This book goes beyond the need to stop climate change from heaping disasters on our planet and its inhabitants. It talks about the peaceful deep satisfaction of humans living in symbiosis with the land and its plants and animals and how the maker seems to have designed nature so that its components complement and serve each other. The author, an indigenous member of the Potawatome group of native Americans, has a PhD in botany, an area she chose because of her love for plants. She tries to balance her knowledge of Science with the legends of the Potawatome. These legends support a view of life that consists of gratitude for the land and its fruits as well as respect for how and how much they are used. They are almost as romantic as they are fanciful. The Potawatome believe that all parts of nature are close to sentient beings. In fact, plants gift their fruits to humans. Even fish are seen to gift their lives for food to humans.
At first, I thought the author provided these native beliefs in order to explain how the world view of the Potawatome’s relationship with nature came about. As I read, it seemed that the author holds these ideas as highly valuable if not Potawatome gospel truth. She actually continues the practice as asking plants if she may have some. She doesn’t say how they answer, but it always appears to be “yes.” (From my limited experience with fishing, the desperate flopping of captured fish to escape seems to indicate no desire to gift their lives to anyone.) The author makes her points over and over again with different examples. My favorites were her recounting trips with her students to experience plants and earth in their natural habitats, where she correctly observes that the plants have taught the students what they’re about. Still, less repetition and fewer details about such things as making baskets from tree bark would have been appreciated. In fact, I fear those who most need to heed her message will be turned off by her adherence to Potawatome legends and prescriptions unrelated to preserving nature. She skims over use of seal-a-meal bags to gift hand grown rice and the ingredients in pancakes that are likely store bought. It was almost refreshing, however, that she put her daughters’ desire for a swimmable pool over the lives of tadpoles.
I was disappointed that she quickly dismissed one effort at sustainability with no reason. Since, one of the Potawatome rules is that no one should ever gather more than half of the produce in an area in order that the site continues to provide, I expected more sympathy with the general idea. I also regret that there was not a word about evolution, and its role in the compatibility she sees between humans and nature before the world became industrialized. In fact, her book inspired me to conjecture that evolutions of varying life forms could be quite coordinated. We already know that species evolve when the climate changes so the same thing likely happens among different plant and animal species.
I couldn’t believe the work she did in providing for her family via the Potawatome way while teaching classes and raising her children. When did she find time to write this fascinating book?
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Popular Highlights in this book
For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.Highlighted by 8,126 Kindle readers- Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.Highlighted by 3,923 Kindle readers
- The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.Highlighted by 3,694 Kindle readers
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A sense of reciprocity with earth....
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2021
I became attached to this book. After reading a chapter I would give myself the time to assimilate what I just read. It changed me. Deeply.The last few years my husband and I have been raising Monarchs. This led to increasing the number of native pollinator plants in our urban yard....which eventually became a pocket prairie. I have become more and more interested in the life of insects, plants and trees. He has a degree in wildlife biology. So, these things aren’t new to me. But, reading ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ have brought the concepts alive. I feel a very close relationship with these creatures of the wild. I also feel a sense of calm. Love it.
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2021
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