Braiding Sweetgrass

I loved so much about this book, but it also made me so mad, and as a result, took me 3 months to finish listening to. There were so many anecdotes and tidbits from the author that I really appreciated and a lot of things I simply had never heard about before that I'm glad that I know now. It made me start to brainstorm ways that I can be more connected and take care of the earth better even though I live in a huge urban center. But at the same time, there was this really icky undertone of classism in some of the chapters that I really think made this book less. Perhaps this would go unnoticed by someone who hasn't been exposed to people from many different places before, or lived in many different types of environments before, but it was really noticeable to me. I also found the author's somewhat interchangeable use of immigrant, settler, and colonialist, to be rather unsettling given the current political climate. I realize that this book is somewhat older, and that topics of Indigenous sovereignty can be fraught in the Americas and Australia in particular, but it nonetheless struck me as somewhat careless in contrast to how much care the author puts into expressing reciprocity in such explicit terms.

I was really excited about this book given how many good things I've heard about people who've read it in the past year so, but I'm feeling more on the negative side of lukewarm about it, which is a shame. Maybe I'll have to try it again at some point with some more education under my belt and see if I feel more positively about it then.

This book has permanently changed the way I think about the world. It made me so overwhelmed with emotions that at times I had to set down my phone and cry for a few minutes. But it is beautiful. It is poignant and important and it has given me renewed hope for a world that is increasingly terrifying. 

Kimmerer spends a lot of time in this book comparing and contrasting Western science to indigenous ways of knowing, specifically from the Potawatomi tradition. As she's someone formally trained in western science, I understood her thesis being that indigenous ways of knowing can coexist with western science, but more than anything, I felt that this book did a really good job justifying why we shouldn't treat science as the end all be all of knowledge.

On one hand, I think this book reintroduced my very secular mind to the ways in which having a spiritual connection to nature can be extremely enriching and can add to our collective understanding of the natural world

On the other hand, it provides a basis for understanding where exactly science falls short in its attempt to catalogue the universe, as well as exposing its "objectivity" for the many ways in which it is actually ideologically motivated.

All in all, this book is definitely going to be a cornerstone of my worldview with respect to knowledge for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the fact that Kimmerer is just a really awesome writer in general

I'm glad that I decided to listen to the audiobook. You can hear the care and passion in Robin's voice as she tells her stories.

This book made me want to reconnect with nature. It brought to light so many things that I never would have even considered as someone who was raised without nature being a regular thing in my life. There was an abundance of information to be found in this book, from why the cost of Native-made goods is on the higher side (spoiler, it's because they don't take from the earth before it's ok to) to how a swamp ecosystem would have provided enough nutrients for people to survive without even needing to hunt. I had no idea that cattails could be used in so many ways.

I have a feeling this is an audiobook that I will be listening to a few times over the years.

Very interesting. I like how she couples her love of "Native science" (as she calls it) and western science. She shares so much knowledge and the love of Native American culture.

This is too beautiful for words

Now, it took me awhile to get into this book. I tend to be annoyed with people who use "Western science" as a derogative unironically. I also think that the pictures of the Native life are way over-idealized. However, all of it is irrelevant. This is a kind of story that does not need to be true to be worth telling.

This book has a good chance of shifting your perception of nature and of ecological matters, completely, and transform your relationship with the world. And I don't say that often.