Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. She brings these frameworks of understanding together in original ways, taking "us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of 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 will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

382 pages (October 2013)

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Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

Braiding Sweetgrass Discussion Questions from USFWS Conservation Library

 

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Gifts of the Land | A Guided Tour with Robin Wall Kimmerer:

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Title Read-alikes: A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants by Ruth Kassinger; Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World by Stephen Kellert; Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees by William Bryant Logan; Full Ecology: Repairing Our Relationship with the Natural World by Mary M. Clare & Gary Ferguson; World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants by Jane Goodall; Still Waters: The Secret World of Lakes by Curt Stager; Lessons from Plants by Beronda Montgomery; The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben; The Overstory by Richard Powers; An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: and Entangled Life; How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.