Hello! I’m Cheryl Dunn in Lincoln, NE for HPPR’s Radio Readers Fall Book Club. As someone who has the joyous job of teaching young adult plants, the book Braiding Sweetgrass really spoke to that connection to the plant world that I try to give my students.
Many of those shiny faces in the fall have very little knowledge about plants…what they are, why they are there, and what makes them unique. I begin the journey by overwhelming them with plant terms and scientific names. This same excitement is evident throughout Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book. While reading of her delight as students explore their surroundings, I understood those feelings.
Curiosity sits within all of us, yet so many of us lose it as we get older, and I find it my job to bring up that very needed skill. Robin asks, “Isn't this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?”
I think helping students find that curiosity is part of their gift. As they dissect their grasses, including Sweetgrass, they see the secrets that they hold and realize the detail that goes into their persistence.
The author takes you on the beginning of her academic journey as well with the chapter Asters and Goldenrods which is one of the most compelling chapters to me since it shows the author’s curiosity when she asks why the purple asters and yellow goldenrods look so beautiful growing together. The professor she is speaking with then tells her that this isn’t a scientific question, which is true if you follow the scientific method but then we learn the importance of these two flowers growing together in relation to pollinator visits.
So, as the author says “That September pairing of purple and gold is lived reciprocity; its wisdom is that the beauty of one is illuminated by the radiance of the other. Science and art, matter and spirit, Indigenous knowledge and Western science—can they be goldenrod and asters for each other?”
This type of pairing of Western Science and Indigenous ways are evident in another chapter, “The Teachings of Grass,” related to research done by one of her graduate students. As a student selects her research project on sweetgrass and presents her ideas to the department she is discouraged in continuing with the thought her research would not contribute to science because it is too steeped in non-traditional ways that would benefit mere basket makers that use this sweetgrass. In the end, she preservers and her conclusions are something we grassland researchers have known, which is pointed out, that left alone, a grass will not flourish.
The picking done by the sweetgrass basket makers improved the grass, just as cattle or bison are used to improve our grasslands. Regardless of what you think of cattle, the grass needs the cattle and the cattle need the grass…reciprocity. As Robin gives us the tools to learn this, as grassland researchers, we listened to the Bison and the Bison told us their story and relationship to the land.
In the end Robin reminds you that “Science and traditional knowledge may ask different questions and speak different languages, but they may converge when both truly listen to the plants.”
So, I challenge you, in the spirit of this book, to look more closely at the plants around you. They aren’t just the green things you mow or that hold the soil together, but they are complex and vital to our survival.
I’m Cheryl Dunn for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2023 Fall Read – Wisdom of the Natural World.
