Braiding Sweetgrass Review

Chris Roppolo

Prof. Melissa Santos

ENGL 102

13 February 2018

Braiding Sweetgrass Review

            Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a non-fiction book about the teachings brought to her by her indigenous upbringing. Kimmerer teaches about the importance of reciprocity and how you only take what you need from nature and nothing more. She shows how other living beings, such as strawberries, sweetgrass, squash, corn, and beans, give us gifts and lessons about life if we just learn to listen to them and hear their voices. The book starts with the Potawatomi creation story about Skywoman and the creation of turtle island and how everything came to be with the seeds that Skywoman brought from the branch that you grabbed on to as she fell. Throughout the book, Kimmerer shares stories and lessons about how a wider ecological consciousness requires a reciprocal relationship with the world and all it’s beings.

            The book does a great job with explaining the indigenous teachings from Kimmerer’s heritage and gives examples of how to use the teachings to help the environment. The way she says these stories and the examples she gives about how humans do not respect nature as well as we used to and how greed, or as mentioned in the book their Windingo, takes over most people and their government, has really settled with me and makes me think more about what I do and to only take what I need from my hunting lifestyle all the way to me shopping for groceries. The quote “We’ve accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed but never satisfy.” (Kimmerer 308) has stuck with me and made me realize that it is not what I buy that will make me happy, but who I spend it with and the kindness that I am able to spread is what really will satisfy my “hunger” to be happy in life. In a review I found online about the book, Sue Ellis, the writer of the review, states “Braiding Sweetgrass has the feel of a bible, and the essays that make up the chapters are like sweet psalms that gently admonish and instruct with practical advise to help us save our environment.” (Ellis, bluelyrareview.com) I would agree fully to this quote because as I read this, it truly did feel like I was reading psalms from the bible and gave me the same sense of peace that I get from the psalms. This book has impacted my life in a positive way and I will highly recommend you read this book if you want to read something that will in turn make you rethink your lifestyle and cause you to change your life for the better.