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Kimmerer opens the preface with a poetic description of a sheaf of sweetgrass, or Wiingaashk, as it is called in the language of the Indigenous Anishinaabe people. She invites the reader to come braid the sweetgrass with her, all while offering her own braid of stories, made of three strands: Indigenous knowledge, scientific knowledge, and personal experience.

In Chapter 1, “Skywoman Falling,” Kimmerer explains the Indigenous peoples’ Creation story and contrasts it with Western ways of thinking. In Indigenous legend, the first woman, Skywoman, falls from a hole in the sky to the water below, where the animals of the water catch her and bring her mud, so she might have a home on land. In gratitude, Skywoman creates the land and covers it in plants, with sweetgrass being the first. She is responsible for nurturing all life, whether plant or animal, and sets an example for how humanity is to treat the earth. In contrast, modern humans seem to show little regard for this decree, and many, such as Kimmerer’s students, believe there is no positive relationship between humanity and nature. Kimmerer argues that this broken relationship between humanity and the earth must be mended before we can hope to undo the damage humanity has done.

Read about Main Idea (#1) of Braiding Sweetgrass: Humanity must repair its relationship with the earth before it can repair the earth.

In Chapter 2, “The Council of Pecans,” Kimmerer explores the ideas of mutualism and unity through the relationship between Kimmerer’s displaced Indigenous ancestors and pecan trees. Everywhere that displaced Indigenous peoples were taken, the pecan trees were there as sustenance. A mutual relationship was created between the two in which the people were fed, and the trees were taken care of by the people. The most important lesson the trees tried to teach the people was that of unity, for the trees would only flourish if all trees were flourishing, and only bear fruit when all others bore fruit. However, when the Indigenous peoples were presented with the option of standing together and fighting for their right to communal land or separating and accepting private property, they chose the latter. By ignoring the wisdom of the pecan trees, most lost their land as a result.

Chapter 3, “The Gift of Strawberries,” introduces the idea of a gift economy. Gifts in Indigenous tradition are based on reciprocity, in which one is meant to give back and share. The earth itself gives the people many gifts, and it is the people’s responsibility to both exercise self-restraint by never taking too much and to celebrate the abundance given to them, not commodify it. The social bonds created by these gifts, whether between people or the earth, help sustain both the land and the world we live in, and gratitude for these gifts is an important part of that. A gift economy is driven by gratitude and reciprocal relationships, while a market economy is driven by commodification and exclusion.

Read about the book’s Main Idea (#2): The unique responsibility of humans is to show gratitude for the earth’s gifts.

Chapter 4, “An Offering,” further develops this theme of gratitude. Kimmerer tells the story of her father’s ceremony of thanking the land while they were camping by pouring the first cup of coffee each morning into the dirt. It did not originally start as a ceremony, but as a practical way of clearing the coffeepot’s spout. However, over time, this mundane act became a celebration of gratitude and acknowledgement to the land, much like ancient ceremonies of the past.
 
In Chapter 5, “Asters and Goldenrod,” Kimmerer explores the complementary nature of scientific knowledge and Indigenous knowledge through the question that drove her to study botany: Why do asters and goldenrods look so beautiful together? Science rejects this question because of the inherent divide between the observer and the subject, as opposed to considering the relationships between the observer and the observed. Kimmerer encourages the marriage of scientific knowledge, which knows things through the mind and body, and Indigenous knowledge, which knows things through emotion and soul, as well. In the case of asters and goldenrods, science dictates that they are beautiful together in order to appeal to pollinators, but Indigenous knowledge adds that this beauty also creates a spiritual and emotional connection with humans.

Read about the book’s Main Idea (#3): Neither science nor Indigenous knowledge alone is enough to understand the world fully.

Chapter 6, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” explains how the grammatical distinctions between English and Indigenous languages inform the worldviews of the speakers. In English, only humans are treated as beings, relegating most everything else to being an “it.” Indigenous languages, however, are based on animacy, which classify words as animate or inanimate. Most everything in nature, whether a tree or an ocean bay, is considered animate, or alive, and fosters a worldview in which the natural world is full of beings and teachers. English, in contrast, strips these words and ideas of their spirit, and classifies them as objects to be used and exploited.

Read an explanation of a key quote (#2) about the idea of animacy.

Next section Tending Sweetgrass (Chapters 7-11)

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