Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Planting Sweetgrass
Learning the Grammar of Animacy
mastered the kindergarten vocabulary and can confidently match the pictures of animals to their indigenous names . It reminds me of reading picture books to my children : “ Can you point to the squirrel ? Where is the bunny ? ” All the while I’m telling myself that I really don’t have time for this ,
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An admiring student once asked me if I spoke my native language . I was tempted to say , “ Oh yes , we speak Potawatomi at home ” — me , the dog , and the Post - it notes .
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To learn again , you really have to listen .
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things . Only 30 percent of English words are verbs , but in Potawatomi that proportion is 70 percent .
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the mystical word Puhpowee is used not only for mushrooms , but also for certain other shafts that rise mysteriously in the night .
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In Potawatomi 101 , rocks are animate , as are mountains and water and fire and places .
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To speak of those possessed with life and spirit we must say yawe .
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Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an it , or it must be gendered , inappropriately , as a he or a she .
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“ we must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects , not a collection of objects . ”
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The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate , to be worthy of respect and moral concern , is to be a human .
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When Crow caws at me from the hedgerow , I can call back Mno gizhget andushukwe ! I can brush my hand over the soft grasses and murmur Bozho mishkos . It’s a small thing , but it makes me happy .
Tending Sweetgrass
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live . Instead of seeing piles of firewood and caches of corn , he found the people lying beneath maple trees with their mouths wide open , catching the thick , sweet syrup of the generous trees . They had become lazy and took for granted the gifts of the Creator .
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Maples have a far more sophisticated system for detecting spring than we do . There are photosensors by the hundreds in every single bud , packed with light - absorbing pigments called phytochromes .
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The best swimming lakes are not eutrophic , but cold , clear , and oligotrophic , or poor in nutrients .
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dissolved nutrients that flocculate in specks
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The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need . Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction ; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity , subverting the foundation of the whole economy . That’s good medicine for land and people alike .
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Let us pledge reciprocity with the living world . The Thanksgiving Address describes our mutual allegiance as human delegates to the democracy of species . If what we want for our people is patriotism , then let us inspire true love of country by invoking the land herself .
Picking Sweetgrass
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A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection ,
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A sculpture is just a piece of rock with topography hammered out and chiseled in, but that piece of rock can open your heart in a way that makes you different for having seen it.
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the genius of indigenous agriculture , the Three Sisters . Together these plants — corn , beans , and squash — feed the people , feed the land , and feed our imaginations , telling us how we might live .
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The way of the Three Sisters reminds me of one of the basic teachings of our people . The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world .
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“ use it up , wear it out , make it do , or do without ”
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an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants : I have a question for them , but since we don’t speak the same language , I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally .
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That’s kind of like Columbus claiming to have discovered America . It was here all along , it’s just that he didn’t know it .
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sustainable harvesting can be the way we treat a plant with respect , by respectfully receiving its gift .
Braiding Sweetgrass
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But true to the circle of time , science and technology are starting to catch up with Native science by adopting the Nanabozho approach — looking to nature for models of design , by the architects of biomimicry .
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The biologist Paul Ehrlich called ecology “ the subversive science ” for its power to cause us to reconsider the place of humans in the natural world .
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A teacher comes , they say , when you are ready . And if you ignore its presence , it will speak to you more loudly . But you have to be quiet to hear .
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To have agency in the world , ceremonies should be reciprocal co - creations , organic in nature , in which the community creates ceremony and the ceremony creates communities .
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How surreal it seems that Carlisle has earned a reputation in America for fervent preservation of its heritage , while in Indian Country the name is a chilling emblem of a heritage killer .
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I can take the buried stone from my heart and plant it here , restoring land , restoring culture , restoring myself .
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so came the cedar coffin . The first and last embrace of a human being was in the arms of Mother Cedar .
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They are not the tallest , but their enormous buttressed waistlines can be fifty feet in circumference , rivaling the girth of the redwoods .
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In five hundred years we exterminated old - growth cultures and old - growth ecosystems , replacing them with opportunistic culture .
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Human time is not the same as forest time . But
Burning Sweetgrass
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Below us was the snarling town ringed with rainbow - colored lagoons of petrochemical waste , too many to count . The footprints of the Windigo .
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complicit . We’ve allowed the “ market ” to define what we value so that the redefined common good seems to depend on profligate lifestyles that enrich the sellers while impoverishing the soul and the earth .
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It is the Windigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger , when it is belonging that we crave .
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The consumption - driven mind - set masquerades as “ quality of life ” but eats us from within . It is as if we’ve been invited to a feast , but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness , the black hole of the stomach that never fills . We have unleashed a monster .
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sweetgrass is a teacher of healing , a symbol of kindness and compassion . She reminded me that it is not the land that has been broken , but our relationship to it .
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Fear and loathing , our internal Haunted Hayride — the worst parts of our nature are all here on the lakeshore .
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wood . It is not more data that we need for our transformation to people of corn , but more wisdom .
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What if Western scientists saw plants as their teachers rather than their subjects ? What if they told stories with that lens ?
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Language is our gift and our responsibility . I’ve come to think of writing as an act of reciprocity with the living land . Words to remember old stories , words to tell new ones , stories that bring science and spirit back together to nurture our becoming people made of corn .
Epilogue: Returning the Gift
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In Potawatomi , we speak of the land as emingoyak : that which has been given to us . In English , we speak of the land as “ natural resources ” or “ ecosystem services , ” as if the lives of other beings were our property . As if the earth were not a bowl of berries , but an open pit mine , and the spoon a gouging shovel .