Francesca Forrest’s Reviews > Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants > Status Update

The nature of an object changes depending on how it comes into our lives. Something purchased: a commodity--you may be grateful to the maker and the seller, but you have no inherent obligation. A gift: creates relationship. Re: a gift of socks: " I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I'll wear them when she visits even if I don't like them."

"Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet ... It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present."

We have always known that the plants and animals have their own councils, and a common language. The trees, especially, we recognize as our teachers.

[note: I'd been dipping in but now I'm reading straight through]

[Land] was identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us.

--yes.

I've been dipping into this, but having just finished reading Ailton Krenak, and seeing the way what he writes dovetails with what I've seen quoted from this--and given how much a friend loved this--I think I'm going to attempt a beginning-to-end read.

We have a patch of sweetgrass growing near us, and this has reinvigorated my reading of this.

"Losing a plant can threaten a culture in much the same way as losing a language. Without sweetgrass, the grandmothers don't bring the granddaughters to the meadows in July. The what becomes of their stories? Without sweetgrass, what happens to the baskets?...When I was young, I had no one to tell me that, like the Mohawks, Potawatomi people revere sweetgrass as one of the four sacred plants." (253-254; 256) ;_;

"I like to think of [Nanabozho and Linnaeus] walking together ... Linnaeus lends Nanabozho his magnifying glass so he can see the tiny floral parts. Nanabozho gives Linnaeus a song so he can see their spirits. And neither is lonely."

"Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world. I'm trying to imagine what it would be likd going through life not knowing the names of the plants and animals around you ... Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection 'species loneliness'--a deep unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship."

"As he continued exploring the land, Nanabozho was given a new responsibility: to learn the names of all the beings. He watched them carefully to see how they lived and spoke with them to learn what gifts they carried... Right away he began to feel more at home and was not lonely anymore when he could call the others by name."