About 1/2 way through our Book Club and the Book! For this upcoming meeting, please try to have read or reviewed pages 121 - 204. The reciprocity theme continues in this section with an emphasis upon the gifts the land provides, finding our unique gifts to give in return, how our gifts can be used to foster the sense of community, and how "plants teach in a universal language: food." (p. 129) 'The Three Sisters' (pp. 128 - 140) story is especially poignant and informative.
Additionally, 'The Honorable Harvest' (pp. 175 - 201) "... asks us to give back, in reciprocity, for what we have been given." (p. 190) The Guidelines of the Honorable Harvest are presented as rules that "... are based on accountability to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds." (p. 183) Kimmerer discusses the culture of gratitude as a springboard for a culture of reciprocity, and the differences between reciprocity and the modern ecological movement towards sustainability.
Week 3 Questions:
What does each of The Three Sisters - corn, beans, and squash - bring to their reciprocal relationship? How can this partnership create a stronger community? Can you think of other examples of such win-win situations? How can we teach people to "remember that what's good for the land is also good for the people"?
In our consumer-driven society, how can we put into realistic practice the covenants of The Honorable Harvest? How can we teach people to "remember that what's good for the land is also good for the people"? (p. 195).
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
Book To Be Discussed
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
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."
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. In Braiding 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).
