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

It’s funny how the nature of an object—let’s say a strawberry or a pair of socks—is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity.

The animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on extinction—not just for Native peoples, but for everyone.

today’s urban world, where “green” means an advertising slogan, not a meadow.

“doesn’t this mean that speaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to disrespect nature? By denying everyone else the right to be persons? Wouldn’t things be different if nothing was an it? ”

the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the language I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around

But science is rigorous in separating the observer from the observed, and the observed from the observer.

even in a market economy, can we behave “as if ” the living world were a gift?

It was the beginning of my reclaiming that other way of knowing that I had helplessly let science supplant.

The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged “thank yous” with

I floated through the market with a sense of euphoria. Gratitude was the only currency accepted here. It was all a gift. It was like picking strawberries in my field: the merchants were just intermediaries passing on gifts from the earth.