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

Throughout Braiding Sweetgrass, fire appears as a powerful symbol of the balance of light and darkness in the universe. In Anishinaabe legend, the original man Nanabozho saw “great fires consume the land” when he explored the West (183). He was terrified by the power of these wildfires until the Firekeeper came to him. He explained to Nanabozho that “all powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy” (183), and that the wildfires were the same fire that warmed his lodge. For Kimmerer, fire acts as a symbol of the balance between light and darkness, a reminder to “invest our gifts on the side of creation” (183).

Elsewhere in the book, Kimmerer describes the effect of fires on landscapes such as the meadows of the Pacific Northwest. Traditionally, Indigenous communities would burn these meadows to welcome migrating salmon from the ocean into freshwater rivers. As Kimmerer explains, “they mean for it to say, ‘Come back to the river where your lives began. We have made a welcome feast in your honor’” (210). As a result of these fires, the meadows burst into bloom in the spring: “the burnt and blackened soil heats up quickly and urges the shoots upward, fueled by the fertilizing ash” (212).