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

Traditionally, the Onondaga people believe that the gift of water is its role as a life sustainer. The Haudenosaunee have a Thanksgiving Address for water. Their confederacy was born out of a period of war, only to later become the oldest surviving democracy in the world. Although the ancestors tried to warn of future strife, today a Superfund site exists on the spot where they made peace; the Onondaga Lake, one of the country’s most sacred sites, is now one of its most polluted. It is as if the newcomers have “declared war, not on each other, but with the land” (313).

All of the land around the lake is thoroughly polluted. Swimming and fishing are banned. The once-clear water now runs “as brown as chocolate milk” (318). Although the Onondaga had a treaty with the US government, George Washington ordered federal troops to kill many thousands of them during the Revolutionary War. The population has been decimated over the centuries, the once large nation reduced to just 4,300 acres. Nevertheless, the Onondaga people have preserved their culture as best they can. Many Indigenous people have filed and settled court cases over lost lands, accepting cash payouts and casino deals. The Onondaga, however, refused to settle, and in 2010 a federal judge dismissed the Onondaga’s land reclamation case.

As the author travels around the lake, she envisions a series of signs that track the destruction—and hopefully the rebirth—of the land. The signs read, in succession, “LAND AS CAPITAL,” “LAND AS PROPERTY,” “LAND AS MACHINE,” and “LAND AS HEALER.” The final stop on the lake is incomplete, the scene is set for a tableau of “kids swimming, families picnicking” (340).

According to the author, stories are “among our most potent tools for restoring the land as well as our relationship to land” (341). In the Mayan story of creation, humanity was created to tell the story of creation and praise it. The gods’ first attempts were unsatisfactory, being either ugly, arrogant, or incapable of gratitude. Finally, they fashioned humans out of corn, ground into fine meal and mixed with water. These were the people capable of sustaining the earth.

Citing another example of reciprocity, the author writes, “Corn cannot exist without us to sow it and tend its growth [...]. From these reciprocal acts of creation arise the elements that were missing from the other attempts to create sustainable humanity: gratitude, and a capacity for reciprocity” (343).

Although the author appreciates Indigenous stories and their wisdom, she believes that “an immigrant culture must write its own new stories of relationship to place” (344). She imagines humanity being created as a poem written about the chemical makeup of the ecosystem. Scientists are the translators, responsible for “conveying their stories to the world” (345), but their typical language can exclude readers. The author dreams “of a world guided by a lens of stories rooted in the revelations of science and framed with an indigenous worldview” (346).

During the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the author listens to news reports from Baghdad listing the collateral damage in the city. Switching off the television, she exits the house in the rain and drives to Labrador Hollow, where the salamanders are stirring from their hibernation. There, she helps the animals to cross the dark road. The salamanders return each year to the pond where they were born, their internal navigation just as complex as “the ‘smart bombs’ winding their way to targets in Iraqi neighborhoods” (352). One year, the author and her daughter followed the salamanders to one such pond and found dozens of the animals gracefully swimming through the water. They began to swirl and froth the water, their mating ritual churning the water and causing a mass of bubbles.

Amphibians are among the animals most threatened by changing habitats. They are collateral damage. As she stands beside the road at night, the author laments the pollution and the war which cause so much collateral damage across the world. A group of people appears with torches. They are students, taking a census of the road-crossing animals, hoping to convince the authorities to install salamander crossing points. The author drives home, hearing more news reports from Iraq on the radio. She feels “powerless.”

The author remembers her father teaching her how to set and light a fire. He takes fire-making seriously, calling it “an emblem of a certain kind of virtue” (361). Aged 83, he still teaches fire-making. He lists the various types of fires: campfires, wildfires, and controlled fires which can renew the land. Fires can also produce shkitagen, “a valued traditional medicine” (364). There is also the “sacred fire within us” (364).

For the Anishinaabe people, fires correspond to seven “eras in the life of [the] nation” (365). Each of the fires describes a period and a place in the history of the people—from their time on the Atlantic shore, to the Great Lakes, to the “coming of the light-skinned people in ships from the east” (366). Prophecies differed on how to deal with these people; the Anishinaabe were nearly destroyed by those with “black robes and black books” (367). In the future, however, a prophet has foretold that the time of the Seventh Fire will see the emergence of a generation with a sacred purpose: to retrace the steps of their ancestors and reinvigorate Indigenous language and culture.

However, the prophecy also warned of people reaching a split in the path and having to make a choice. The author chooses to read this as climate change and the manner in which humanity responds. She prays that “we have not already passed the fork in the road” (371).

The author visits her medicine woods. She notices that her neighbor has been logging in the area but has not followed the guidelines of the Honorable Harvest. In all likelihood, her medicine plants will not survive. The author worries about protecting “what I love against the Windigo” (374). She views the modern global economy as a Windigo economy. Some of her peers believe that the Windigo will die on its own, after climate change destabilizes the economic status quo. However, the author rejects this view, writing, “Climate change will unequivocally defeat economies that are based on constant taking without giving in return. But before the Windigo dies, it will take so much that we love along with it” (375).

To fight the Windigo, the author prescribes changes to the economy and changes to the heart, because “gratitude is a powerful antidote to Windigo psychosis” (377). However, she admits that this is easier said than done. She prepares her medicines as best she can; the Windigo appears at her door and drinks the medicine down in one gulp. It makes him sick, spewing pollution everywhere. Then, she gives him healing medicines and the Windigo is “helpless” before such care and gratitude. Then, she sits beside the Windigo and tells him the story of Skywoman.

In summer, people gather together to celebrate and exchange gifts. The minidewak, a ceremonial giveaway, is “an echo of our oldest teachings” (381). Children are taught about the importance of gifts and how to honor them. The author imagines the world as a similar kind of ceremony, as “we are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity” (383). She wants nothing more than to hear “a great song of thanks rise on the wind” (383); she wants people “to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath” (384).