iselima

subtitle that didn't fit in the subject line: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The "braid" of the the title refers to the interweaving of Western science with Indigenous knowledge to create a way of looking at the world that is stronger than either one alone. In a series of wide-ranging essays she elaborates on this idea from many angles, exploring the economic and cultural factors that lead us to feel cut off from the land that sustains us, and the consequences for our environment, our society, and our mental health.

I found the book effective at developing an intuitive sense of what she means and what it looks like to hold complementary truths and change our relationship with the planet. She argues that the problem isn't just seeing the environment as a possession to exploit, but also the common perception of "nature" as something separate from ourselves that we mustn't touch, like a fragile exhibit in a museum that we can only admire with our hands clasped behind our backs. Indigenous relationships with the land are mutual interactions, and active land management in the Americas long predates colonization. She points out that while those of us who aren't Indigenous can't appropriate those cultures, we can still cultivate a relationship of intimate reciprocity with the land we live on in our own way. I was struck by her comment that many North American settlers seem to have one foot on the land and one still on the boat, as if we're not really sure if we're staying. It's been a long time; maybe, for all our sakes, we need to start treating this like home.

The book is beautifully written, and struck me as deeply evocative of the Obama era in its themes of reaching across gulfs of misunderstanding and its appeals to hope. Kimmerer cautions that despair robs us of our agency, which was perhaps easier to say in 2013, but I believe the message is more relevant now than ever.

I have to admit that at close to 400 pages I think the book might be too long, and some of the later essays began to feel like they were reiterating earlier points rather than expanding upon them. It might read better if you interspersed the essays with reading other things rather than plowing straight through, but I have a hard time doing that so maybe it's on me. The book does offer a lot to think about and isn't the kind of material that can be digested quickly, and I expect I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

The flowering season comes and goes quickly here. The same hillside can be purple one week, yellow the next, and then everything's gone to seed. But we do have some wildflowers still going.



Black-eyed Susans.

( more flowers [3 photos] )

( flower aftermath: fruit [3 photos] )

( (not) mushrooms [1 photo] )

( birds [3 photos] )

( lepidoptera [4 photos] )

( my favorite sighting of the month: feed me, Seymour! [2 photos] )