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

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer offers an inspired weaving of Indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures Indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be humanity’s oldest teachers. As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of reciprocal relationships with the world.