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

In 1895, two “young willow whips” (11) cross the prairie and go fishing. The boys head home, having caught nothing. En route, one boy stubs his toe on a ripened pecan nut. They gather as many as they can and take them home. One of these boys is the author’s grandpa, “living in a shanty on the Oklahoma prairie when it was still ‘Indian Territory’” (12).

The word “pecan” is etymologically derived from Indigenous languages. After the Potawatomi’s forced removal from the Great Lakes region on the Trail of Death, the author’s ancestors were moved to reservations in Oklahoma. They lost their lands, names, and history, and many lost their lives. During one of these removals, they came across the “pigan” tree, which would eventually become “pecan” in English. Full of protein, nuts are “poor man’s meat” (13), the author writes.

Though harvested intermittently, pecan nuts ripen during the winter when food is scarce. All pecan trees bear fruit as one. This “boom and bust cycle” (14) allows them to be stored by animals and thus propagate more successfully, though science differs on the exact reasons why. The author sees a lesson in this: “All flourishing is mutual” (15).

As part of the US’s Indian Removal and assimilation policies, the federal government separated Indigenous children from “their families and cultures, sending them far away to school, long enough, they hoped, to make them forget who they were” (17). Children were kidnapped outright, or their parents were coerced, blackmailed, or threatened into giving them up. Eventually, the Indigenous peoples were given the choice between becoming US citizens and surrendering “their allegiance to land held in common” (18). To decide, they met at a place named Pecan Grove. Many accepted and headed to Oklahoma. Unlike the pecan trees, they did not remain unified. Soon, many lost their land anyway. Decades later, their descendants gathered in Oklahoma and tried to stand together “for the benefit of all” (21), just like the pecan trees.

The author describes herself as being “raised by strawberries” (22), in that the nearby fields of wild strawberries provided “[her] sense of the world” (22) when she was growing up. She describes playing in the fields after school; even now, fresh strawberries feel to her like “an unexpected gift” (23). In the Creation myth, Skywoman’s daughter died during childbirth; strawberries and the other “most revered plants” (23) grew from her buried body. Like the gifts harvested from nature, the author’s family gave one another almost exclusively homemade gifts. Her mother baked her father a strawberry shortcake each year on his birthday, for example.

The author notes the difference between items bought as a commodity and those received as a handmade gift: “A gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people” (26). For this reason, she adds, “we do not sell sweetgrass” (26); it should only be given. Those who pick it should do so “properly and respectfully” (27), giving a gift back to the earth in return.

According to the author, the offensive phrase “Indian giver”—a pejorative to describe a person who gives something away and later asks for it back—“derives from a fascinating cross-cultural misinterpretation” (27). The settlers, with their concept of private property, saw gifts as valuable items that should be retained. The Indigenous people understood “the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity” (28) and expected the cycle of gift-giving to continue. In the paradigm of private property, the gift is free. In the gift economy, the gift “creates a set of relationships” (28). The author imagines a market square that operates under the gift economy; any attempt to pay is refused, the author feels a natural sense of self-restraint, and there is an understanding that the givers can expect gifts in kind.

Such a change in perception alters “our human relationship with strawberries” (30); in gift economies, objects remain plentiful “because they are treated as gifts” (30), transforming the fundamental comprehension of a commodity. The author advises readers to reject the buying and selling of gifts and to choose instead a gift economy over a market economy whenever possible.

The author spends her childhood summers “canoe camping in the Adirondacks” (33). Every morning, her father makes coffee and then pours some out on the ground to run into the lake—an offering for “the gods of Tahawus” (34). Tahawus is the Algonquin name for the highest peak in the Adirondacks, Mount Marcy. On these trips, the author learns about the public names for mountains and bodies of water, which differ from their “true names.” She also learns that places were “home to others before we arrived and long after we left” (34). Whenever they leave a campsite, they ensure that it is “spotless.” They also leave firewood and kindling for the next arrivals.

When other children are in church, the author’s parents take the family out into the natural world. On reaching adolescence, however, these trips begin to “leave [the author] angry or sad” (35), as though they are recreating a lost memory. This confusion gradually passes; later, she finds people with similar beliefs, built upon the same foundation of mutual respect for these connections with the natural world.

This understanding informs the author’s life and work. Rituals like pouring coffee onto the ground are “a vehicle for belonging” (37), connecting her to a lost lineage and reminding her of gifts and responsibilities. Years later, however, she learns that her father’s coffee ceremony is probably not rooted in ancient Indigenous traditions. According to her father, it may have begun simply as a way to pour out the grounds which got caught in the spout of the kettle. Nevertheless, he continued this ritual because it felt right—a “kind of thanks […] you could call it joy” (37). This is how ceremony “marries the mundane to the sacred” (37).

The author recalls her first days as a college freshman majoring in botany. In her rehearsed answer during her intake interview, Kimmerer says she always wanted to know “why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together” (39). This—and many similar questions—are “not science,” says her advisor, who views botany as a purely empirical concern.

According to Kimmerer, the laboratory is a different world that asks different questions than the ones that initially interested her. It is “reductionist, mechanist, and strictly objective” (42). At first, the author struggles with this, but she later thrives in a laboratory setting—so much so that she progresses to a master’s degree and a PhD. Then, she takes a faculty position. Feeling as though she is still missing something, she begins a “long, slow journey back to [her] people” (44). She returns again to the question of asters and goldenrod, discussing the scientific reasons for why they look so good beside one another. The scientific answer is that to the human eye and the bee’s eye, purple and gold are complementary colors. Kimmerer writes, “Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone” (46). This is a major revelation for the author. It speaks to her growing awareness of the importance of reciprocity in nature, and it helps reconcile her dual approach to the natural world, which is equal parts scientific and spiritual.

The author describes the process of becoming native in a place by speaking its language. On learning the Indigenous word “puhpowee”—“the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight” (49)—the author delights in the possibility of names and languages beyond the world of science. Many Indigenous languages, including the Potawatomi language, were forcibly suppressed and now have few fluent speakers. The author makes a concerted effort to relearn the language of her ancestors.

Learning nouns is easy enough for the author, but verbs are more complex. While around 30% of the English language is made up of verbs, 70% of Potawatomi words are verbs. Whereas many romance languages divide words into different genders, Potawatomi divides words into the animate and the inanimate. This grammar of animacy is not found in English, which reduces words to “either a human or a thing” (56). As a result, one of Kimmerer’s students argues, “[S]peaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to disrespect nature” (57). Along those same lines of thought, Kimmerer writes, “Learning the grammar of animacy could well be a restraint on our mindless exploitation of land” (58).