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

The interconnectedness of life on Earth is an important theme throughout Braiding Sweetgrass, which depicts the world as a “web of reciprocity” (254). Kimmerer argues that, contrary to modern belief, humans cannot be separated from the natural world, but are rather intimately interconnected with “all living beings, our relatives” (10). She frames this relationship as both a responsibility and a gift.

Kimmerer’s parents raised her with strong Potawatomi roots and taught her to think of plants as “teachers and companions to whom I shared a mutual responsibility” (60). She writes that, like many Indigenous groups, the Potawatomi believe that humans have “relationships with and a responsibility to water and wolves and one another” (13). For Kimmerer, a botanist, the most obvious example of this mutual responsibility is respiration, “the source of energy where the breath of plants gives life to animals and the breath of animals gives life to plants” (262). The cycle of give-and-take described here is a physical manifestation of the interconnectedness of life on Earth. Kimmerer’s experience as an avid gardener also contributes to her understanding of mutual responsibility. She describes how her family in Oklahoma fulfilled their responsibility to nearby pecan trees “by taking care of the grove, protecting it from harm, planting seeds so that new trees will shade the prairie and feed the squirrels” (35).