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

Hazel Barnett was a neighbor of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s family when they lived in Kentucky. Her story is told in “Witch Hazel,” which is narrated through the eyes of Kimmerer’s daughter, Larkin. Larkin describes Hazel as “the oldest woman I’d ever seen” and remembers wondering if she was the witch that the plant witch hazel was named after (75). In Larkin’s memory, Hazel’s “iron-gray hair was drawn into a bun at the back of her neck with white wisps standing out like sunrays around her toothless face” (75). Hazel’s story demonstrates the value of community and the necessity of supporting vulnerable neighbors.

Hazel lived next door to Larkin and her family with her son Sam. Years prior, on Christmas Eve, Sam had a heart attack, and Hazel left her own home to take care of him. Because Sam needed her and she could not drive, Hazel never returned to her own home. Even as a child, Larkin understands that this is an enormous sacrifice: “you could see that her heart ached for the place—she would get a faraway look in her eyes when she spoke of it” (77). Kimmerer offers Hazel’s dedication to her son as an example of the kind of mutual care and sacrifice necessary in families.

Larkin and Kimmerer attempt to honor this sacrifice by driving Hazel to visit her old home. As a Christmas surprise, they clean and restore the home to host a festive Christmas party with Hazel’s family and friends. Hazel’s face “gleamed like a candle” when she entered the home, demonstrating the tangible benefits of mutual care. Larkin describes her mother’s relationship with Hazel as “a balm for loneliness and a strengthening tea for the pain of longing” that both women felt (82). Her story emphasizes the importance of community care and shows how The Interconnectedness of Life on Earth includes the interconnectedness of human beings.

Nanabozho is the original man of Anishinaabe mythology and an important figure for Anishinaabe storytellers like Kimmerer. She describes Nanabozho as “the personification of life forces, the Anishinaabe culture hero, and our great teacher of how to be human” (178). Nanabozho is a shapeshifter. Although legends sometimes feature the hero as a woman, Kimmerer uses male pronouns throughout her descriptions of Nanabozho. Kimmerer offers Nanabozho as an example of humans living in harmony with the rest of the natural world. His story encourages readers to acknowledge their place as the youngest member of creation and to listen and learn from other beings on Earth.

According to the Anishinaabe Creation story, Nanabozho was the last of all beings to be created. Nanabozho knew nothing of his creation, “only that he was set down into a fully peopled world of plants, animals, winds, and water” (178). He instinctively understood that “he was an immigrant” (178) and that “his role was not to control or change the world as a human but to learn from the world how to be human” (182). This story presents a worldview in which the original man humbly accepts his place as a newcomer in the world, rather than the dominant species. Kimmerer encourages her audience to let Nanabozho’s humility “guide the journey of those who come after” (181).

After being instructed to “learn the names of all the beings” (183), Nanabozho carefully studied the plants and animals he encountered “to see how they lived, and spoke with them to learn what gifts they carried” (183). He was later instructed by the creator “to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters” (184), the plants and animals of the Earth. Nanabozho’s journey offers an example of Indigenous ecology grounded in an understanding of and attention to the lives of other beings on Earth. He also represents The Importance of Storytelling in Indigenous Communities, both as a way of connecting Indigenous people across time and space and as a mode of preserving and transmitting knowledge.

Tom Porter (also known as Sakokwenionkwas) is the founder and spiritual leader of Kanatsiohareke, a small Mohawk community Kimmerer visits near Fonda, New York. Porter belongs to the Bear Clan of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, a sovereign nation straddling the American-Canadian border. He is described as “a powerfully built man, his pitch-black hair streaked with gray, but his face is scarcely wrinkled despite his more than seventy years” (225). Kimmerer portrays Porter as an affable, charismatic leader and storyteller, writing that “words flow from him as water flows from the spring at the foot of the bluff—stories, dreams, and jokes” (225). Kimmerer presents Porter and his work at Kanatsiohareke as the “heart of living stone” in Indigenous communities “that will not surrender” to assimilation (222).

The mission of Kanatsiohareke is to “return to the people what was taken from them—their language, their culture, their spirituality, their identity” (223). Kimmerer presents Porter’s work at Kanatsiohareke as the correction of the historical Injustice of the American Government’s Treatment of Indigenous Americans, calling it “Carlisle in reverse” (223). While the Carlisle Industrial School sought to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” (221), Porter established a cultural center dedicated to teaching traditional Indigenous ways of living. Kanatsiohareke is “a working farm where people learn again how to grow traditional foods, a place for the traditional ceremonies to honor the cycle of the seasons, where ‘the words that come before all else’ are spoken” (226). Kimmerer offers Porter’s work at Kanatsiohareke as a microcosm of the types of changes that she believes need to take place on a national scale in order “to make things whole” for Indigenous people in the United States (230). She uses his example to encourage readers to work to restore traditional ways of living and being with the Earth in their own community.