Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Although I had some quarrels with this book through the middle part, it successfully uses the sandwich technique and the beginning and ending left me really satisfied. Even though I found the author slightly up her high horse sometimes, I do think I can forget all of that in order to appreciate her teachings. Many of the stories were hard-hitting and quite revolutionary for me, and it has helped me see the world through newer lenses, learn more about all the living beings on Earth (and about Indigenous cultures specifically) and grow as a person. I feel like I pressured myself a bit in order to finish it, as a challenge, and I don't think it's because this book "begs to be read slowly" (I feel like I might have got a reading slump on it if I hadn't tried, because, as I mentioned, the middle parts were getting a bit hard for me for no particular reason, I think I just found them less pressing or connected to the core of the book), but just that I got frustrated at myself for not being able to read even though I wanted to. But, anyways, I'm really happy I finally got to read it, I don't think I'll ever re-read it (maybe some specific essays) but I do have a lot of underlined quotes that I hope to go back to in the future, if I ever waver or forget.

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woolgatherer's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.75

It took a while to get through Braiding Sweetgrass. I just had too many thoughts running through my head while reading. Kimmerer draws attention to Indigenous knowledge and how it can coexist and complement science when we approach nature. Relatedly, she highlights the importance of gratitude and reciprocity in our relationship with the earth, that plants can be our teachers, as well as how intertwined everything is in nature.

I found myself thinking the most about reciprocity during the months I (very slowly) made my way through this book. I reflected a lot about how much listening and giving back I’ve been doing in particular. This also grew to a broader question of whether I understand reciprocation in the spaces I exist in. It’s tough, and I sometimes feel defeated, not knowing where to begin. And, considering this, I really appreciated how Kimmerer guides us through oral tradition and her experiences to teach us how to care for the land we call “home” and ways we can give back to the earth.

While I appreciated the book’s messages, it sometimes felt as though Kimmerer had on rose-tinted glasses. It’s possible I’m just a cynic (especially as of late), but I’m not sure if we (by which I mean us settlers) have a genuine grasp of gratitude, let alone reciprocity. It sometimes feels as though she assumes we have this starting point, when, in reality, we probably don’t. Do we actually know how to express thanks and give back to the earth in a way that’s just? Maybe in small ways (she suggests planting a garden, for example), but what about bigger matters such as land and sovereignty? What then?

It’s important that we remember to listen to the earth and have love and joy for it. Really, Kimmerer expresses this so beautifully and with such kindness. However, I feel that we also need to keep in mind there are complicated layers of settlers’ relationship with land and our positionality that won’t be as gentle in approach, and the hardest part of that is swallowing that pill. I guess it’s here that you’re sort of seeing my thoughts going in all directions, which is why this “review” is a bit jumbled, haha.

Overall, this was a wonderful book to read, and there’s a lot to reflect on. That being said, I do think it’s fair to say that it barely scratches the surface of what Indigenous people have been talking about when it comes to the relationship between humans and the land we live on.

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rosequarterdrifting's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

favorite quotes:

Spoiler

In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as "the younger brothers of Creation." We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.

Spoiler

It's funny how the nature of an object—let's say a strawberry or a pair of socks—is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged "thank yous" with the clerk. I have paid for them and our reciprocity ended the minute handed her the money. The exchange ends once parity has been established, an equal exchange. They become my property. I don't write a thank-you note to JCPenney. 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 take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I'll wear them when she visits even if don't like them.

Spoiler

Had all the things in the market merely been a very low price, I probably aould have scooped up as much as I could. But when everything became a gift, I felt self-restraint. I didn't want to take too much.

Spoiler

The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one. One of these stories sustains the living systems on which we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the
world. One of these stories asks us
to bestow our own gifts in kind, to
celebrate our kinship with the world. We can choose. If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in
motion, how wealthy we become.

Spoiler

Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world.

Spoiler

I realize that those first homesteaders were not the beneficiaries of that shade, at least not as a young couple. They must have meant for their people to stay here. Surely those two were sleeping up on Cemetery Road long before the shade arched across the road. I am living today in the shady future trees planted with their wedding vows. They could not have imagined me , many generations later, and yet I live in the gift of their care. Could they have imagined that when my daughter Linden was married, she would choose leaves of maple sugar for the wedding giveaway?

Spoiler

The Thanksgiving Address reminds us that duties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?"

Spoiler

I don't have much patience with food proselytizers who refuse all but organic, free-range, fair-trade gerbil milk. We each do what we can; the Honorable Harvest is as much about the relationships as about the materials. A friend of mine says she buys just one green item a week—that's all she can do, so she does it.
"I want to vote with my dollar," she says. I can make choices because
have the disposable income to choose "green" over less-expensive goods, and I hope that will drive the market in the right direction. In the
food deserts of the South Side there
is no such choice, and the dishonor in that inequity runs far deeper than the food supply.

Spoiler

My students are always different after root gathering. There is
something tender in them, and open, as if they are emerging from the embrace of arms they did not know were there. Through them I get to remember what it is to open to the world as gift, to be flooded with the knowledge that the earth will take care of you, everything you need right there.

Spoiler

There are often other walkers here. I suppose that's what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they're trying to remember what it would be like to love the world.

Spoiler

Every drip it seems is changed by its relationship with life, whether it encounters moss or maple or fir bark or my hair. And we think of it as simply rain, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it.

Spoiler

The very facts of the world are a poem. Light is turned to sugar. Salamanders find their way to ancestral ponds following magnetic lines radiating from the earth. The saliva of grazing buffalo causes the grass to grow taller. Tobacco seeds germinate when they smell smoke.
Microbes in industrial waste can destroy mercury. Aren't these stories we should all know? Who is it who holds them? In long-ago times, it was the elders who carried them. In the twenty-first century, it is often scientists who first hear them. The stories of buffalo and salamanders belong to the land, but scientists are one of their translators and carry a large responsibility for conveying
their stories to the world. And yet scientists mostly convey these stories in a language that excludes readers. Conventions for efficiency and precision make scientific papers very difficult for the rest of the world, and if the truth be known, for us as well. This has serious consequences for public dialogue about the environment and therefore for real democracy, especially the democracy of all species. For what good is knowing, unless it is coupled with caring?

Spoiler

I maintain that the destructive lens of the people made of wood is not science itself, but the lens of the scientific worldview, the illusion of dominance and control, the separation of knowledge from responsibility.

Spoiler

Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defense of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.

In return for the privilege of breath.

i think most ppl should read this book but i had some ?? moments

the chapter on language emphasized linguistic relativity almost to the point of linguistic determinism which seemed really out of place, especially given how often that theory has been used to dehumanize indigenous people in the americas specifically

i felt like i didn't get a good handle on her ideas around colonizers becoming indigenous to place. it seemed a little too open-ended for me there

also the beginning of the book listed sponsors or something and one of them was Wells Fargo ? idk what was goin on there

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