Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The same object can reach you as a commodity or as a gift, and the two leave you in completely different positions. Pay for socks and you owe nothing once the receipt prints; take socks knitted by your aunt and you are bound to her. Robin Wall Kimmerer builds an entire ecological ethic on that difference. She is a plant ecologist at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and her argument is that her two inheritances are not rivals. Science is very good at describing how a living thing works. It says nothing about how you should behave toward it. A culture that keeps only the first half ends up holding an inventory of resources and no idea what it owes them.

Robin Wall Kimmerer on SummaryShelf

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants