Braiding Sweetgrass Essay PDF

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Brandon Boulos ENGL 212 April 26, 2021 Fixing What Is Now Broken We are not the same people we once were. Over 300 years ago we were in tune with nature and embraced it. We saw nature as a gift. Now, we see it as an opportunity and disregard its importance. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, “Braiding Sweetgrass”, makes allusions to other faiths and contemporary issues This book is a story told through the eyes of Robin Kimmerer about her life growing up as a member of the Potawatomi people. She uses personal experiences and stories from her people’s culture to emphasize the significance of her relationship with nature. Kimmerer is a botanist who earned a master’s degree in botany 1983 from the University of Wisconsin along with he a PhD in plant ecology in. This knowledge of nature and clear expertise in the field allows her to use science and facts as a means to properly justify why the Potawatomi respect wilderness so much. Through her life experiences and knowledge, Robin Wall Kimmerer uses her knowledge of botany and plant ecology to deliver a message of how the relationship between humans and nature. Her examples of the Skywoman, the strawberry harvest, and the Windigo are all allusions to real life contemporary and environmental issues.

The book is divided into five sections: Planting Sweetgrass, Tending Sweetgrass, Picking Sweetgrass, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Burning Sweetgrass. The name of these titles is significant because they are named after the steps taken in using the sweetgrass plant. Sweetgrass is a symbol for spirituality, healing, and peace. “Planting Sweetgrass” presents the main concepts of reciprocity, gratitude and gift giving. These concepts are used to display a positive and healthy relationship with the environment. “Tending Sweetgrass” focuses on what the Earth does for humans. This section goes on to explain how humans take too much from the Earth and don’t

give back to Mother Earth. “Picking Sweetgrass” warns the reader of responsibilities that humans need to consider when it comes to the Earth. Reciprocal giving should be adopted since the world has given so much to allow humans to inhabit it. “Braiding Sweetgrass” is a section that focuses on the reconciliation between humans and the environment. The “Braiding” part of the title is meant for intertwining and fixing the once strong bond between man and nature. The last section, “Burning Sweetgrass”, concentrates on the devastating damage done to the environment caused by corporate greed. All of these sections give different perspectives of the relationship between nature and the people who extort it.

Kimmerer uses several allusions and metaphors to find ways to relate nature and humans. These are to display how much nature has given us and how much we have taken from it. The story of Skywoman is a great example of this relationship. In the Potawatomi culture, this is the story of a woman who falls from “Skyworld”. As she was falling, the animals would try to keep her from falling into the darkness in the world. She would find her new home on the back of a great turtle that offered her its shell. From the gifts that all the animals gave to her, she would create the Earth. “The land grew and grew as she danced her thanks from the dab of mud on Turtle’s back until the whole earth was made. Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals’ gifts coupled with her deep gratitude. Together they formed what we know today as Turtle Island, our home” (Kimmerer, 4). Nature granted the tools to create the world and humans took them for granted. Rather than continuously taking from the earth, people should give back and reciprocate the earth’s bounteousness. As humans continued living through the centuries, they took advantage of the earth’s generosity which is unlike what Skywoman and nature intended.

Kimmerer’s childhood experiences are added details to show how her relationship with nature affected her life. One of those experiences is the strawberry harvest. She grew up with fields that would give her strawberries as well as other gifts from the earth. She saw the strawberries as gifts because they came to her through no effort of her own. They would simply appear, and she would be indebted to nature for offering them such a fruitful gift. “I experienced the world in that time as a gift economy, ‘goods and services’ not purchased but received as gifts by the earth” (Kimmerer, 24). The gift economy differs from the wage economy as there is no income from giving gifts. Furthermore, every gift that her family made was homemade. The principle of the homemade gifts was to show the effort that went in to making a gift for someone. The fact someone put physical effort into a gift made it more special for the recipient. The earth will give humans land, food, energy and tools, but humans will see these as opportunities to exploit. Kimmerer used the strawberry harvest to show an example of gift giving between humans and nature. The only problem is that humans have now taken advantage of the earth’s generosity.

Robin Wall Kimmerer used a story that was taught to her when she was a child, the story of the Windigo. This story is similar to that of the boogeyman. This creature is a monster that feeds on the flesh of man and is born from another person giving into the cravings of cannibalism. Moreover, the Windigo is never satisfied with its meal. It only gets hungrier with every time it consumes another. It is “consumed by consumption” (Kimmerer, 305). Kimmerer reveals that the Windigo lives dormant inside all of us and can be detained by controlling one’s greed. “Traditional upbringing was designed to strengthen self-discipline, to build resistance

against the insidious germ of taking too much. The old teachings recognize that Windigo nature is in each of us so the monster was created in stories that we might learn why we should recoil from the greedy part of ourselves” (Kimmerer, 305-306). The moral of that story is to remind people to avoid the insatiable greed that lies within us. This analogy of greed can be alluded to deforestation by companies who are constantly trying to expand. No matter how big these companies grow, they will always aspire to be bigger. These “corporate Windigos” will never be satisfied with their profits. People like that are giving in to greed which damages the earth by taking advantage of the gifts it gives us. If companies were more contentious of the damage they are doing to nature and helped give back by avoiding deforestation, nature would appreciate what we do for it.

Robin Kimmerer’s uses her vast knowledge of the environment, plants and childhood stories to raise awareness for environmental issues in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”. The title itself is an allusion to reconciling the once strong relationship humans had with the earth. She uses analogies such as the Skywoman story, her history with the strawberry harvest and the mythology of the Windigo as evidence for contemporary problems in the world of environmentalism. Problems such as lack of thankfulness, environmental reciprocity, corporate greed. This book does not simply support environmentalism. It is giving reasons as to we would support this cause through the eyes of a culture that can be very misunderstood by the majority of the world. Native American people were one of the first people on earth and they view of nature has not changed since then. After reading this book, think about how humans can do a better job of saving the environment before it is too late, and we all begin to suffer the consequences.

Works Cited

“Braiding Sweetgrass Summary & Study Guide.” BookRags, BookRags, www.bookrags.com/studyguide-braiding-sweetgrass/#gsc.tab=0. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Book Club Kit. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013....