Major and Minor Quotes

“Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.” (“Skywoman Falling,” Planting Sweetgrass, p. 10)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: A key, recurring idea in Braiding Sweetgrass is that of the gift. Kimmerer views—and urges readers to view—the natural world through the lens of gift giving—to see blueberries, pecans, and willow bark not as resources to exploit or manage but as gifts. Whereas the goal of natural resource management is merely practical—to keep enjoying the resource without depleting it—the gift-giving lens suggests that nature be approached with gratitude and an intention to give back. 

It’s not by accident, either, that Kimmerer says plants “know” how to produce these gifts. Like the allusion to the “teachings of plants” in the book’s subtitle, this word choice points to the broader idea that nonhuman species have their own kinds of wisdom for humans to learn from. This knowledge takes the form of both practical solutions to the problems of survival and moral lessons about how to live. A biochemist, for instance, may study the compounds produced by a tree for potential use as medication; a traditional storyteller may use that same tree as an example of how to adapt gracefully to adversity. 

“There was a time when I teetered precariously with an awkward foot in each of two worlds—the scientific and the Indigenous. But then I learned to fly.” (“Asters and Goldenrod,” Planting Sweetgrass, p. 47)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: The “two worlds” that Kimmerer refers to here are often seen as incompatible, even today. In her own upbringing and scientific training, Kimmerer notes that she struggled to reconcile her wonder and reverence toward nature with the scientific emphasis on numbers, names, and data. She tells of initially feeling that she had to abandon her Indigenous values to adopt those of the scientific community, then gradually finding that the two could be fruitfully combined. Initially, Kimmerer says, she faced an uphill battle to convince fellow researchers that such a combination was worthwhile. Part of her work, in fact, has been to translate Indigenous knowledge into the “language” of scientific hypothesis testing and data gathering so that it can gain a proper audience with otherwise skeptical scientists and policy makers. 

In the passage that includes this quotation, Kimmerer goes on to describe how bees cross-pollinate flowers by moving between them to gather the nectar they need. This cross-pollination serves as her model for how different knowledge communities can come together to solve problems and achieve a fuller perspective. The remainder of Braiding Sweetgrass includes several examples of such collaboration: Indigenous herbalists share techniques that inform modern land management, and university-trained ecologists help to safeguard the harvest of traditional sacred plants. 

“A good mother grows into a richly eutrophic old woman, knowing that her work doesn’t end until she creates a home where all of life’s beings can flourish.” (“A Mother’s Work,” Tending Sweetgrass, p. 97)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: One of the biographical threads of Braiding Sweetgrass is Kimmerer’s journey of motherhood. Throughout the earlier chapters of the book especially, she tells of raising her daughters and imparting to them her values of care and reciprocity. In “A Mother’s Work,” she begins to grapple with the prospect of what is sometimes called the empty nest. What she comes to recognize, however, is that the responsibility to foster life did not start when her children were born and does not end when they are grown. Watching her daughters grow up is still, of course, bittersweet, and Kimmerer honors this fact in the next chapter, “The Consolation of Water Lilies.” 

Kimmerer draws on her own personal experiences throughout Braiding Sweetgrass, and she often frames her ecological ideas in terms of those experiences. Thus, she speaks here of motherhood instead of parenthood, of becoming an old woman instead of an old person. However, her broader point about fostering life can apply to anyone, and later in the book she gives powerful examples of men who also create good homes for plant and animal life. For instance, Franz Dolp, whose story is told in “Old-Growth Children,” leaves his own “richly eutrophic” legacy through his reforestation efforts. Considered as a whole, the stories in Braiding Sweetgrass present the stewardship of nature’s gifts as something in which all people can—and should—participate. 

“Together these plants—corn, beans, and squash—feed the people, feed the land, and feed our imaginations, telling us how we might live.” (“The Three Sisters,” Picking Sweetgrass, p. 129)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer

Analysis: Indigenous peoples throughout North America have long recognized the benefits of planting corn, squash, and beans together, an arrangement of crops known as the Three Sisters. The corn supports the bean vine, which enriches the soil, while the squash vines and leaves ward off predators and mitigate harsh sunlight. Each plant grows stronger and yields a better harvest than it would if not for its “sisters.” The improved yield “feeds the people,” and the added nitrogen in the soil “feeds the land.”  

Kimmerer takes this paradigm as an example of the wisdom to be gleaned from plants. The Three Sisters “feed our imaginations” by showing how a group with diverse gifts and abilities can combine those gifts to produce something greater than the sum of its parts. Following the suggestion of the term “sisters,” Kimmerer applies this idea to individual families, whose siblings often occupy different roles in the family culture and adopt different responsibilities. She notes, however, that Three Sisters-style arrangements can also be found in larger social groups and may even suggest a way forward for humans in connection to the natural world. A fruitful relationship, Kimmerer suggests, is one in which humans utilize their unique gifts while allowing nonhuman species to express theirs. 

“We need the Honorable Harvest today. But like the leeks and the marten, it is an endangered species.” (“The Honorable Harvest,” Picking Sweetgrass, p. 200)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: Kimmerer frequently mentions the Honorable Harvest—the Indigenous ethic of taking mindfully from nature and giving back. There are no strict rules that make a harvest “honorable,” whether of wild rice, deer meat, or marten fur. Instead, Kimmerer explains, there is the broad principle of taking no more than one needs, leaving enough for others, and giving (at a minimum) thanks for what is taken. When berries, nuts, or leeks are abundant, it may be honorable to take as many as one can carry; when they are scarce, the only honorable course may be to find some other source of food. 

Because the Honorable Harvest depends on the intentions of the one doing the harvesting, it is impossible to codify completely and difficult to enforce. Hence, it has become an “endangered species” in modern times, when the rules governing harvests of any kind are to be found on the statute books. Those rules, at least in principle, are more clear-cut and less reliant on the harvester’s interpretation, but they say nothing about mindset or attitude, qualities that Kimmerer suggests are ultimately essential to any sustainable relationship with the land. What’s needed, she argues, is an ethics grounded in reverence toward nature. People motivated by such reverence will ask whether it is wise or just to harvest a given plant or animal and not just whether it is legal. 

“In learning reciprocity, the hands can lead the heart.” (“Sitting in a Circle,” Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 240)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: A recurring message in Braiding Sweetgrass is that simple, well-intentioned actions can be an important first step in healing humanity’s relationship with nature. Kimmerer recognizes that in light of the many ecological disasters wrought by human industry and settlement, it can be easy to feel that there is no “good” way to relate to nature—nothing to do but hang a “Keep Out” sign on fragile habitats and try not to take up too much space. She argues that this is both an emotionally unfulfilling and a disempowering way to relate to the natural world. 

Instead, Kimmerer urges, taking some action—assisting with a habitat remediation effort, planting a garden, or even just going camping—can help restore the original attitude of reciprocal gift giving between humans and the “more-than-human world.” At the societal level, she acknowledges, there are many serious ethical questions about how human beings should treat the planet of which they are a part. Yet no amount of analysis, worry, or carbon credits will make a person feel that they are indeed part of nature. That attitude, she says, comes from action. Hence, in her teaching, Kimmerer favors the kind of backcountry field trips described in this chapter, ones in which students directly encounter woodland, montane, and marshland ecosystems and form their own ideas about how to respond. 

“What can we who recognize the debt possibly give back?” (“Old-Growth Children,” Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 280)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Analysis: Throughout Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer <Prod: link Kimmerer to char in major figures> argues from two basic premises: the “resources” of nature are better understood as gifts, and gifts demand reciprocation of some form. In “Sitting in a Circle,” she gets some pushback from her students on this latter idea, but she cites many examples of systems in which reciprocal gift giving is the norm. In addition to the “gift economies” briefly surveyed in “The Gift of Strawberries,” there are the potlatches, or gift-giving feasts, of Indigenous cultures in the Pacific Northwest and the celebratory giveaways called minidewak among the Potawatomi (“Epilogue: Returning the Gift”). All of these traditions come with the understanding that the gift will either be repaid in some capacity or “paid forward” to another. 

It is relatively easy to see how humans can reciprocate gifts among themselves, but here Kimmerer asks how a gift from nature can be repaid. This puzzle comes in for recurring discussion in Braiding Sweetgrass, and Kimmerer never proposes a simple, definitive solution. Instead, she offers some possibilities. Some say that gratitude itself, as a unique human endowment, is repayment enough; others have distinct traditions of offering herbs such as tobacco to the earth. The option that seems to appeal most to Kimmerer is taking thoughtful care of the environment that has given the gifts: weeding and watering the garden, for instance, or harvesting—but not overharvesting—the sweetgrass patches. 

“It is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” (“The Sacred and the Superfund,” Burning Sweetgrass, p. 340)

—Joanna Macy 

Analysis: Joanna Macy is an ecologist whose work promotes a turning away from environmental despair and toward constructive action, which she calls “The Work That Reconnects.” Her statement above encapsulates an idea that resonates throughout both her own philosophy and that of Burning Sweetgrass. Kimmerer has argued earlier that action, even simple and low-stakes action like planting a backyard garden, is necessary if one is to restore one’s relationship to the natural world. Her field trips with her botany and ethnobotany students serve, in part, to inspire them to take the first active steps toward such a relationship. The plants, animals, and terrain serve as teachers, Kimmerer says, without any prerequisite of spiritual enlightenment or academic knowledge. 

Here, Kimmerer cites Macy in connection with the larger projects of bioremediation and habitat restoration at Onondaga Lake. In her “haunted hayride” tour of the lake cleanup effort, Kimmerer notes that there are many imperfect initiatives in play to improve the lake environment and undo the damage of industrial pollution. Such efforts might be rejected precisely because of their imperfections: the reforestation project is using too many of the same kind of trees, for instance, or some native species are not being effectively brought back. Kimmerer suggests, however, that although nature will have the final say in any act of ecoengineering, the work has an important benefit in that it brings humans back into a relationship with the earth. 

“It’s tempting to call it altruism, but it’s not. There is nothing selfless about it.” (“Collateral Damage,” Burning Sweetgrass, p. 358)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer

Analysis: Kimmerer argues that environmentalism, even when it concerns species that are not particularly “useful” to humans, is not truly altruistic. Here, she is describing an effort to protect salamanders as they cross a road to reach their breeding ponds. As Kimmerer points out, salamanders are not thought of as especially charismatic or cute; they are very unlike the mammals that often serve as the poster children for conservation efforts. They do play a variety of ecological roles, including the control of insect populations through predation, but humans have little immediate practical reason to leave their homes at night and carry salamanders across a road. 

Yet, Kimmerer points out, people have a strong urge to feel a meaningful, reciprocal connection to nature. This urge to connect is sometimes called “species loneliness,” and soothing that loneliness even temporarily seems to be worth a good deal of trouble. In this connection, the example of the salamanders serves at least two purposes. On the one hand, the encounter hints that there is a natural human inclination to reach out to other species, an inclination strong enough to send people onto a dark country road on a cold spring night. On the other hand, if even this short episode of interspecies solidarity can bring real cheer and comfort, then living in true community with nature might cure “species loneliness” altogether. 

“Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making.” (“Epilogue: Returning the Gift,” p. 384)

—Robin Wall Kimmerer

Analysis: At the very end of Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer returns to the issues of gift giving and reciprocity that have recurred throughout the book. Here, she suggests an emphatic and empowering answer to the question of how to give back. She suggests that, just as at a minidewak, or ceremonial giveaway, the gifts can be diverse. At a large minidewak, a term Kimmerer translates as “they give from the heart,” not all gifts are necessarily traditional in form: plastic toys share space on the gift blankets with handmade crafts and wild foods. Likewise, the planetwide minidewak that Kimmerer proposes has space for both traditional and high-tech gifts. Some people may give back by devising solutions to ecological problems, others through their art and writing, and others through acts of compassion. 

The tone of this quotation—and of the closing passage overall—is confident and celebratory. Ethical questions of ecological indebtedness and doubts as to whether one even can give a gift to the earth are not definitely answered. However, they do not take center stage here. Instead, Kimmerer focuses on the feelings of love and gratitude that motivate spontaneous, creative, heartfelt gift giving. She seems to suggest that a culture of gratitude, deeply felt and widely shared, would bring about nothing less than “the renewal of the world.”