Braiding Sweetgrass: Book Review

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Kimmerer, 2013. Kimmerer is a Potawatomi, schooled in the indigenous knowledge of the natural world, and earning a PhD in botany. She came into academics with interesting knowledge like asters and golden rod plants growing together, which her academic advisor claimed was not science and she needed to change her perspective (rather than saying that science had no obvious way to test the proposition). She later did the research, discovering that the two together attracted more pollinators than either individually. This is mainly a memoir of Kimmerer merging native truths with science.

Preface. Kimmerer begins with the mythology of the sweet-smelling Mother Earth, with honor paid to her by braiding sweetgrass: “The braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is the intertwining of science, spirit, and story” (p. ix).

Skywoman Falling. The legends of the beginning, with sweetgrass the first plant to grow on earth, becoming a ceremonial plant and used in basket making: “when we braid sweetgrass, we are braiding the hair of Mother Earth.

The Council of Pecans. The indigenous word for any nut is pigan, which became pecan for specific nuts of the pecan hickory. Kimmerer’s ancestors were moved several times from around Lake Michigan, eventually to Oklahoma. Good years often depended on a good pecan harvest (a tree they were not familiar with). Indian agents generally were not friendly to the Indians, including sending children off the government boarding schools to strip away their indigenous culture. Apparently, the Constitution only protected the land rights of white male property owners.

The Gift of Strawberries. “Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. … Those fields of my childhood showered us with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, hickory nuts in the fall. … A gift is something for nothing, except that certain obligations are attached. … The indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity” (p. 23).  

When Kimmerer did research in the Andes, she went to the local village on market day, with papaya, tomatoes, and yucca roots available, but no shopper was paying, it was all a gift in a relationship of gratitude and reciprocity.

An Offering. “Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world” (p. 35).

Asters and Goldenrod. Kimmerer went to college in the class of 1975, majoring in botany to learn why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together, to be told by her advisor that was not what botanists concerned themselves with. She also wanted to know other things not considered science like why some stems worked well for basket making, why some were edible or medicinal—again told that that was art not science.

She shifted focus from a “natural history of experience” into science focused on how things worked (“reductionist, mechanistic, and strictly objective”). She was interested in the structure of leaves and the “alchemy of photosynthesis.” “Following the path of science trained me to separate, to distinguish perception from physical reality, to atomize complexity into its smallest components, to honor the chain of evidence and logic, to discern one thing from another, to savor the pleasure of precision” (p. 42). The advisor then stated: “She’s done remarkably well for an Indian girl.” [Slightly better, I suppose, than: “Injun squaw heap good.”]

She got a PhD and a faculty position: “I stepped off the path of indigenous knowledge” (p. 43). Native people could name the plants and how they survived the seasons, and which were medicines, with no training in botany. Robin reclaimed the native knowledge, like why goldenrod and aster were more beautiful together. They are purple and yellow, a reciprocal pair, which also made them more attractive to bees and other pollinators. Seeing with both perspectives improved the view of the world. The indigenous way was seeing: “mind, body, emotion, and spirit” (p. 46), like seeing the bees’ dance of cross-pollination.

Learning the Grammar of Animacy. “Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. … I did learn another language in science, though, one of careful observation, an intimate vocabulary that names each little part. … In scientific language our terminology is used to define the boundaries of our knowing. … What lies beyond our grasp remains unnamed” (p. 48). “English is a noun-based language somehow appropriate to a culture so obsessed with things. … Doesn’t this mean that speaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to disrespect nature?” (p. 53).

Maple Sugar Moon. “Maple sap flows like a stream of water with only a trace of sweetness. … So it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup” (p. 63). The Indians of New England tapped the sap of sugar maples to create maple syrup, an arduous process during cold winters. Maples determine when by photosensors in their buds and they keep the calendar. Robin determines syrup time based on hollows in the snow around the tree base, which she described. The buds send hormonal signals to the roots.

Witch Hazel. November is the time of witch hazel flowers. A Mother’s Work. “Ponds grow old … like the ecological idea of aging as progressive enrichment, rather than progressive loss” (p. 85). Consider pond wildlife exists like tadpoles. “Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of the Water. … The pond built my muscles, wove my baskets, mulched my garden, made my tea, and trellised my morning glories” (p. 94). She describes the way of the daughter and changing roles of women through phases of life: next self-reliance, the way of the mother, spiritual knowledge, and way of the teacher.

The Consolation of Water Lilies. Her daughter went to college far from home. “Against all the evolutionary imperative of protecting our gene pool, we give them car keys. And freedom” (p. 98). This includes the grief-containment system.

Alliance to Gratitude. Robin noted that the Pledge of Allegiance was puzzling; was it really a republic?  “Liberty and justice for all” seemed questionable. The Potawatomi have a sunrise ceremony of gratitude, as do many indigenous cultures. The Onondaga have a flag of Hiawatha’s wampum belt as a symbol of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The day begins and ends with the Thanksgiving Address as “words that come before all else.” Parts of the pledge: “We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one. … We are thankful to our Mother the Earth, for she gives us everything that we need in life. … To our Mother, we send thanksgiving, love, and respect. Now our minds are one” (p. 107). “We gather our minds to greet and thanks the teachers. … When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people” (p. 114).

Kimmerer gives thanks to food: “The leader of the berries is the strawberry, the first to ripen in the spring. … With one mind, we honor and thank all the food plants we harvest from the garden, especially the Three Sister who feed the people with such abundance’ (p. 109). More thanks to medicinal herbs and animals, raising kids in a culture of gratitude. Thanks to birds and the gift of their songs.

A critique of the capitalist economy: “In a consumer society, contentment is a

 radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness” (p. 111).  “Leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom” (p. 111). Thus, a pledge of interdependence. The Iroquois were masters of negotiation and survival. Their decision-making was by consensus.  

 Epiphany in the Beans. Her garden had raspberries, squash, basil, potatoes, asparagus, lettuce, kale, beets, broccoli, peppers, brussels sprouts, carrots, dill, onions, leeks, and spinach, trying to build “sustainable relationships with ecosystems” (p. 122). Plant science is “a matter of increasing net primary productivity of the artificially selected domesticated genotypes, manipulating environmental conditions through inputs of labor and materials to enhance yields” (p. 123).

Kimmerer prefers loving behaviors: “nurturing health and well-being, protection from harm, encouraging individual growth and development, desire to be together, generous sharing of resources, working together for a common goal, celebration of shared values, interdependence, sacrifices by one for the other, creation of beauty” (p. 123).

The Three Sisters. Corn, pole beans, and squash, developed thanks to Mesoamerican genetic engineering. “Women have mounded up the earth and laid these three seeds in the ground, all in the same square foot of soil” (p. 1290).

Planted in May, the corn takes in moisture, which “triggers enzymes under the skin that cleave the starch into sugars, fueling the growth of the corn embryo. … Corn is the first to emerge from the ground. … The bean seed swells … sending a rootling deep in the ground. The stem bends to the shape of a hook and elbow their way above ground. … Pumpkins and squash take their time. … The bean focuses on leaf growth while the corn concentrates on height. … The bean shoot extends itself into a long vine [looking for] vertical support … to wrap itself around the corn. … Squash extents herself over the ground … setting up broad leaves like a stand of umbrellas. … a Map of balance and harmony. … a Three Sister garden yields more food than if you grew each of the sisters alone” (p. 130). Corn is a grass with fibrous roots and a shallow network. The beans have deep taproots and are legumes which fix nitrogen in the soil. Unity, balance, color.

Kimmerer has a Three Sisters potluck with corn-bread, three-bean salad, bean cakes, black bean chili, squash casserole and Three sister soup. They are a “nutritional triad.” Beans are high in protein, squash provides vitamins, corn carbs. Dessert was Indian pudding and maple corncakes. Corn was modified to fit the land and many varieties in different places. Modern agriculture modifies the land to fit the plant. Tractors make “clean” fields, then sprayers are used for fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket. Indigenous basket making “in the tradition of the Honorable Harvest: take only what you need and use everything you take. … Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” (p. 147). It turned out that black ash was dying out without the necessary light. The exception was near basket maker communities, partners in a symbiosis: respect and reciprocity.

Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of the Grass. You smell it before you see it. “There is a barrier of language and meaning between science and traditional knowledge, different ways of knowing, different ways of communicating. To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen. … Plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. … the right of passage for women scientists—the condescension, the verbal smackdown from academic authorities. … Getting scientists to consider the validity of indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold water. … The basket makers had given us the prerequisites of the scientific method: observation, pattern, and a testable hypothesis” (p. 157).

For sweetgrass it was watching the grass grow. Sweetgrass flourishes when it’s harvested and declines when it is not. Different worldviews [I call it blinders]. This was known to range scientists because grass growing points are just below the surface soil and use compensatory growth. Sweetgrass is in decline but flourishing near native communities. Traditional and scientific knowledge might converge when focusing on plants.

Maple Nation: A Citizenship Guide. The Maple Nation is in the northeast, home of sugar maples.

The Honorable Harvest. Monoculture of corn. After harvest, virtually nothing grows until the corn is planted in straight rows the following year. Native cultures warn of taking too much, in English called overconsumption. Apparently, American Indians are similar to indigenous people of Turkey, who have their own version of Honorable Harvest. Plus, the cultural shock of waste, not sustainable development.

On to timber, from the old method of low-impact practices to big machines and clear cutting wrecking the land. Ditto, mines for nickel, coal, and more. Add processing with furnaces making toxic rain and killing all living things in the immediate area. The marketplace makes “a Potemkin village of an ecosystem” (p. 199).

In the Footsteps of Nanobozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place. Europeans as Americans: “relentless materialist culture. … All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy” (p. 211).

The Sound of Silverbells. “The biologist Paul Ehrlich called ecology ‘the subversive science’ for its power to cause us to reconsider the place of humans in the natural world” (p. 217).

Sitting in a Circle. There is Maslow’s hierarchy. There is a discussion of cattails and their physiology to thrive. Plants as “those who take care of us.” As part of a graduate class, students are brought to an island to live off the land, including the freshwater marches as the home of cattails, plus “the most highly productive ecosystem on earth, rivaling the tropical rainforest. … The philosophy of reciprocity is beautiful in the abstract, but the practical is harder. … The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world” (p. 230).   

Burning Cascade Head. Salmon fishing. Indigenous meant protecting the salmon, westerners meant catching salmon for canning plus building dams. Estuaries are the nurseries for salmon, biodiverse, and productive. Dikes were built to turn estuaries into grazing pastures. Wild salmon were replaced by salmon hatcheries and “industrial fish.” The US Forest Service eventually started a restoration project for estuaries.

Putting Down Roots. “The Mohawk people were pushed from this generous valley in upstate New York to the very margins of the country” (p. 254). For those remaining the Thanksgiving Address remained. They were superb basket makers. Industrial pollution made traditional life unsafe. Some settled on 400 acres of woods at Kanatsiohareke: “The land speaks the language of renewal” (p. 257), there to reestablish their language and culture (replacing plows and cows). Sweetgrass (one of four sacred plants) was a source of materials for basket makers.

Umbilicaria: The Belly Button of the World. Lichen is a fungus and an algae, with a needed symbiosis: algae capable of photosynthesis, fungus to dissolve minerals for the pair and break them down into simpler components. Thus: “the fungi who discovered agriculture” (p. 271). There are thousands of species of fungi that can be part of lichen.

Old-Growth Children. Ecosystems are multi-layered and appear chaotic, but there are key interconnections. In the Pacific Northwest, the natives use both the forest and seafood, including salmon. Cedar was a tree of significant for many purposes. The ancient ones were nearly the size of redwoods. “The old-growth forest … is a model of efficiency, with layers of foliage in a multi-layered canopy that optimizes capture of solar energy” (p. 284). The area was opened to logging in the 1880s and they clearcut most of the ancient forests. Then the forests change. There are “early succession plant species” and grow quickly in full sun. This includes salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, and blackberry. These limit biodiversity.   

Witness to the Rain. Windigo Footprints. Somewhat similar to a zombie, the Windigo is voracious to eat humans, a metaphor for greed and concern only for themselves. Traditional upbringing strengthened self-discipline against taking too much—not to seize the power of the dark. An example was the Ecuador oil fields turning the Amazon black and other destruction of pipelines and petro-waste. Then the clear-cutting of the Oregon coast and coal strip mining. Here value is determined by the market. Versus the “commons-based values.”

The Sacred and the Superfund. “The Peacemaker and his allies, among them the real Hiawatha, spoke peace in times of terrible trouble” (p. 311), creating the Great Tree of Peace among the Iroquois. The same spot is a Superfund site on Onondaga Lake near Syracuse. Washington ordered troops to exterminate the Onondaga during the Revolution, reducing their number to a few hundred. Then, all treaties were broken. The return of the natives meant an industrial growth society back to a “life-sustaining civilization,” assuming clearing the damage.

People of Corn, People of Light. The Mayan creation story seems like most others, including humans shaped with mud by gods, then send a flood because of ingratitude. Corn became the sacred plant. All was described in the Mayan sacred text. The scientific worldview “is too often an enemy of ecological compassion” (p. 345). Culture interprets science usually for materialist perspectives, with humans dominant and in control. “What if Western scientists saw plants as their teachers rather than their subjects” (p. 346).

Collateral Damage. Salamanders and other amphibians, with Kimmerer trying to protect them as they migrate over their lifecycle (across a highway).

Shkitagen: People of the Seventh Fire. The birth forest provided bark for canoes, wigwam sheathing, and more. The Sacred Fire was for ceremonies. Historians and scholars were knowledge keepers.

Defeating Windigo. “I fear that a world made of gifts cannot coexist with a world made of commodities” (p. 374): hunter-gatherers as the original affluent society. “Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest peoples. … The market system artificially creates scarcity” (p. 376).

Epilogue: Returning the Gift. “Ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. … The earth is a gift that we must pass on” (p. 383).