Braiding Sweetgrass: A Review in Conversation With My Grandmother
Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer and published in 2013, could be a story about the devastation wrought upon the earth by human beings or a testament to the resilience of our planet and the interconnectedness of all beings. It could be about a million subjects in between. This is not a single story written by one person, but a collection of knowledge that Indigenous people have possessed and passed on through the centuries.
The book is separated into individual essays. Some stories detail the lives of wild strawberries, some are philosophical tangents, some are about language and how it frames perspective. Choosing this book to read with my grandmother in the beginning of 2025 was intentional. Against the backdrop of a society rapidly diverging from the natural world and even knowingly harming our planet, I wanted to see what this author had to say about our prospects as humans. Did she think we were doomed, or did she have hope? And if the latter, what lessons could we take, and what small actions could we execute to improve our situation? My grandma had finished the entire volume before my copy had even arrived.
My grandmother was born in March of 1929. She has four children, eight grandchildren, and now eight great-grandchildren. I am the youngest of the grandchildren and the one most interested in animals, plants, nature, and being outside. I don’t normally read or write for my job, but my grandma outreads me by a factor of probably 20 to one, and I wanted to contribute to this e-zine in a way that would help me even the score. Not that I’ll ever catch up.
My grandma lives on the fourth floor of an apartment building with an enclosed balcony where she grows aloe vera that actually blooms (a striking achievement in Maryland’s climate) and overlooks a patch of grass where whitetail deer wander and graze. I was curious what she would think about a book about nature and how humans relate to the living environment. She summarizes the chapter that particularly stood out to her.
“Another chapter discusses the almost complete disaster of Onondaga Lake in upstate New York, caused by industrial development and millions of tons of waste materials dumped into the lake. The water that was carried became poison[ed] for drinking. The waste impeded the growth of rooted aquatic plants, which generate oxygen. But the Indigenous people continued to give thanks to the land because that is what they were taught to do.
In March 2005, the Onondaga Nation filed a complaint in federal court and reclaimed the title to their lost homelands. The corporations offered cleanup plans that provided minimal assistance while keeping costs low for themselves. Some 10 or so years later, Robin [the author] returned to school in Syracuse and visited the lake. She saw a glimpse of a cottonwood and then a view of a big cottonwood with thick, spreading branches. A few trees had become established along with clumps of shrubs, legumes, and more. Plants had become the restoration ecologists. Anthills had been seen. Birds, deer, and bugs were spotted. Shrubs were growing. And the smell of sweetgrass that Kimmerer called the ‘teacher of healing, a symbol of kindness and compassion.’
The restoration had begun, and the relationship between land and people was celebrated with a dance to honor the water and … that the lake would eventually be clean. To me, this was an inspiration and a story that lifted my hopes for the future.”
Seeing someone who has witnessed the crimes American industrialism has perpetrated upon the environment for the last 96 years and still has hope gives me hope.
Reciprocity between living things is one of the strongest themes in Braiding Sweetgrass, and this chapter offers a different take on that point of view. Much of the book is about how humans, plants, and animals can harmonize, giving and taking in balanced measure, but this chapter deals mainly with the consequences of that balance falling apart. I think the most important takeaway from this section of the book is that restoring a balance, righting a wrong, and rediscovering a better way of being in the world can take longer than you’d wish. But there is always hope to improve the situation.
Sometimes I can’t get a clear view of that hope. Maybe I have something to learn from my grandma about taking the long perspective.
Just focusing on one desired outcome closes other doors you may not even know are there.
For my part, I really enjoyed the story about how beans, squash, and corn produce a higher yield when planted together than they do when planted in fields exclusively made of their own kind. There is a relationship not yet understood among those plants that results in each of them becoming happier, healthier, and more productive when they grow together. The corn grows first and produces a pole on which the beans can then climb; the squash is a ground crawler that shades the soil with broad leaves.
It seems logical that if you want to grow corn, you would grow a whole field of corn. But when I read this chapter, the concept occurred to me that just focusing on the one desired outcome closes other doors you may not even know are there. Just as reducing a field to a single crop can lower yields and result in less healthy and productive plants, reducing the breadth of our experience of the world can lead to an anemic life. I prefer to have a vibrant life, even if it’s a messy tangle of vines and leaves.
Braiding Sweetgrass is a serious, heavy book at times. However, the concepts are so beautifully articulated and interwoven with stories that I would recommend this book to anyone. The anecdotes of Indigenous wisdom and the way that humanity reflects back to us through nature make this an absolutely worthwhile venture. My grandma and I both struggled with this book at various stages, but we were both ultimately glad we stuck it out and saw it through. I’m hoping to bring some of both my grandma’s and the author’s long-term optimism about the future with me when I plant my next garden.
