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

The squash creates the ethical habitat for coexistence and mutual flourishing. I envision a time when the intellectual monoculture of science will be replaced with a polyculture of complementary knowledges. And so all may be fed.

A person can live well on a diet of beans and corn; neither alone would suffice. But neither beans nor corn have the vitamins that squash provide in their carotene-rich flesh. Together, they are once again greater than alone.

By virtue of their nitrogen-fixing capacity, beans are high in protein and fill in the nutritional gaps left by corn.

All summer, the corn turns sunshine into carbohydrate, so that all winter, people can have food energy.

That nitrogen should be the factor that limits growth is an ecological paradox: fully 78 percent of the atmosphere is nitrogen gas. The problem is that most plants simply can’t use atmospheric nitrogen. They need mineral nitrogen, nitrate or ammonium. The nitrogen in the atmosphere might as well be food locked away in full sight of a starving perso

The glossy bean is speckled brown, curved and sleek, its inner belly marked with a white eye—the hilum. It slides like a polished stone between my thumb and forefinger, but this is no stone. And there is a pumpkin seed like an oval china dish, its edge crimped shut like a piecrust bulging with filling. I hold in my hand the genius of indigenous agr

One student summed it up: “You wouldn’t harm what gives you love.” Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is summer sunshine flowing in golden streams to pool on our plates.

holds an embryonic copy of a maple branch, and each bud wants desperately to someday be a full-fledged branch, leaves rustling in the wind and soaking up sun. But if the buds come out too soon they’ll be killed by freezing. Too late and they’ll miss the spring. So the buds keep the calendar. But those baby buds need energy for their growth into bra