“Braiding Sweetgrass” deserves more recognition for Indigenous wisdom

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s visit and keynote on Jan. 26 deserves more discussion and appreciation, even nearly three weeks after the visit. Here is a book that has sold almost 1.5 million copies, topped multiple bestseller lists and received glowing reviews from scientists, poets and critics alike. The day after her keynote at SJU, The New York Times published an interview with Kimmerer. To say that she and her ideas are a big deal is an understatement—she is part of defining a new environmental movement.

We were beyond lucky to have her on campus. But for those who haven’t yet read “Braiding Sweetgrass,” here’s why her work is part of the growing revolution of values and why you should join it. “Braiding Sweetgrass” is a celebration of science enriched by grounding in Indigenous wisdom. As a Ph.D. botanist and college professor, Kimmerer knows the power of categorization, scientific method and clear speaking. As a student of Indigenous wisdom through her cultivated relationships with people and planet, she knows the importance of ceremony, metaphor and gratitude.

The sweetgrass in the title is itself a metaphor. Kimmerer’s writing weaves a three-stranded braid of science and spirit with her own life’s stories. She invites you to hold the bundled end of the sheaf of fragrant, sacred sweetgrass as she braids these ideas together. “Breathe it in,” she encourages in the preface, “and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.” I read “Braiding Sweetgrass” in preparation for Kimmerer’s visit, and I really did feel as if I was reading something I once knew, but forgot. After all, most cultures were indigenous to a place once, with habits, stories and even languages learned directly from the plants and animals and rocks and waters of that place.

We still long for that connection. In a nation of immigrants and an age of industrialization, when did your family and mine lose our bonds with nature? Have we forgotten who even now gives us our food, water and air? Kimmerer writes, “It is human perception that makes the world a gift.” Can you and I call these things gifts again and start asking what we can give in return? Let’s learn reciprocity from the Three Sisters of corn, squash and beans. Let’s take a trip to “Wal-Marsh” with Kimmerer’s ethnobotany class and feel their gratitude for the gifts of cattails, spruce roots and sunrise. Let’s seek the footprints of monstrous, greedy Windigo and defeat him together.

Let’s tell each other new stories and relearn the language of animacy, hope and rebirth that revitalizes us when all seems lost. Go watch the recording of Kimmerer’s talk if you didn’t see it in-person three weeks ago. It was just published on digitalcommons.csbsju.edu under Lectures and Events, and it’s about an hour long. Her book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” is available through interlibrary loan or Milkweed Publishing. But if you’d like, you can come and read my copy. I’ll hold the bundle while you braid.