Be sure to mark your calendars for another month-long small group discussion around indigenous knowledge and wisdom, ethnobotany, and women in the environmental movement.

We want to give you ample time to prepare, so please try to read the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, before the last week of September!

The schedule and questions will go out the week before so you can prepare your thoughts. You are not required to attend all the sessions. In the last session, we will celebrate Native American Month (November) and hope this book enlightens you a bit to indigenous cultures.

October 6 - November 3, 2021

7:30-8:30 PM EDT / 4:30 - 5:30 PM PDT

FREE for all to attend!

Via Zoom

Questions To Be Discussed - Section Burning Sweetgrass

1. Kimmerer states that "we seem to be living in an era of Windigo economics of fabricated demand and compulsive overconsumption" (p. 308) In addition, "Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet-except of course those that have gone extinct. Windigo thinking." (p. 309) Can you provide examples of unnecessary overconsumption? The need for the healing of the land and the ecological restoration of the gifts that Mother Earth has given us is passionately presented in the 'The Sacred and the Superfund' chapter. What would we need to change in our society to stop these practices?
2. "The Onondaga people still live by the precepts of the Great Law and still believe that, in return for the gifts of Mother Earth, human people have responsibility for caring for the nonhuman people, for stewardship of the land." (p. 319) What do you believe are the responsibilities of our government and our society in aiding the Onondaga Nation in its efforts to restore Onondaga Lake to a healthy state?
3. Reflect upon Kimmerer's statement "environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire
predictions and powerless feelings." (p. 327) What action can you take within your community to
bring about positive environmentalism and ecological restoration/preservation?
4. Based upon the central themes as presented by Dr. Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, explain the differences between reciprocity and the current ecological movement known as sustainability.

About the Book

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a 2013 nonfiction book by American professor Robin Wall Kimmerer and published by Milkweed.

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 acknowledgment and 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."