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

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Reading Check

1. Light (Chapter 1)

2. From the body of Skywoman’s daughter (Chapter 3)

3. The highest Adirondack peak (Chapter 4)

4. 70 percent (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

1. She points out that the Skywoman story depicts the natural world as a place where humans belong and one that they have a responsibility to tend thoughtfully. By contrast, the Biblical story of Eden depicts the natural world as a hostile place that must be subdued by the humans exiled into it. (Chapter 1)

2. Kimmerer explains that all pecan trees in an area fruit at the same time, which means that when the pecans ripen, there are huge quantities of them and animals must store the extras. This allows the pecans to propagate in new places. From this example, Kimmerer draws the lesson that “all flourishing is mutual.” (Chapter 2)

3. She says that in the dominant culture, gifts are expected to be free and do not create any obligation in the recipient. In “gift economies,” however, which many Indigenous societies have, gifts create relationships with an expectation of mutual benefit. (Chapter 3)

4. At first, she felt that the way botany is studied, especially in the lab, is reductionist and does not make room for the kinds of questions and approaches that she is most interested in. (Chapter 5)

Part 2, Chapters 7-11

Reading Check

1. Nanabozho (Chapter 7)

2. Kimmerer’s daughter (Chapter 8)

3. A purple bedroom (Chapter 9)

4. Stand for the Pledge of Allegiance (Chapter 11)

Short Answer

1. She says that Nanabozho’s teachings show us that gifts from the Earth should be earned by participating through work and gratitude. (Chapter 7)

2. She is keenly aware that each change she makes in the pond impacts some life forms positively and others negatively, and she works slowly and deliberately, trying to minimize harm. (Chapter 9)

3. When she gets home, she discovers that Larkin has left her a stack of presents—one for every year she has been Larkin’s mother. (Chapter 10)

4. She says that it teaches gratitude and an important civics lesson: Leadership is rooted in wisdom and service, not in authority and power. (Chapter 11)

Part 3, Chapters 12-17

Reading Check

1. Squash, beans, and corn (Chapter 13)

2. John Pigeon (Chapter 14)

3. A gs station (Chapter 16)

4. The Honorable Harvest (Chapter 17)

Short Answer

1. She says that gardens are the way the Earth tells us it loves us back. (Chapter 12)

2. Cooperation, balance, and harmony lead to better outcomes for everyone. (Chapter 13)

3. The basket makers were afraid that overharvesting was causing the decline in black ash populations, but Kimmerer’s study showed that because there are fewer basket makers, less space is being created in forests for ash to grow. (Chapter 14)

4. Laurie and Kimmerer show that harvesting sweetgrass actually promotes healthier growth. (Chapter 15)

Part 4, Chapters 18-25

Reading Check

1. Carl Linnaeus (Chapter 18)

2. A song (Chapter 20)

3. Salmon (Chapter 21)

4. A type of lichen (Chapter 23)

Short Answer

1. When she hears her students singing “Amazing Grace,” she hears in their song the same reverence for Creation that she feels, which contradicts her earlier impression that they have no interest in the natural world. (Chapter 19)

2. Porter has restored traditional buildings along the river, with the intention of resettling Mohawk people in one of their traditional homes; the next part of the plan is to increase the number of Mohawk speakers in this area. (Chapter 22)

3. Dolp intended to gradually cultivate an old-growth forest, because this type of forest is a model of a self-sustaining community. (Chapter 24)

4. She wonders why the droplets of rain are so much larger here than in other places. (Chapter 25)

Part 5, Chapters 26-32

Reading Check

1. A Superfund site (Chapter 27)

2. Stories (Chapter 28)

3. Salamanders (Chapter 29)

4. The economy and human hearts (Chapter 31)

Short Answer

1. The story teaches that greed in any form is self-destructive. (Chapter 26)

2. Each fire corresponds to a particular era and location in the history of the Anishinaabe people. (Chapter 30)

3. She discovers that her neighbor is harvesting trees in an unsustainable way that threatens her medicine plants. (Chapter 31)

4. Kimmerer is making the point that whether people want to acknowledge it or not, the entire world is bound together by “a covenant of reciprocity.” (Chapter 32)