Throughout the book, Kimmerer intertwines her experiences as an indigenous woman, her ongoing project to reclaim lost indigenous ways of knowing, and her long career as a practicing bryologist (a botanist specilising in the study of moss and bryophytes), culminating in a celebration of humanity’s historical reciprocal relationships with the rest of the living world. It is at once a memoir, a historical cultural narrative, and a hopeful manual in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises. The book is an epic project that puts indigenous and scientific ways of knowing in conversation with each other. In many ways, Braiding Sweetgrass is a response to this question. Can you list an example of one interaction between society and the environment that benefits them both? This is the question that Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, asked her students at the beginning of Botany 101.
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