Will I love Braiding Sweetgrass?

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered… show more.

I love this book because it slows me down. Every time I return to it, I feel my edges soften.

Kimmerer writes with such presence that I can almost hear her breathing between sentences. Her way of connecting care, ecology, and gratitude reminds me how to be in the world—not as someone trying to master it, but as someone trying to belong to it. She makes knowledge feel like kinship, how she teaches without telling.

This book reminds me that making sense of change begins with learning how to listen.

Indigenous knowledge on plants, nature, sustainability and mental wellbeing told by a scientist in personal notes. My favorite was the chapter on teaching style and taking students on nature excursions. Very inspirational!

Kimmerer invites us to reconsider how we see our relationship with the earth. Even if you are a nature nut like me, the way she brings you into the understanding of earth as a provider, a magician, and a wise sage made fall in love yet again with where we live and wanting to learn more of how to better live alongside, and with, nature.

This book makes botany accessible, intertwining Indigenous wisdom with scientific insights to demonstrate the magic of the natural world.

I love the lyricism of this book and the way its storytelling approach transcends genres, engaging readers from all walks of life. I learned so much from Kimmerer’s detailed descriptions and her unique philosophy on environmental education.  

Robin Wall Kimmerer holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Botany, and a Ph.D. in Ecology. She is also a member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In Sweetgrass she beautifully braids Western scientific and American Indian spiritual epistemologies into a unified evolutionary-ecological worldview of reciprocity between the human and more-than-human worlds. Braiding Sweetgrass proves that the sketch of that worldview by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, underwritten by Western science, that worldview has for far longer been underwritten by Indigenous ways of knowing

I loved the poetic but down-to-earth approach to finding a way to reconnect with nature.
Highly recommended.

I love this book because of how beautiful and hopeful it is. The author pulls together amazing stories from her life to gradually weave an understanding of the meta-crisis we find ourselves in. I was captivated by the way she contrasts her family’s indigenous American culture with our modern approaches to both science and the economy.

I love Robin’s prose, which is exquisitely written. But perhaps what I value the most is the fact that she writes with optimism, giving me the courage to get up every day and think about how to put her wisdom into practice.

I have guru-phobia, so I had avoided this book because so many people I knew were declaring it one of the best books ever and that Robin Wall Kimmerer was wonderful. Stupid, right?! But then I read it and could understand.

More than reading and listening to it, I met the author at a literary festival and was even more impressed by her gentle wisdom. She writes about the importance of reciprocity—about the rest of life being just as important as we are. Her work merges wonderfully with Jane Goodall’s, and I would recommend reading them in tandem. 

One of the best books I’ve read in years. Kimmerer is a university botanist and a Potawatomi elder, and she applies modern science and Indigenous wisdom to the troubles of our times.

I was moved to tears many times as I read her stories about connecting so intimately with trees, ponds, and plant life cycles. Her stories made me realize how much I’ve been conditioned to feel separate from nature when, in fact, I am a descendant of trees, plants, rivers, and other creatures.

I love how grounded the author is and how beautifully her language expresses something deep and… show more.