and other marsh plants. I had no idea that you could eat cattails or that pollen had nutritional value.
"Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass" was another great chapter. One of her students was studying the best way to harvest sweetgrass to protect the population. The faculty committee thought she was wasting her time because they thought that harvesting sweetgrass would damage the population regardless of the harvesting method. She ran an experiment where she tried out different harvest methods, and she found that harvesting sweetgrass stimulated more growth, regardless of the method of harvest. It was a cool way to see how traditional knowledge is backed up by science.
Graphic: Genocide and Colonisation
readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition
4.0
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Excrement, Kidnapping, Car accident, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail
residential schools, trail of death, carlisle, pollution.thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Genocide and Colonisation
salemander's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Genocide, Racism, and Colonisation
bashsbooks's review against another edition
4.25
All-in-all, Braiding Sweetgrass is a fantastic personal essay collection about nature, culture, and our interpersonal (person here including nonhumans!) connections. I can understand perfectly why it is so popular and widely recommended. My friend and I listened the audiobook, so we not only appreciated the descriptions as written, but also, Kimmerer's steady and soothing voice as she read through the text she so lovingly crafted. My favorite takeaways from Braiding Sweetgrass were: the obvious and unabashed love Kimmerer has for the natural world, her willingness to combine traditional wisdom and hard science, her gentle encouragement to consider the world from a different perspective (especially that of a plant or an animal), and her fierce love and appreciate for her Potawatomi culture and heritage. I was also deeply compelled by her rumination on how to become indigenous to place and what obligations we have to others (both human and not). What I liked less was relatively minor by comparison; I thought she was a little uncomfortably committed to gender roles as 'natural' from time to time, and I wished that she came out and actually expanded on her issues with 'technology' rather than taking vague pot-shots at it here and there. Adjacently, my friend pointed out that the anecdote about an ex's attempted suicide in his car to make a point about human disconnectedness with nature was... messy, at best. But those were small moments, and with a book as long and expansive as this one, there were bound to be hangups here and there. Overall, fantastic book, and I highly recommend listening to the audiobook.
Graphic: Grief and Colonisation
Moderate: Animal death, Genocide, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Violence, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, and Cultural appropriation
Graphic descriptions of environmental disasters, pollution, and other eco-destructive activities.thenovelmaura's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Genocide and Colonisation
Moderate: Racism and Grief
wickedgrumpy's review against another edition
3.25
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Racism, Xenophobia, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Classism
rexpostfacto's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Genocide, Racial slurs, Racism, and Colonisation
Minor: Death, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, and War
booknerd_therapist's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Death, Genocide, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, and Colonisation