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# 2023-07-24 - Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer | |
Sky Woman Falling by Ernest Smith (1936) | |
Several friends recommended this book to me years ago. I wanted to | |
check it out, but it was backlogged with reservations at the library. | |
And then it was lost at my local library. Recently, i found it in | |
the shelves and checked it out! | |
One of my favorite chapters was The Gift of Strawberries, which | |
goes into depth about the gift economy and the nuance of gifts | |
versus commodities. | |
What follows are excerpts with my own writing in square brackets. | |
# The Council of Pecans | |
As unpredictable as life may be, we have even less control over the | |
stories they tell about us after we're gone. He'd laugh so hard to | |
hear that his great-grandchildren know him not as a decorated World | |
War I veteran, not as a skilled mechanic for newfangled automobiles, | |
but as a barefoot boy on the reservation running home in his | |
underwear with his pants stuffed with pecans. | |
The word "pecan"--comes to English from indigenous languages. Pigan | |
is a nut, any nut. | |
Butternuts, black walnuts, and pecans are closely related members of | |
the same family (Juglandaceae). Our people carried them wherever | |
they migrated... Pecans today trace the rivers through the prairies, | |
populating the fertile bottomlands where people settled. | |
In the old times, our elders say, the trees talked to each other. | |
There is now compelling evidence that our elders were right--the | |
trees ARE talking to one another. ... There is so much we cannot yet | |
sense with our limited human capacity. Tree conversations are still | |
far above our heads. | |
The Potawatomi Gathering of Nations reunites the people, an antidote | |
to the divide and conquer strategy that was used to separate our | |
people from each other and from our homelands. The synchrony of our | |
Gathering is determined by our leaders, but more importantly, there | |
is something like a mycorhizal network that unites us, an unseen | |
connection of history and family and responsibility to both our | |
ancestors and our children. As a nation, we are beginning to follow | |
the guidance of our elders the pecans by standing together for the | |
benefit of all. We are remembering what they said, that all | |
flourishing is mutual. | |
# The Gift of Strawberries | |
Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply | |
scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of | |
your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It | |
is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even | |
deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed | |
and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery--as with | |
random acts of kindness, we do not know their source. | |
Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular | |
relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to | |
reciprocate. | |
It's funny how the nature of an object--let's say a strawberry or a | |
pair of socks--is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, | |
as a gift or as a commodity. | |
As the scholar Lewis Hyde notes, "It is the cardinal difference | |
between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a | |
feeling-bond between two people." | |
That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value | |
increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to | |
us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is | |
shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for | |
societies steeped in notions of private property, where others are, | |
by definition, excluded from sharing. | |
The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity. In | |
Western thinking, private land is understood to be a "bundle of | |
rights." Whereas in a gift economy property has a "bundle of | |
responsibilities" attached. | |
What I mean of course is that our human relationship with | |
strawberries is transformed by our choice of perspective. It is a | |
human perception that makes the world a gift. When we view the world | |
this way, strawberries and humans alike are transformed. | |
... when there is no gratitude in return--that food may not satisfy. | |
It may leave the spirit hungry while the belly is full. Something is | |
broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery | |
plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped | |
cage. This is not a gift of life; it is theft. | |
Refusal to participate is a moral choice. Water is a gift for all, | |
not meant to be bought and sold. Don't buy it... | |
# An Offering | |
My mother had her own more pragmatic ritual of respect: the | |
translation of reverence and intention into action. Before we | |
paddled away from any camping place she made us kids scour the place | |
to be sure that it was spotless. No burnt matchstick, no scrap of | |
paper escaped her notice. "Leave this place better than you found | |
it," she admonished. And so we did. We also had to leave wood for | |
the next person's fire, with tinder and kindling carefully sheltered | |
from rain by a sheet of birch bark. I liked to imagine their | |
pleasure, those other paddlers, arriving after dark to find a ready | |
pile of fuel to warm their evening meal. My mother's ceremony | |
connected us to them too. | |
That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to | |
the sacred. | |
What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else | |
can you give but something of yourself? | |
# Asters and Goldenrod | |
As it turns out, though, goldenrod and asters appear very similarly | |
to bee eyes and human eyes. We both think they're beautiful. Their | |
striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most | |
attractive target in the whole meadow, a beacon for bees. Growing | |
together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they | |
were growing alone. It's a testable hypothesis; it's a question of | |
science, a question of art, and a question of beauty. | |
Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously | |
material and spiritual, for which we need all wavelengths, for which | |
we need depth perception. | |
When botanists go walking the forests and fields looking for plants, | |
we say we are going on a foray. When writers do the same, we should | |
call it a metaphoray, and the land is rich in both. We need them | |
both; scientist and poet Jeffrey Burton Russel writes that "as the | |
sign of a deeper truth, metaphor was close to sacrament. Because the | |
vastness and richness of reality cannot be expressed by the overt | |
sense of a statement alone." | |
# Learning the Grammar of Animacy | |
Listening in wild places we are audience to conversations in a | |
language not our own. | |
But beneath the richness of [the] vocabulary and [the] descriptive | |
power, something is missing [from the language of science], the same | |
something that swells around you and in you when you listen to the | |
world. Science can be a language of distance which reduces a being | |
to its working parts; it is a language of objects. | |
But in scientific language our terminology is used to define the | |
boundaries of our knowing. What lies beyond our grasp remains | |
unnamed. | |
But a few summers ago, at our yearly tribal gathering, a language | |
class was held and I slipped into the tent to listen. | |
There was a great deal of excitement about the class because, for the | |
first time, every fluent speaker in our tribe would be there as a | |
teacher. When the speakers were called forward to the circle of | |
folding chairs, they moved slowly--with canes, walkers, and | |
wheelchairs, only a few entirely under their own power. I counted | |
them as they filled the chairs. Nine. Nine fluent speakers. In the | |
whole world. Our language, millennia in the making, sits in those | |
nine chairs. The words that praised creation, told the old stories, | |
lulled my ancestors to sleep, rests today in nine very mortal men and | |
women. | |
The speakers eyes blaze as he tells us, "We're the end of the road. | |
We are all that is left. If you young people do not learn, the | |
language will die. The missionaries and the United States government | |
will have their victory at last." | |
"It's not just the words that will be lost," she says. "The | |
language is the heart of our culture; it holds our thoughts, our way | |
of seeing the world. It's too beautiful for English to explain." | |
Our teacher, Justin Neely, explains that while there are several words | |
for "thank you," there is no word for "please." Food was meant to be | |
shared, no added politeness needed; it was simply a cultural given | |
that one was asking respectfully. | |
European languages often assign gender to nouns, but Potawatomi does | |
not divide the world into masculine and feminine. Nouns and verbs | |
both are animate and inanimate. ... Different verb forms, different | |
plurals, different everything apply depending on whether what you are | |
speaking of is alive. | |
A bay is a noun only if the water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is | |
defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the | |
word. But the verb "wiikwegaman"--to be a bay--releases the water | |
from bondage and lets it live. "To be a bay" holds the wonder that, | |
for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself | |
between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby | |
mergansers. Because it could do otherwise--become a stream or an | |
ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that too. | |
This is the grammar of animacy. | |
The list of inanimate objects seems to be smaller, filled with | |
objects that are made by people. Of an inanimate being, like a | |
table, we say, "What is it?" And we answer "Dopen yewe." Table it | |
is. But of apple, we must say "Who is that being?" And reply | |
"Mshimin yawe." Apple that being is. | |
When we tell [the children] that the tree is not a "who," but an | |
"it," we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, | |
absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to | |
exploitation. Saying "it" makes a living land into "natural | |
resources." If a maple is an "it," we can take up the chainsaw. If | |
a maple is a "her," we think twice. | |
The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be | |
worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human. | |
I'm not advocating that we all learn Poppadom or Hopi or Seminole, | |
even if we could. Immigrants came to these shores bearing a legacy | |
of languages, all to be cherished. But to become native to this | |
place, if we are to survive here, and our neighbors too, our work is | |
to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we might truly be | |
at home. | |
# Maple Sugar Moon | |
Sugaring has changed over the years. ... In many sugaring operations, | |
plastic tubing runs right from the trees to the sugar house. | |
People of the Maple Nation made sugar long before they possessed | |
trade kettles for boiling. Instead, they collected sap in birch bark | |
pails and poured it into log troughs hollowed from basswood trees. | |
The large surface area and shallow depth of the troughs was ideal for | |
ice formation. Every morning, ice was removed, leaving a more | |
concentrated sugar solution behind. The concentrated solution could | |
be boiled to sugar with far less energy required. The freezing | |
nights did the work of many cords of firewood, a reminder of elegant | |
connections: maple sap runs at the one time of the year when this | |
method is possible. | |
Wooden evaporation dishes were placed on flat stones over the coals | |
of a fire that burned night and day. ... when the syrup reached just | |
the right consistency, it was beaten so that it would solidify in the | |
desired way, into soft cakes, hard candy, and granulated sugar. The | |
women stored it in birch bark boxes called makaks, sewn tight with | |
spruce root. Given birch bark's natural antifungal preservatives, | |
the sugars would keep for years. | |
# The Consolation of Water Lillies | |
Before I knew it, and long before the pond was ready for swimming, | |
they were gone. My daughter Linden chose to leave the little pond | |
and put her feet in the ocean at a redwood college far from home. | |
I had known it would happen from the first time I held her--from that | |
moment on, all her growing would be away from me. | |
Before my younger daughter, Larkin, left, she and I had a last | |
campfire up at the pond and watched the stars come out. | |
The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we | |
cannot provide ourselves. I hadn't realized that I had come to the | |
lake and said "feed me," but my empty heart was fed. I had a good | |
mother. She gives what we need without being asked. I wonder if she | |
gets tired, old Mother Earth. Or if she too is fed by the giving. | |
"Thanks," I whispered, "for all of this." | |
[I suspect that grief, being a complex of contradicting emotions, has | |
room for a mother to feel simultaneously fed and tired.] | |
We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us | |
to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and exhale of | |
our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift | |
and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come | |
back. | |
# Allegiance To Gratitude | |
Our old farm is within the ancestral homelands of the Onondaga Nation | |
and their reserve lies a few ridges to the west of my hilltop. | |
Here [at the Onondaga school] the school week begins and ends not | |
with the Pledge of Allegiance, but with the Thanksgiving Address, a | |
river of words as old as the people themselves, known more accurately | |
in the Onondaga language as the Words That Come Before All Else. | |
This ancient order of protocol sets gratitude as the highest | |
priority. The gratitude is directed straight to the ones who share | |
their gifts with the world. | |
Thanksgiving Address | |
The actual wording of the Thanksgiving Address varies with the | |
speaker. | |
Gratitude doesn't send you our shopping to find satisfaction; it | |
comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of | |
the whole economy. That's good medicine for land and people alike. | |
Because I feared overstepping my boundaries in sharing what I have | |
been told, I asked permission to write about [the Thanksgiving | |
Address] and how it has influenced my own thinking. Over and over, I | |
was told that these words are a gift of the Haudenosaunee to the | |
world. | |
# Epiphany In The Beans | |
Gardens are simultaneously a material and spiritual undertaking. ... | |
"Where's the evidence? What are the key elements for detecting | |
loving behavior?" | |
That's easy. ... even a quantitative social psychologist would find | |
no fault with my list of loving behaviors: | |
* Nurturing health and well-being | |
* Protection from harm | |
* Encouraging individual growth and development | |
* Desire to be together | |
* Generous sharing of resources | |
* Working together for a common goal | |
* Celebration of shared values | |
* Interdependence | |
* Sacrifice by one for the other | |
* Creation of beauty | |
If we observed these behaviors between humans, we would say, "She | |
loves that person." You might observe these actions between a person | |
and a bit of carefully tended ground and say, "She loves that | |
garden." Why then, seeing this list, would you not make the leap to | |
say that the garden loves her back? | |
The exchange between people and plants has shaped the evolutionary | |
history of both. | |
Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend | |
and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, | |
that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a | |
sacred bond. | |
People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore | |
relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, | |
"Plant a garden." It's good for the health of the earth and it's | |
good for the health of people. | |
# Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass | |
"It's our way," she says, "to take only what we need. I've always | |
been told that you never take more than half." ... the most important | |
thing to remember is what my grandmother always said: "If we use a | |
plant respectfully it will stay with us and flourish. If we ignore | |
it, it will go away. If you don't give it respect it will leave us." | |
... As we leave the meadow for the path back through the woods, she | |
twists a handful of timothy into a loose knot upon itself, beside the | |
trail. "This tells other pickers that I've been here," she says, "so | |
that they know not to take any more." | |
In the early years, no matter how carefully you prepared, this was | |
nearly a rite of passage for women scientists--the condescension, the | |
verbal smackdown from academic authorities, especially if you had the | |
audacity to ground your work in the observations of old women who had | |
probably not finished high school, and talked to plants to boot. | |
The surprise was that the failing plots were not the harvested ones, | |
as predicted, but the unharvested controls. The sweetgrass that had | |
not been picked or disturbed in any way was choked with dead stems | |
while the harvested plots were thriving. Even though half of all | |
stems had been harvested each year, they quickly grew back, completely | |
replacing everything that had been gathered, in fact producing more | |
shoots than were present before harvest. Picking sweetgrass seemed | |
to actually stimulate growth. ... it didn't seem to matter how the | |
grass was harvested, only that it was [harvested]. | |
... their Western science worldview... sets human beings outside of | |
"nature" and judges their interactions with other species as largely | |
negative. They had been schooled that the best way to protect a | |
dwindling species was to leave it alone and keep people away. But | |
the grassy meadow tells us that for sweetgrass, human beings are part | |
of the system, a vital part. | |
Many grasses undergo a physiological change known as compensatory | |
growth in which the plant compensates for loss of foliage by quickly | |
growing more. | |
With a long, long history of cultural use, sweetgrass apparently | |
became dependent on humans to create the "disturbance" that | |
stimulates its compensatory growth. | |
Sweetgrass thrives where it is used and disappears elsewhere. | |
With their tobacco and their thanks, our people say to the Sweetgrass | |
"I need you." By its renewal after picking, the grass says to the | |
people "I need you, too." | |
# The Honorable Harvest | |
Asking permission shows respect for the personhood of the plant, but | |
it is also an assessment of the well-being of the population. Thus I | |
must use both sides of my brain to listen to the answer. The | |
analytical left reads the empirical signs to judge whether the | |
population is large and healthy enough to share. The intuitive right | |
hemisphere is reading something else, a sense of generosity, an | |
open-handed radiance that says "take me," or sometimes a tight-lipped | |
recalcitrance that makes me put my trowel away. | |
Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are | |
ubiquitous in Native cultures, but it's hard to recall a single one | |
in English. [Hansel and Gretel? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?] | |
Early colonists on Turtle Island were stunned by the plenitude they | |
found here, attributing the richness to the bounty of nature. | |
Settlers in the Great Lakes wrote in their journals about the | |
extraordinary abundance of wild rice harvested by Native peoples; in | |
just a few days, they could fill their canoes with enough rice to | |
last all year. But the settlers were puzzled by the fact that, as | |
one of them wrote, "the savages stopped gathering long before all the | |
rice was harvested." She observed that "the rice harvest starts with | |
a ceremony of thanksgiving and prayers for good weather for the next | |
four days. They will harvest dawn till dusk for the prescribed four | |
days and then stop, often leaving much rice to stand unreaped. This | |
rice, they say, is not for them but for the Thunders. Nothing will | |
compel them to continue, therefore much goes to waste." The settlers | |
took this as certain evidence of laziness and lack of industry on the | |
part of the heathens. They did not understand how indigenous | |
land-care practices might contribute to the wealth they encountered. | |
The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or | |
even consistently spoken of as a whole--they are reinforced in small | |
acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look | |
something like this: | |
* Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may | |
take care of them. | |
* Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for | |
a life. | |
* Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. | |
* Never take the first. Never take the last. | |
* Take only what you need. | |
* Take only that which is given. | |
* Never take more than half. Leave some for others. | |
* Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. | |
* Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. | |
* Share. | |
* Give thanks for what you have been given. | |
* Give a gift in reciprocity for what you have taken. | |
* Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever. | |
Unlike state laws, the Honorable Harvest is not an enforced legal | |
policy, but it is an agreement nonetheless, among people and most | |
especially between consumers and providers. The providers have the | |
upper hand. The deer, the sturgeon, the berries, and the leeks say, | |
"If you follow these rules, we will continue to give our lives so | |
that you may live." | |
# In The Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous To Place | |
For the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the | |
Second Man may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become | |
indigenous to place. | |
Wabunong--the East--is the direction of knowledge. We send gratitude | |
to the East for the chance to learn every day, to start anew. | |
Zhawanong--the South--is the land of birth and growth. | |
In his journey to the North, Nanabozho found the medicine teachers. | |
They gave him Wiingaashk to teach him the ways of compassion, | |
kindness, and healing, even for those who have made bad mistakes, for | |
who has not? | |
When Nanabozho came to the West, he found many things that frightened | |
him. ... "All powers have two sides, the power to create and the | |
power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts | |
in the side of creation." | |
Plantain is so prevalent, so well-integrated, that we think of it as | |
native. ... Plantain is not indigenous but "naturalized." That is | |
the same term we use for the foreign-born when they become citizens | |
in our country. | |
Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that | |
feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that | |
build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to | |
know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your | |
gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to | |
live as if your children's future matters, to take care of the land | |
as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. | |
Because they do. | |
# The Sound of Silverbells | |
The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is | |
mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the | |
living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart. My | |
job was just to lead them into the presence and ready them to hear. | |
A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its | |
presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet | |
to hear. | |
# Sitting In A Circle | |
Indigenous architecture tends to the small and round, through | |
following the model of nests and dens and burrows and redds and eggs | |
and wombs--as if there were some universal pattern for home. ... A | |
sphere has the highest ratio of volume to surface area, minimizing | |
the material needed for living space. Its form sheds water and | |
distributes the weight of a snow load. It is efficient to heat and | |
resistant to wind. Beyond material considerations, there is cultural | |
meaning to living within the teachings of a circle. | |
[The Klamath dwellings and prayer seats were also constructed in | |
circular forms.] | |
> You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and | |
> that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and | |
> everything tries to be round. Everything the Power of the World does | |
> is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the | |
> earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in | |
> its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for | |
> theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes | |
> down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. | |
> Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always | |
> come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle | |
> from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power | |
> moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these | |
> were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many | |
> nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children. | |
> | |
> --Black Elk in Black Elk Speaks | |
My students are always different after root gathering. There is | |
something tender in them, and open, as if they are emerging from the | |
embrace of arms they did not know were there. Through them I get to | |
remember what it is to open to the world as a gift, to be flooded | |
with the knowledge that the earth will take care of you, everything | |
you need right here. | |
This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn't this the | |
purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how | |
to use them for good in the world? | |
The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct | |
experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack. | |
# Umbilicaria: The Belly Button of the World | |
Scientists are interested in how the marriage of alga and fungus | |
occurs and so they've tried to identify the factors that induce two | |
species to live as one. But when researchers put the two together in | |
the laboratory and provide them with ideal conditions for both alga | |
and fungus, they give each other the cold shoulder and proceed to live | |
separate lives, in the same culture dish, like the most platonic of | |
roommates. The scientists were puzzled and began to tinker with the | |
habitat, altering one factor then another, but still no lichen. It | |
was only when they severely curtailed the resources, when they created | |
harsh and stressful conditions, that the two would turn toward each | |
other and begin to cooperate. Only with severe need did the hyphae | |
curl around the algae; only when the alga was stressed did it welcome | |
the advances. | |
When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual | |
species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is | |
tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going | |
forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid | |
become critical for survival. So say the lichens. | |
author: Kimmerer, Robin Wall | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Braiding_Sweetgrass | |
LOC: E98.P5 K56 | |
tags: book,native-american,non-fiction | |
title: Braiding Sweetgrass | |
# Tags | |
book | |
native-american | |
non-fiction |