Thursday, March 28, 2019

Braiding Sweetgrass

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer  391 pp.

Dr. Kimmerer is a botanist and plant scientist and a professor in the SUNY Environmental and Forest Biology Department. She is also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and learned about Native plant science from her family and tribal elders. Using her scientific and traditional knowledge, Kimmerer explains how living beings, including plants and animals, rely on each other for growth and survival, and how the current methods of farming, logging, industry, and construction have destroyed the fragile connections between all living things leading to environmental catastrophes and climate change. She also describes programs she has developed where botany students spend an extended time in a wilderness area studying and tabulating plant information while learning the ancient Native ways of survival and living a hunter-gatherer existence and the importance of being connected to the natural world. I have been recommending this book before I even finished it. I listened to the audiobook which is read by the author. 

No comments:

Post a Comment