Welcome to the UO Libraries Braiding Sweetgrass student research guide. Using the Common Reading theme of Listen. Learn. Act., the UO Libraries presents this guide for you to listen to, learn from, and act in response to the stories and the topics of Robin Wall Kimmerer's book. Robin Wall Kimmerer (Bodéwadmi) is a member of the Citizen Band Potawatomi Nation. To learn more about her tribe, other federally-recognized tribes in the US and in Oregon, visit the Additional Resources page of this guide. Please also review the information about Common Terms in Native American & Indigenous Studies.
Many of the stories and topics in Braiding Sweetgrass are of a sacred nature to the Potawatomi and other Native Peoples. We have endeavored to create this guide with respect and encourage readers of the book to consider the sacred meaning of sweetgrass, other sacred plants, and the stories from the Indigenous tribes in the book and in your local communities.
Please visit the FAQs section of this guide for more information about how this guide was created.
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A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Named a “Best Essay Collection of the Decade” by Literary Hub
A Washington Post “2020 Holiday Gift Guide” Recommendation
A Minneapolis Star Tribune “2020 Holiday Book Recommendation”
A Book Riot “Favorite Summer Read of 2020”
A Food Tank Reading Recommendation for Fall 2020
"What does it take to abandon what does not work and take the risks of uncertainty? We’ll need courage; we’ll need each other’s hands to hold and faith in the geese to catch us. It would help to sing. The landing might not be soft, but land holds many medicines. Propelled by love, ready to work, we can jump toward the world we want to co-create, with pockets full of seeds. And rhizomes."
Robin Wall Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. She is active in efforts to broaden access to environmental science education for Native students, and to create new models for integration of indigenous philosophy and scientific tools on behalf of land and culture. She is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge
- Faculty profile from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Author profile from Yes! Magazine
"Pushing beyond mainstream green politics or policies of preservation and conservation, Kimmerer expertly outlines the crucial relationships and responsibilities Native peoples have long maintained with the non-human world, relationships and responsibilities that require a fundamentally reciprocal interaction."
"[Kimmerer] offers the hope of human-plant interaction as life-giving reciprocity in which we engage, whether we remember it or not. [...] Rather than the typical environmental message of doom and destruction, she calls us to see our integral part in the world, our 'participatory role'."
"This is the best book I have read on Native science. [...] The reader is drawn into the sheer wonder that arises when we actively do good science. Kimmerer shows us that science can be a path toward kinship, and when we awaken to the intelligences around us, we become more fulfilled human beings."
The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians of Oregon, and continue to make important contributions in their communities, at UO, and across the land we now refer to as Oregon.
The UO Libraries has operations and repositories at various locations in Oregon, and wishes to acknowledge the traditional homelands of the Kalapuyan peoples (Eugene area); Chinook, Clackamas, Kalapuya, Kathlamet, Molalla, Multnomah, Tualatin, and other tribes and bands (Portland area); and the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw (Charleston area). [...]
For those who would like to access an electronic version of the book.
Braiding Sweetgrass by For those who would like a physical copy of the book.
Braiding Sweetgrass by
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. InBraiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgmentand celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
For those who would like to listen to the book.
Braiding Sweetgrass by
As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes, she circles toward a central argument: The awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
Eugene Public Library provides unlimited access to the eBook and eAudiobook on Hoopla and Library2Go (via the Libby or OverDrive apps) as well as the print book. Anyone who lives within City of Eugene limits can get a free library card!
Students at our PDX campus may be able to get a Multnomah Library Card.
Students at UO's OIMB campus in Charleston may be able to get a Coos Bay Public Library card.
If any of the available formats do not meet your needs, please email altformat@uoregon.edu with an accessible alternate format request that specifies your preferred format.
For any access issues or questions, please get in touch with your librarians here at UO Libraries!
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