Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

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e. knowing does not build a culture of caring, an " indigenous worldview"), and further contrasts the "practice of science" from the "science worldview" (i. What is conspicuously absent from Kimmerer’s book is any meaningful references to the Indigenous experience in this country.

Environmental Philosophy says that this progression of headings "signals how Kimmerer's book functions not only as natural history but also as ceremony, the latter of which plays a decisive role in how Kimmerer comes to know the living world. Powerful book with lots of indigenous wisdom related to science, gratitude, and how we relate to the land. Kimmerer draws on her own experiences as a botanist and an indigenous woman to meticulously craft this book of essays about the importance of nurturing ecological awareness and developing a relationship with the natural world.

Consequently, when she preaches against the evils of consumer culture, trying to convince her suburban middle-class, college-educated, predominantly white readers to curtail their compulsive consumption of luxury goods, she seems oblivious to how little financial or material wealth Indians possess in the first place.

If you've never heard of the Indian Removal Act Braiding Sweetgrass may do some good by providing a third-hand account of some of its consequences, but for the most part it's just an aggravating waste of time.Ultimately, though, my biggest criticism of the book is its over-reliance on spirituality as a solution to very material problems. She doesn't do what many of us would do, that is, take them anyway and complain about how the leeks are bad this year. It happened when botanist/ecologist/professor/mother/Potawatami Native Kimmerer wrote an utterly sensible chapter about the notion that if I love the Earth, the Earth may love me back. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us.