Braiding Sweetgrass / Trenzar hierba sagrada, Robin Wall Kimmerer

The book is an invitation to integrate multiple languages and identities into one idea that goes into every chapter and subchapter: reciprocity. In each section, Robin Wall Kimerrer goes deeper into this notion, braiding it with her cultural heritage knowledge and her scientific formation, in an attempt to reframe the limits of science and culture, taking into account the role of the person behind it, and this is crucial to understand the richness of the text with the multiple metaphors used to sustain that idea.

Robin is highly aware of the big role that language and speech play in creating practices and revindicating cultures, and she uses that power to summarize the goal of the book:

«El papel ecológico tradicional de los recolectores indígenas posee muchísimas fórmulas para favorecer la sostenibilidad. Estas se encuentran en la ciencia y la filosofía nativas, en las prácticas diarias, en las formas de vida y, especialmente, en los relatos que se cuentan a sí mismos, aquellos que permiten restablecer el equilibrio y situarnos de nuevo dentro del círculo», 209.

“The traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous harvesters is rich in prescriptions for sustainability. They are found in Native science and philosophy, in lifeways and practices, but most of all in stories, the ones that are told to help restore balance, to locate ourselves once again in the circle,” 216.

In this phrase, Robin addressed her proposal: the link between science and indigenous knowledge and how some indigenous practices can teach to maintain a balanced world between humans and nature, as humans are part of that nature. Concepts as beauty —as we’ll see later— will help reinforce the question of why giving voice to both of them is important.

With this awareness, the book invites the readers to reframe how they grow a relationship with the earth. Using the nouns or codes described in each story, and each practice, Robin invites us to modify our consumption practices, as we will see later when she talks about the Honorable Harvest, the Gift economy, the Gratitude culture: The Thanksgiving Address, the Beauty and the Gift as a Reciprocity practice.