Introduction
As I write this review, an aggressive storm has been raging adamantly through the night and now well into the day. On top of the inclement weather, hurricane force winds have taken powerlines to the ground and with them internet service. Though this is an extreme case, with a potential harsh winter approaching it may be in our best interest to use this storm as a prompt to begin thinking of what we might do, as we will be inevitably house ridden. In that spirit, this week’s blog is a book review of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
Relatively speaking, in cosmological time, expression through writing is a young practice. Each generation is only lucky enough to be gifted the timely work of a handful of contemporary writers. Such writers eloquently illustrate and address the challenges of the times. Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of these gifted contemporary writers of our time. Kimmerer is unique in the fact that not only is she a member of the nation Potawatomi, but she is also a poet, a mother, and trained biologist. Kimmerer’s apt and brave reflections on her ethnicity, livelihoods and lived experience in relation to the environment gives her an uncontested pen and intellectual foundation to work from. Further, with the threats of environmental degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss, Braiding Sweetgrass’ importance is paramount.
Review
I am often told that learning environmental concepts can be needlessly arduous. Concepts are made unattainable to the public by writers who immaturely exercise writing imbued with heady words and niche, highly abstract logic. These practices often establish a mental barrier to a readers’ successful uptake of ideas. On a literary basis alone Kimmerer’s work deserves praise. Kimmerer casually implements a poetic approach in her communication of complex environmental ideas. Hints – and at times direct use – of poetry in Braiding Sweetgrass illustrate challenging ideas with ease. As a testament to Kimmerer’s writing throughout the book, complex concepts become effortlessly easy to grasp, recognize, and arguably most importantly, enact in our lives beyond the pages. Take for example how Kimmerer illustrates the Honorable Harvest. (1)
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer
Never take first. Never take the last,
Take only what you need
Take only that which is given
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
By simply reading this even without Kimmerer’s prior expositions, the reader can still grasp how to live in harmony with the environment. Kimmerer’s style is firm, challenging and caring. In this it stands toe to toe with advice I only could have learned through my careful listening of individuals from around the globe and demanding academic reading. Yet Kimmerer effortlessly captures those same lessons with her pen.
Kimmerer effectively uses science and poetry in her arguments, yet her reasoning is equally developed by an incorporation of Indigenous ways of knowing. By combining these three, Kimmerer provides a balanced, levelheaded analysis of why and how institutions of science, and other Western knowledge systems, can fall short of the mark. For example, in an instance where Kimmerer found herself walking with a Navajo woman, Kimmerer conveys that she is not only taught the native names of plants in her valley, but “where each plant lived, when it bloomed, its relationships, what medicine it offered, who ate it, who lined its fibers, its origin myths, how it got its name and what it has to tell us”. Kimmerer says the Navajo woman “spoke of beauty.. her words were like smelling salts walking me to what I had known back when I was picking strawberries”. (2) As a PHD, Kimmerer comments that she was humbled and recognized how narrow her scientific views were. Kimmerer goes on to echo Greg Cajete who says, “Indigenous ways of knowing understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion and spirit”. Kimmerer notes that science “privileges one, possibly two of those ways of knowing mind and body”.
Kimmerer also pays recognition to science and its practitioners’ praiseworthy attributes. Most notably, Kimmerer’s multidisciplinary, balanced mindset allows us a chance to observe what ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ looks like for the individual. A new concept in integrative science and co-learning, Two-Eyed Seeing - introduced by Mi’kmaw Elder, Albert Marshall – “refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing.” (3) Concepts such as Two-Eyed Seeing may help humanity realize collective actualization of combatting climate breakdown, and global biodiversity loss. Two-Eyed Seeing progresses through fostering a wholistic vision of the environment built on the strengths of inclusion and a diversity of knowledges. Kimmerer generally expresses and exemplifies values of Two-Eyed Seeing while making a strong commitment to collaboration throughout her work. Kimmerer’s consistent back and forth discussions of general collaboration and Two-Eyed Seeing specifically may inspire even the most established scientists and science enthusiasts to reassess their approach, practice and mindset.
Breton Lorway, one of LO’s fellows and an aspiring field ecologist, reflected for this blog on how Braiding Sweetgrass shaped one of her defining moments at Mount Holyoke College:
“During my senior year, I was given an open-ended assignment in my Environmental Studies senior seminar. The project could be about anything and could be presented however we saw fit, so long as we could relate it to our Environmental Studies education. While many of my peers were crafting beautifully organized research, I was at a loss. I felt overwhelmed and uninspired. I even lamented on a phone call with my mother that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a scientist after all. Luckily, I happened to be reading Braiding Sweetgrass on my own at the time, and right when I was feeling the most hopeless about my project, I reached the chapter titled, ‘Asters and Goldenrod.’
“Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously material and spiritual… Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? (4)
“As I read this chapter, I thought, how could I be so clueless? I wasn’t just an Environmental Studies major. I was also completing a minor in Studio Art. Why, until I read Kimmerer’s words, had I only considered research, and not thought to combine my two worlds? I do not have the experience Kimmerer has as an Indigenous person, so I will not say my experience was the same as hers. Her way of seeing, of marrying her spirituality with her scientific career, simply reminded me to respect ways of seeing beyond science and inspired me to consider marrying my emotional connection to creativity with my love for environmental science.
Asters and goldenrod, a symbiotic relationship. Photo by LO, 2021.
“The end of that semester, with Kimmerer as my leading inspiration, I turned in a series of prints that explored the union of scientific and spiritual approaches to viewing nature. In Braiding Sweetgrass she discusses her experiences in the contrasting worlds of science and soul, as she juxtaposes experiencing nature from an Indigenous perspective and her career in the hard sciences. Oftentimes, she finds that one combats the other—she does her best to see nature as more than just photosynthesis and food webs, to see its soul… but being a scientist means she must often put aside those sentiments to be taken seriously among her peers. Since reading Kimmerer’s words, I have been trying to bridge the gap between looking at the world as a scientist and as an artist, and to feel like I can be both. Beyond that, Kimmerer teaches that Indigenous knowledge and ways of seeing apart from Western science are essential to our world and hold the answers to many questions we otherwise will never be able to answer. We must make space for them…”
While Braiding Sweetgrass demonstrates the strengths of productive collaboration the book also offers invaluable insights into the human-nature relationship. In her anecdotes of motherhood, poetry, Indigenous storytelling, and scientific inquiry as they are related to land, Kimmerer stresses that everything the individual does - from restoring ponds, to listening to raindrops, to dropping kids off at school - is tied to what we learn from land, what gifts we receive, and how deeply we are embedded in it. Braiding Sweetgrass’ core contention in this sense is to challenge the false dichotomy of human and nature. Rather we need to view ourselves as humans in nature. Similarly, Elder Albert Marshall eloquently labels this relationship as Netukulimk.
Netukulimk is a Mi'kmaw understanding that, in Albert's words, ‘takes you into a place where you are very conscious of how the human two-leggeds are interdependent and interconnective with the natural world ... this philosophy / ideology is so ingrained in your subconscious that you are constantly aware of not creating an imbalance.’ Key concepts within this understanding are: co-existence, interrelativeness, interconnectiveness, and community spirit. Albert emphasizes that these four apply to our relationships with each other and with Mother Earth. (5)
These concepts that grow out of the understanding of the human in nature are critical in our fight for a viable future. They go beyond the important questions of societal organization and ask us to re-evaluate and define what the human self implies for the environment. Reflecting on these concepts result in coherent, powerful movements predicated on a changing of the self and societal patterns. Braiding Sweetgrass balances both concerns and invites us along for the journey with a preview of what eloquent, composed and powerful reevaluation of the self and society tied to land might look like. If you have not read it, we recommend that you put it at the top of your list for the winter’s reading.
(1) Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 2013. p. 183
(2) Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 2013. p. 44
(3) http://www.integrativescience.ca/Principles/TwoEyedSeeing/
(4) Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 2013. p. 46.
(5) http://www.integrativescience.ca/Principles/TwoEyedSeeing/