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

From her daughter’s perspective, Kimmerer tells a story about her old friend Hazel. Shortly after moving to Kentucky, they meet Hazel Barnett while picking berries. Hazel is “the oldest woman [her daughter had] ever seen” (73). The daughter worries that she might be a witch; nevertheless, her mother and Hazel become friends. Hazel lives in a small house with her disabled son Sam and daughter Janie, who is “simple.”

Hazel knows a great deal about the medicinal qualities of plants including witch hazel, a natural astringent and antiseptic often used to treat skin conditions. She was born nearby but moved in with Sam the night he suffered a heart attack. She misses her home, much like the author’s daughter knows her own mother misses her home.

One Christmas, the author prepares a surprise dinner at Hazel’s house. With the help of some of her students, Kimmerer cleans the house, arranges for the electricity to be temporarily restored, and invites the neighbors for a Christmas feast. When all is revealed, Hazel beams and “moved through her house like a queen” (80).

A few years later, the family leaves Kentucky. A few years after that, Hazel dies. The author’s daughter recollects how Hazel and her mother formed an unlikely friendship; they had “made a balm for their loneliness together” (81).

One day, the author’s husband decides to leave the country and his family behind permanently. Kimmerer searches for a new home in upstate New York with explicit instructions from her daughters to find a home with a purple bedroom. She takes it as a sign when she finds an old farmhouse with a purple bedroom, just as her daughters requested: “This is where we would fall to earth” (83). They move in and buy ducklings to be raised by the girls. Three ducks survive into adulthood, but before long they become a nuisance. They bully the dog and leave frozen defecations on the porch. Despite their annoying natures, the author cannot bring herself to be anything less than a “good mother” to them.

One day, the ducks disappear, leaving the pond thick with algae. After a pair of geese settle beside the pond, the author discovers a gosling trapped in the algae. It frees itself, but the author decides that she must clear the pond to make it more hospitable to wildlife. Coming at the issue from a scientific perspective, she begins to excavate the algae to prevent the chemical reaction which allows it to prosper.

During one such excavation, Kimmerer discovers hundreds of tadpoles in the pond. Struck by the moral dilemma, she faces the problem of letting the tadpoles—and other creatures—die in pursuit of a clean, swimmable pond. Each new process or change in the pond forces her to reconsider what she is doing. The process takes years, her life becoming entwined with the pond “in ways both material and spiritual” (95). Today, after 12 years, the pond is “nearly swimmable.” While the author’s daughters are now grown up and gone, she knows that it is her “grandchildren who will swim in this pond” (97).

While on a visit to see her older daughter Linden at her college in Northern California, Kimmerer walks along the nearby beach. She reflects on “the fundamental unfairness of parenthood” (98) and the fact that children will inevitably grow up and leave home. She spends much of her life feeding those in her charge: children, pet, fruits, vegetables, and flowers. She has a similar pang of emotion when Larkin, her younger daughter, also leaves for college.

To deal with these departures, the author purchases a new kayak. After taking Larkin to college, she drives straight to Labrador Pond and places the kayak on the water. She paddles through the lilies and rushes, pausing to float alone on the deep water. Satisfied, she rows to the shore and drives home. She arrives at her porch to find a stack of wrapped presents from Larkin. They are for the author, “one for every year of mothering Larkin” (104).

One day, when her children are younger and still live at home, the author receives a call informing her that her daughter “refus[es] to stand with the class for the Pledge of Allegiance” (105). The call inspires the author to remember her own time in school; at the time, she felt “part of something” when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but now, she writes, “[T]he idea of asking schoolchildren to pledge loyalty to a political system seems exceedingly curious” (106). Moreover, it is difficult for Kimmerer and her daughter to celebrate America as a place of “liberty and justice for all” when their experiences as Indigenous people have proved otherwise.

At the time, the Kimmerer family house is located in “the ancestral homelands of the Onondaga Nation” (106) in upstate New York. Instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, the local Onondaga school recite the Thanksgiving Address each morning, a ritual expressing gratitude for the offerings of the natural world.

The author describes the various passages of the Thanksgiving Address, calling it “a lesson in Native science” (108). It thanks fish, plant life, berries, food plants, medicine herbs, trees, and much more. The Address can be tailored in length, and the listeners’ attention demonstrates gratitude. It is also a civics lesson, providing models of leadership “remind[ing] the whole community that leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom” (112). While the Pledge of Allegiance imbues the author with a sense of cynicism over “the nation’s hypocrisy,” in the Address she hears respect given to “all of life.”

The author continues the Address, thanking the stars, the moon, and more. She asks the Onondaga whether she can write about their Address; they tell her “of course,” as it is supposed to be shared. The author longs for the day when people “can hear the land give thanks for the people in return” (118).