In their experiment, Kimmerer, her colleague, and their team demarcate plots of sweetgrass and treat each one according to several variables. But this series of vignettes begins to paint a larger picture as she describes a project she worked on with a fellow grad student to prove her hypothesis that sweetgrass would grow better with a human caregiver selectively harvesting it - a notion that goes against traditional Western science’s insistence that humans are separate from the environment, rather than an integral part of it.
Kimmerer seemed to be telling random stories with no clear direction. I must admit that I found this book hard to follow during the early chapters. She cleverly leads the reader on a wandering journey as she tells of her own experiences as a student, a teacher, a mother, a scientist, an Indigenous woman, and a being with personhood (other beings with personhood include trees, plants, animals, rivers, basically everything in the natural world), to discuss the damage we have done and are doing to indigenous culture, to the natural world, and by extension, to each other. Kimmerer’s book is a wonderfully woven selection of stories from her personal life, her career as an ecologist, and her own rediscovery of her Potawatomi heritage. I can’t remember the last time I have been so completely inspired by a book - inspired to take action, but also emotionally. This is another book I happened across while browsing Goodreads, and I gave it a shot to broaden my reading list a bit. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land.I recently listened to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land they’re about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons.
Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us? Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. “The ceremonies that persist-birthdays, weddings, funerals- focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition.
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