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I’ve always loved historic house museums, loved peering beyond the velvet rope into a Victorian bedroom or a colonial kitchen and imagining the ghosts that wore those dresses, or worked the handle of that butter churn, or laid the fire in that grate... 

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

by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

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ISBN13: 9781571313560
ISBN10: 1571313567



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From Powells.com

Native American Heritage Month

A selection of pivotal works by Indigenous authors.


Staff Pick

In this luminous and wise book, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi Nation) makes a lyrical and convincing case for reimagining our relationship to nature as mutually beneficial. Taking the reader from her classroom to her lab to her (enviably abundant) garden to a rainforest in Oregon, Kimmerer demonstrates time and again how working with the land, as opposed to shaping it to one’s purpose, is a method rooted in Indigenous tradition and borne out by science. Brimming with knowledge and a deep love for the natural world, Braiding Sweetgrass is a hopeful guide to a better future for all life on our planet and an absolute joy to read. Recommended By Lucinda G., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take 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, a mother, and 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 a rich braid of 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 a wider 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.

Review

“Braiding Sweetgrass is instructive poetry. Robin Wall Kimmerer has put the spiritual relationship that Chief Seattle called the ‘web of life’ into writing. Industrial societies lack the understanding of the interrelationships that bind all living things — this book fills that void.” Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper, Onondaga Nation and Indigenous Environmental Leader

Review

“Robin Wall Kimmerer opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate.” Krista Tippett, host of On Being

Review

“Robin Wall Kimmerer has written an extraordinary book, showing how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most — the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain and a meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page.” Jane Goodall

Review

“Robin Wall Kimmerer is writer of rare grace. She writes about the natural world from a place of such abundant passion that one can never quite see the world the same way after having seen it through Kimmerer’s eyes.” Elizabeth Gilbert

About the Author

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, a scientist, a decorated professor, and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. A SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, she lives in Fabius, NY.

 


Powell's Staff on PowellsBooks.Blog

Surprisingly, for people who spend a minimum of 40 hours a week up-close and personal with books, a lot of us aren't totally comfortable with the status of our relationships. Are we giving our books the care and attention they deserve?...

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5 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (4 comments)

`
Leah , May 21, 2020
Absolutely one of my all-time favorite books. I've encouraged so many people to read it, I believe I've added least 8 other fans of this book to the world. A beautiful interweaving of Native American knowledge, folklore, and creation stories, combined with scientific botany knowledge, delicately interspersed with compelling personal stories throughout. I've already read it twice and found it just as compelling, emotional, and inspiring the second time. I look forward to using some of the wisdom about plants, balance, family, and Mother Earth found in this book in my own life and hopefully one day in the lives of my future children.

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DC , June 12, 2018 (view all comments by DC)
Like the two previous reviewers, I recommend this book highly. It has changed how I garden, as one example. I now discuss things with the plants. I listen more. If you have any inclination, do read this book. It may allow some of the barriers to drop away and allow you to be more at home with your world.

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Ruth P. , October 01, 2016
I am planning on buying 10 copies of this book to give to friends. It is a book filled with beauty that is teaching me to see the world in a different way. It is a slow read--like slow food and slow dance music--wonderfully sensual, filled with word pictures and comparisons of eco-botanical science and the stories and wisdom from Native American beliefs, teachings and ways of life. The author will take a traditional belief and use scientific method to figure out why it works. For instance, the planting of the 3 sisters (corn, beans and squash) together, while producing foods that go well together, also turns out to produce more crop than planting them separately. The corn provides the stalks to support the beans. The beans fix the nitrogen in in soil that the corn needs to grow and the squash shades the roots of the other two. The three plants help with pollination and give nutrients to each other that are needed. The native way of planting and harvesting food often prevents the need for wide spread fertilizers and spraying. The planting of purple and yellow flowers together allows the eye system of bees to see the plants optimally and leads to better pollination. Finally she asks how the world would be different if we humans perceived all life as sacred, if we followed rules of fair/wise harvesting and hunting.

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Tasha H , October 21, 2014 (view all comments by Tasha H)
Robin Wall Kimmerer weaves together modern botany, Native American understandings of how the world works, and her own history to create a book I will read and re-read, a chapter at a time, for years to come. I will never look at the forest floor, or my relationship to the gifts I am given everyday, the same way again. If your heart is hurting from all the pain rocking the world, read this book, and let it gift you will possibilities.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781571313560
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
09/01/2014
Publisher:
MILKWEED EDITIONS
Pages:
390
Height:
1.10IN
Width:
5.50IN
Thickness:
1.00
Copyright Year:
2014
Author:
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Subject:
Biology-Reference

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