Braiding Sweetgrass: the teachings of plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer , PhD, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment

Drawing on her life as an indigenous plant scientist, a teacher, a writer and a mother, Robin Wall Kimmerer will share ideas found in her award-winning book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, in which she shows how plants—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In traditional ecological knowledge, plants are regarded not only as persons, but as among our oldest teachers. If plants are our teachers, what are they teaching us and how can we be better students? In a rich braid of ecological science, indigenous philosophy and literary reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she explores and celebrates the material and cultural gifts of plants and our responsibilities for reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.