Hello! My name is Cheryl Dunn in Lincoln, Nebraska, for HPPR’s Radio Readers Fall Book Club.
Our first book is the nonfiction Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer which is an intriguing book that braids together indigenous traditions (specifically Potawatomi heritage), science, and really delves into the author’s botany profession. More than anything she takes you on a journey and teaches you science while making you understand the gifts that come from the land and why they are precious and finite. Each chapter compels you to the next by her ability to write so eloquently and with soulful messages that continually connect you to maybe experiences you had or ones that you should have. There are really five sections in this book: planting sweetgrass, tending sweetgrass, picking sweetgrass, braiding sweetgrass, and then burning sweetgrass. So, it really leads you through the cycle of life for sweetgrass.
The planting sweetgrass section is one that I liken to having a delicate seed that needs to be nurtured and tended to while it germinates and grows. The plant then gives you lessons on how it began and what it needs to thrive. The author lays the foundation of the significance of Native American traditions in particular her Potawatomi People and how they tell the story of Skywoman who brought light and plants to earth, one in particular was sweetgrass which was the first plant to grow. She then continues to talk about gifts that the land brought her as a child, such as pecans and strawberries, as well as the gifts that her family gave back to the land. Reciprocity. All the while she interjects stories of Native American history.
The next section is tending sweetgrass is one that a liken to the how we make a plant flourish under our care. The author takes you on a journey of how she raised her children and strengthened their and her connection to the land as a scientist, mother, and indigenous person. As a mother, it showed me how you can have your children make a lasting connection to all the things around them and so even after you are gone, they can still find comfort in Mother Nature.
The third section picking sweetgrass and fourth section braiding sweetgrass is a combination of growth from time and knowledge, specifically her Indigenous knowledge, that she uses to teach us her experiences and what she would have done differently. We also learn if done correctly picking sweetgrass can cause the plant to increase its’ growth in comparison to not being harvested at all. And therein lies the teachings related to reciprocity again…the mutualistic relationship that we should have with our natural world. And eventually those natural resources being finite and intertwined with one another will give out. She urges readers to live a more sustainable existence.
The last section burning sweetgrass, pays homage to what is to come if we keep doing the destructive things to our planet. She gives a unique perspective with her background of Indigenous spiritual knowledge and science of the loss of life as we know it due to destruction and climate change.
Her unique position as a professor of Botany and as an indigenous woman I believe has allowed to her to understand living things on a deeper level rather than just the basic “carbon-based” lifeform perspective. I encourage you to read this book and reflect on why each section is aptly named how I have done it here. How do each of these sections speak to you? All are of equal importance, but I feel like everyone will relate to some section more than others.
