Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

If I hadn’t already been feeling a deep pull back to the earth, this book was everything I needed to choose a different path moving forward. The author starts out this beautiful book of connected essays by painting a picture of her young self, an aspiring scientist hoping for validation of the indigenous wisdom she’d been raised with. Little did she know that the scientific community and the traditional community rarely crossed paths and her career would become one of discovery and illuminating others in the lessons plants have to teach us. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass coincided with my departure from city life, delving into farming. I hope it isn’t just me and that this book’s popularity suggests there might be a movement afoot. A human understanding that healing lies somewhere beyond the pharmacies and hospitals the post-industrial population relies so heavily on. I will carry this book with me on my journey like a trusted friend, full of gratitude.

About Braiding Sweetgrass:

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. 

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