The very facts of the world are a poem. Light is turned to sugar. Salamanders find their way to ancestral ponds following magnetic lines radiating from the earth. The saliva of grazing buffalo causes the grass to grow taller. Tobacco seeds germinate when they smell smoke. Microbes in industrial waste can destroy mercury. Aren’t these stories we should all know? [loc. 5324]
My 'dip-into' book for most of 2021: Kimmerer's essays and stories reward contemplation: I don't think I would have appreciated the book as much if I'd read it cover to cover without breaks.
Kimmerer is a professor of botany and forest ecology, who is also a citizen of the Potawatomi nation. She describes Braiding Sweetgrass as 'a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. This braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story' [loc. 320] and combines folk tales and mythology with a profound understanding of ecology, botany and zoology. I was particularly intrigued by the ways in which traditional First Nations practices reflect a balance, almost a symbiosis, between humans and the plants and animals on which they rely. For example, the Nechesne people of Oregon greeted the annual return of salmon to the river, but didn't start fishing them until the fourth day after the first fish had been seen. This ceremony meant that more fish made it upstream into the forests, bringing nitrogen and nutrients as well as spawning the next generation. I was struck by the reciprocity inherent in this approach: a gift for a gift, a responsibility towards, well, food.
Kimmerer writes powerfully of her rediscovery of her own heritage: learning the language of her ancestors and marvelling at the world-view it facilitates. I shared her joy at discovering the word 'Puhpowee... “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.” As a biologist, I was stunned that such a word existed. In all its technical vocabulary, Western science has no such term'. [loc. 996] And I was moved to tears by some of her descriptions of the wounded natural world, of the damage that has been done: some of it irreversible, but not all. Kimmerer's grief for what's been lost is honest, raw and painful, but she has practical suggestions for repair and reparation.
There were points at which it would have been easy to tip into sentimentality, especially when Kimmerer echoes the animism, and the anthropomorphism, of myth and story. But I felt this was balanced by her scientific background and by her knack for interpolating fascinating facts. This book made me want to walk in the woods, to immerse myself in the natural world, to turn my back on the city and marvel at the worlds in a yard of hedgerow, a muddy riverbank, a rotting log. The urge to roam is less practical these days than before the pandemic, but I am determined to reroot myself, however briefly.
Fulfils the 'Memoir by an Indigenous Woman' prompt for the Reading Women Challenge 2021.
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