Book review
I really loved this book and would definitely recommend it.
A main theme is the tension and interplay between ‘hard scientific inquiry’ and Indigenous ways of knowing. Kimmerer describes through many examples how Indigenous worldviews embody principles like respect for the land & reciprocity between people and plants/animals that are often disregarded in the detached academic world of science. She connects our relationship to the earth to our collective values — describing, for example, how our desire to squeeze the earth of every last resource and disrupt natural ecosystems in the name of efficiency reflects a more widespread greed and materialism. Towards the end of the book, she touches on restoration and the path forward. An important point to me was that despair is not the end game. Making people sad and upset paralyzes them. Making them truly care for and love the world around them, and to discover kindred community who feel the same, might catalyze them.
Her descriptions of plants, animals and the natural world throughout the book are so evocative I really felt my heart breaking for them in a way that typical scientific reporting about sustainability doesn’t achieve. You can tell she truly views all living things — whether micro-organisms, trees, or animals — with respect, wonder, and love, and it makes the reader feel that way, too.
Some discussions/stories in particular that stuck out to me:
The discussion about language: in Potawatomi, things we typically think of as nouns (a bay, a rock, water, stories) are actually verbs (to be a bay, to be a story), communicating that they are living and animate. Kimmerer asks whether our relationship to the natural world would be different if humans were not the only ones granted such personhood (‘Saying it makes a living land into ‘natural resources.’ If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice’). Does speaking & thinking in English give us permission to disrespect nature? ‘The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worth of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.’
The reoccurring theme of reciprocity: Kimmerer frequently comes back to the mindset shift that occurs when you go from thinking about the world around us as full of things to be taken versus gifts that are given to us. She tells many stories about gift-giving, sharing, and reciprocity in Indigenous cultures. Usually when you receive a gift, it carries some meaning beyond that value of the material object itself. You express gratitude and treat the gift respectfully, and you reciprocate, building a relationship. Throughout the book, she describes how a reciprocal, respectful relationship between people and plants/animals is beneficial to both. For example: strawberries have evolved to be sweet and juicy so that people and animals will pick them and eat them, and in doing so, scatter the seeds far and wide for further proliferation. Sweetgrass grows best when half of it is harvested, not when it is left completely alone. She connects the loss of this relationship to the disconnect and detachment in our current food systems. When you’re so disconnected to the natural sources of infinitely-processed and packaged stuff, it’s difficult to imagine where it came from or treat it as a gift. ‘Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.’
The genius of plants; living beings as our teachers: in chapter after chapter, Kimmerer demonstrates the natural genius of plants, the way they have evolved to solve so many different problems in a way that seems effortless. She describes how in Indigenous culture, the first man put on earth was told to look to the plants and animals as his teachers, since they have been around for much, much longer and deserve to be treated with respect, in the same way a learned elder would be revered. When we lose this humility to hubris that makes us think that humans are the smartest beings with all the answers, we end up throwing away the prolific teachings and gifts of the natural world. She gives the example of a class trip (which sounded really fun, made me wish I studied ecology) where her class devised shelter, food, clothing, storage, insulation, and tinder from cattails found in a swamp marsh.
Restoration and the path forward: Kimmerer talks about the ‘Windigo’, a cannibalistic mythical monster in Indigenous culture, famed as the thing to be afraid of, the vice of reciprocity and respect, and the opposite of a harmonious relationship with the world. The monster is high on consumption, and the more it eats the more it wants. Its heart is cold. She compares the Windigo to the state of the world now, and the false scarcity that is imposed on us to hide a world of abundance. ‘The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated. The market system artificially creates scarcity by blocking the flow between the source and the consumer. Grain my rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot play for it. The result is famine for some people and disease of excess for others. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings: this is a Windigo economy.’ As an alternative, she brings up the economy embodied by ‘one bowl, one spoon’ — the gifts of the earth are in one bowl, all to be shared from a single spoon. Resources fundamental to our well-being (water, land, forests) should be commonly held, not commodified. This returns to the Indigenous worldview that ‘the earth exists not as private property, but as a commons, to be tended with respect and reciprocity for the benefit of all.’
- Goodreads rating – 4.57
- REVIEW – Harini